May Day - 'going-a-maying' and the May Queen: part 3 of 4

Dear Mr Postman .. yesterday’s letter gave us some more of the background .. so today’s letter is about the May Queen ..

Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem “The May Queen” starts:

You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;

To-morrow ’ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year;

Of all the glad New-year, mother, the maddest merriest day,

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

The third verse refers to’ knots of flowers’ and you’ll probably remember the nursery rhyme:

“Here we come gathering nuts and may,
Nuts and may, nuts and may;
Here we come gathering nuts and may
On a cold and frosty morning”

We all know that we cannot gather nuts in May, especially on a cold and frosty morning (which I hope have gone for a few months!) .. No-one told us that ‘nuts’ was probably a corruption of ‘knots’ and referred to the old custom of gathering knots of flowers on May Day!

May fairs have been going on in the UK for over a thousand years .. one of the most celebrated here is the Knutsford Royal May Day .. in 1887 the Prince and Princess of Wales bestowed the title ‘Royal’ on the May Day festivities.

There’s a peculiar May Day custom in Knutsford, Cheshire .. still observed today, of “sanding the streets”. The streets are decorated with coloured sands in patterns and pictures. The tradition has it that King Canute (d 1035), while fording the River Lily, threw sand from his shoes into the path of a wedding party, wishing the newly-weds as many children as the grains of sand at their feet. (Not sure I'd like this - rather too many ...?? especially today?! - what do you think?)

The custom can be traced to the late 1600s. Queen Victoria, when she was still a Princess, recorded in her journal of 1832 “we arrived at Knutsford, where we were most civilly received, the streets being sanded in shapes which is peculiar to this town”

Knutsford also has an exhibition of May Queen costumes dating back to 1887 .. and the one worn in 1887 is made of white plush velvet trimmed with lace and satin ribbons. The crown decorated with costume jewels lined with blue velvet with ecclesiastical braid and trimmed with ermine: see picture.

KATIE Smith (see above) was crowned at this year's Knutsford Royal May Day after hundreds of people gathered for the annual procession. More than 500 children set off from Marshall's Yard at 2pm and were joined by the May Queen and her court at the Sessions House in Toft Road. The youngsters, decorated lorries, horse and drays and other participants then made their way along the streets to the Heath, where there’s dancing, a New Orleans Parade Band, an antique fire engine, the Leyland Morris Men and what is said to be largest funfair in the UK.

An interesting aspect .. I bet the 1887 costume displayed above was made in England & probably locally near Knutsford .. while the 2009 costumes were made in China, as they were considerably cheaper than if they'd been made here in the UK!

Thank you for visiting today Mr Postman .. it’s always kind of you to deliver our letter .. so my mother and I can have something to chat about and remember days gone by .. perhaps you can bring something about Morris Dancing and Jack-in-the-Green .. that sounds interesting ..

Hilary Melton-Butcher

Positive Letters

Thankyou to the Knutsford Guardian newspaper for their information on this year's May Queen, and the wonderful picture of Katie Smith .. please see the link for more pictures of the 2009 event. The Knutsford Guardian also has an article on the May day costumes being shipped 5,000 miles from the Far East.