On May-morning, the children go out into the country and fetch home the flowering branches of the white-thorn, or boughs of the narrow-leaved elm, which has just put forth its leaves, both of which are called 'May.'
At a later hour, all the boys of the village sally forth with bucket, can, syringe, or other instrument, and avail themselves of a license which the season confers, to dip or well-nigh drown, without regard to person or circumstance, the passenger who has not the protection of 'May' in his hat or button-hole.
The sprig of the hawthorn or elm is probably held to be proof that the bearer has not failed to rise early to do the observance to a morn of May.
- Rev. T.F. Thiselton-Dyer's British Popular Customs, 1876.
The same desk calendar features the following words for the first week of May, should anyone need a starting point for a poem:
Blash: To soak, to drench. A heavy fall of rain. Deluging: sweaping away by inundation. Applied to meat or drink that is thin, weak, flatulent, or viewed as debilitating to the stomach. To blash one's stomach, to drink too copiously of any weak and diluting liquor.
Steeple-hats: Long hats, described as "pearking up like the sphere or shaft ofa steeple, standyng a quarter of a yarde above the croune of their heades, some more, some lesse, as please the phantasies of their inconstant mindes."
Canvas opera: A circus.
Shumpgullion: A glutton.
Ready-comb: In farm houses, a comb was hung by the string to the kitchen door by which the men-servants combed their hair.
Croozle: To make a low, whispering noise, like an infant just on the point of waking; a nursery word.
Englaimed: Furred; clammy.
