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'lIi II
In all places where festivals, games, or solemn ceremonials
were held, and whenever public rejoicings and gaiety were deemed
desirable, flowers were utilised with unsparing hands.
“ Set before your doors
The images of all your sleeping fathers.
With Laurels crowned; with Laurels wreath your posts.
And strew with flowers the pavement; let the priest
Do present sacrifice; pour out the wine,
And call the gods to join with you in gladness.”—Dryden.
In the triumphal processions of Rome the streets were strewed
with flowers, and from the windows, roofs of houses, and scaffolds,
the people cast showers of garlands and flowers upon the crowds
below and upon the conquerors proudly marching in procession
through the city. Macaulay says—
“ On ride they to the Forum,
While Laurel-boughs and flowers.
From house-tops and from windows,
Fell on their crests in showers.”
In the processions of the Corybantes, the goddess Cybele, the
protectress of cities, was pelted with white Roses. In the annual
festivals of the Terminalia, the peasants were all crowned with
garlands of flowers; and at the festival held by the gardeners in
honour of Vertumnus on August 23rd, wreaths of budding flowers
and the first-fruits of their gardens were offered by members of
the craft.
In the sacrifices of both Greeks and Romans, it was customary
to place in the hands of victims some sort of floral decoration, and
the presiding priests also appeared crowned with flowers.
“ Thus the gay victim with fresh garlands crowned,
Pleased with the sacred pipe’s enlivening sound.
Through gazing crowds in solemn state proceeds,
And dressed in fatal pomp, magnificently bleeds. ”—Phillips.
The place erected for offerings was called by the Romans ava,
an altar. It was decorated with leaves and grass, adorned with
flowers, and bound with woollen fillets: on the occasion of a
“ triumph ” these altars smoked with perfumed incense.
The Greeks had a Nymph of Flowers whom they called Chloris,
and the Romans the goddess Flora, who, among the Sabines and
the Phoceans, had been worshipped long before the foundation of
the Eternal City. As early as the time of Romulus the Latins
instituted a festival in honour of Flora, which was intended as a
public expression of joy at the appearance of the welcome blossoms
which were everywhere regarded as the harbingers of fruits. Fiv e
hundred and thirteen years after the foundation of Rome the
Floralia, or annual floral games, were established; and after the
sibyllic books had been consulted, it was finally ordained that the
festival should be kept every 20th day of April, that is four days
before the calends of May—the day on which, in Asia Minor, the
festival of the flowers commences. In Italy, France, and Germany,
the festival of the flowers, or the festival of spring, begins about the
same date—i.e., towards the end of April—and terminates on the
feast of St. John.
The festival of the Floralia was introduced into Britain by the
Romans ; and for centuries all ranks of people went out a-Maying
early on the first of the month. The juvenile part of both sexes,
in the north, were wont to rise a little after midnight, and walk to
some neighbouring wood, accompanied with music and the blowing
of horns,
“ To get sweet Setywall [red Valerian],
The Honeysuckle, the Harlock,
The Lily and the Lady-smock,
T o deck their summer hall.”
They also gathered branches from the trees, and adorned them
with nosegays and crowns of flowers, returning with their booty
homewards, about the rising of the sun, forthwith to decorate their
doors and windows with the flowery spoil. The after-part of the
day, says an ancient chronicler, was “ chiefly spent in dancing
round a tall pole, which is called a May-pole ; which, being placed
in a convenient part of the village, stands there, as it were,
consecrated to the goddess of flowers, without the least violation
offered it in the whole circle of the year.”
Your May-pole deck with flowery coronal;
Sprinkle the flowery coronal with wine ;
And in the ninable-footed galliard, all.
Shepherd and shepherdess, lively join,
Hither from village sweet and hamlet fair.
From bordering cot and distant glen repair:
Let youth indulge its sport, to old bequeath its care.”
Old John Stowe tells us that on May-day, in the morning,
“ every man, except impediment, would walk into the sweet
meadows and green woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the
beauty and savour of sweet flowers, and with the harmony of
birds praising God in their kind.” In the days of Henry V I I I . it
was the custom for all classes to observe the May-day festival, and
we are told that the king himself rode a-Maying from Greenwich to
Shooter’s Hill, with his Queen Katherine, accompanied by many
lords and ladies. Chaucer relates how on May-day
“ Went forth all the Court both most and least;
To fetch the floures fresh, and branch and blome,
And namely Hawthorn brought both page and grome ;
And then rejoysen in their great delite,
Eke each at other threw the floures bright.
The Primrose, Violette, and the Golde,
With garlands partly blue and white.”
The young maidens repaired at daybreak to the meadows and
hill-sides, for the purpose of gathering the precious May-dew, where-
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