Still a little chilly

Every parish town and village assemble themselve’s together. Men and women and children, old and young and go off, some to the woods and groves, some to the hills and mountains, where they spend the night in pastimes. In the morning they return bringing with them birch-boughs and trees to deck their assemblies withal. I’ve heard it credibly reported by men of great gravity, credibility and reputation. That forty, three score, or a hundred youths, going to the woods over night. They have scarcely the third part of them, returned home again undefiled.

- Philip Stubbe’s Anatomy of Abuses, on traditional May Day practices. (from Pagan Origins of May Day, again via v-2)

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