[Sidenote: May Bride or Whitsuntide Bride.] Often the marriage of the spirit of vegetation in spring, though not directly represented, is implied by naming the human representative of the spirit, “the Bride,” and dressing her in wedding attire. Thus in some villages of Altmark at Whitsuntide, while the boys go about carrying a May-tree or leading a boy enveloped in leaves and flowers, the girls lead about the May Bride, a girl dressed as a bride with a great nosegay in her hair. They go from house to house, the May Bride singing a song in which she asks for a present, and tells the inmates of each house that if they give her something they will themselves have something the whole year through; but if they give her nothing they will themselves have nothing.[347] In some parts of Westphalia two girls lead a flower-crowned girl called the Whitsuntide Bride from door to door, singing a song in which they ask for eggs.[348] At Waggum in Brunswick, when service is over on Whitsunday, the village girls assemble, dressed in white or bright colours, decked with flowers, and wearing chaplets of spring flowers in their hair. One of them represents the May Bride, and carries a crown of flowers on a staff as a sign of her dignity. As usual the children go about from cottage to cottage singing and begging for eggs, sausages, cakes, or money. In other parts of Brunswick it is a boy clothed all in birch leaves who personates the May Bride.[349] In Bresse in the month of May a girl called _la Mariée_ is tricked out with ribbons and nosegays and is led about by a gallant. She is preceded by a lad carrying a green May-tree, and appropriate verses are sung.[350]
Quoted by J. Brand, _Popular Antiquities_, i. 246 (ed. Bohn).
T. F. Thiselton Dyer, _British Popular Customs_ (London, 1876), p. 254.
W. Borlase, _The Natural History of Cornwall_ (Oxford, 1758), p. 294.
T. F. Thiselton Dyer, _Popular British Customs_, p. 233.
R. Chambers, _Book of Days_ (London and Edinburgh, 1886), i. 578; T. F. Thiselton Dyer, _op. cit._ pp. 237 _sq._
W. Hone, _Every Day Book_ (London, N.D.), ii. 615 _sq._; T. F. Thiselton Dyer, _British Popular Customs_, pp. 251 _sq._ At Polebrook in Northamptonshire the verses sung by the children on their rounds include two which are almost identical with those sung at Abingdon in Berkshire. See Dyer, _op. cit._ pp. 255 _sq._ The same verses were formerly sung on May Day at Hitchin in Hertfordshire (Hone, _Every Day Book_, i. 567 _sq._; Dyer, _op. cit._ pp. 240 _sq._).