1938-04-30 — Page 10

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HE CHINA MAIL, APRIL 30, 1938.

The China Mail

Ninety-1

3A Wyndham Street, Hong

Telephone 20022.

London Office:

ed agitation among the Hyde Park orators.

give

It is difficult tamañon of the venera the First of May becau easons are so numerous.

in of the name is puted, the derivation from Maus, the mother of Mercury, to whom the Romans were accustomed to sacrifice on the first day of the 7, Garrick Street, London, W.0.2 month, is usually accepted. The

ancient Romans used on May Day. to go in procession to the grotto of Egeria From the twenty- All communications intended for eighth of April to the second of

Notice To Contribuito

publication should be addressed to May was kept the festival in honour of Flora, goddess of flowers, Most of us remember the old counix song, "Flora's

the Editor, and be accompanied by

the Writer's Name and Address, Holiday." By the Somans the

not necessarily for insertion"

as a guarantee of good faith.

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MAY DAY

ronth was regarded as unlucky but for marriages, owing to the cele bration on the ninth eleventh, and thirte of the Lemuria,

|

the festival of the unhappy dead. This superstition has survived to the present day, although one could hardly conceive of a better month for a wedding.

In mediaeval and Tudor Eng- land, May Day was a great public holiday. All classes of the peo- ple, young and old alike, were up with the dawn, and went “a- Maying" in the woods. Branches

Hong Kong, Saturday, April 30, 1938 of trees and flowers were borne back in triumph to the towns and villages, the centre of the procession being occupied by those who shouldered the may- pole, glorious with ribbons and May Day which more or less wreaths. It is funny to think marks the beginning of Hong that the maypole was forbidden Kong's summer, is associated in by Act of Parliament in 1644, the minds of most Britons with and that they were eyesores to two events; one, an entirely plea the Puritanis, who referred to surable reminiscence of the charm them as "stinckying idols, about of our countryside the other, which the people did "leape and the international socialist move daunce, as the heathen did Pos- ment which celebrates May the sibly there was something degen- First as "Labour Day."

erate and atavistic in these dan- ces around the phalic symbol, It is the advent of this month going back into the early mists which will turn the thoughts of of time, but it seems a pity that many to the burgeoning beauties so much of the simplicity and of Kentish orchards in blossom gaiety and loyalty of the British and the two-fold note of the cuc people of those times should have koo, heard, we are told, in

the disappeared. suburbs of London, which are full of phantom voices long before the birds are there. Nothing, not even the flowers or the buds on

the branches or the changed Folklore for the Future

An effort is to be made to film

wind, speaks clearly of earth awakened at the end of the long Winter's sleep as the cockoo's many of the ancient customs, cry. The strict rule is that claims crafts and traditional dances of to have heard the first cuckoo Britain, before these pass away. should be made only by those who To preserve for the future the live within sound of the bells of ring of the ruin man's bell, the Heathfield Church, in Sussex. technique of the flint knapper, For there, on April 13, the old symbolic ceremonies, such as lady opens her basket, and lets that of "beating the bounds,” and the bird out. The undisputed similar folk material is a worthy fart that the bird has been rather object; but it is to be hoped that late with its call in recent years those responsible for the move may be attributed to its astonishment will not confine themselves ment on seeing the new sort of altogether to recording merely buildings they put up nowadays. time-honoured institutions.

For the importance of such a But in Hong Kong May Day record consists primarily in the can mean nothing to us but said that it affords to a recon- store of pleasures which memory struction of the past; and there may hold Most of our trees are is much in contemporary deciduous and there are no cuc tence that is of recent growth, koos to awaken us to an earlyjand, for the most part it is to be demonstration of the approach of hoped, ephemeral, but that has, the silly season. There is no nevertheless, a great gignifiez.ce subtle and unnoticed change of for those who would understand temperature, verdure, er mood, the conditions under which we The pleasant fresh weather mere live to-day.

ly undergoes a slight metamor

phosis, drizzle and fog conspire the morning and ever

to make the island as closely as for

possible resemble the interior of the cities,

a steam laundry, and there is no housing and comfort within us. So that for that will us poor, struggling, nostalgiac methods,

folk in this comer of the Em-ial of this pire, the First of May means ed to-morrow, little more than memories of recorded, if only plum blossom, newts in the pond (moral, or adors. frogs in the rushes, and increas-itale is history,

point

for the