May Day
The Romans celebrated May Day. It was known as Floralia, the festival of Flora and lasted six days from April 28th to May 3rd, when there was much singing and dancing and merriment. Flora has a special place in the hearts of Blackburn people, ever since 1871 when her statue appeared in Corporation Park, the work of Thomas Allen of Liverpool.
In so far as May Day marks the end of winter and heralds the arrival of summer, its celebration probably predates Roman times. The earliest inhabitants of these northern hills would have decked their dwellings with hawthorn blossom and danced to welcome the long days and the sunshine.
May Day celebrations reached their zenith in the country in Elizabethan times. It became the custom to get up early and go into the woods to select a tall elm, cut it down, paint it and erect it in a public place, then it was adorned with garlands, ensigns and streamers. So prevalent was early rising on May Day that Shakespeare refers to it in Henry VIII:
Pray Sir, be patient: tis as much impossible
(Unless we sweep them from the door with cannons,)
To scatter them, as tis to make them sleep
On May-day morning; which will never be.
Dancing round the maypole on the village green was a survival of the Roman celebrations. There was a custom in Lancashire of placing boughs at the doors of marriageable girls, and just as there was a language of flowers, so the choice of tree was significant and spoke flatteringly or otherwise of the girls' characters.
Many May Day customs: the processions and the election of a May Queen have fallen into disuse. In recent years May Day has become associated with the Labour movement, but even this tradition is in decline. Assigning the May Day Bank Holiday to the first Monday in the month has done much to weaken its traditional associations, despite this people now, as in days of old, are glad to welcome it as a harbinger of summer and better days.
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