One of the first of living painters has pointed to the old English
custom of carrying about flowers on May Day as a sign that, in the
Middle Ages, artistic sensibility and a pleasure in natural beauty
were not dead among the common people of England. Nothing can be truer
than this way of judging the observance of the Rite of May. Whatever
might be the foolishness that it led to here and there, its origin lay
always in pure satisfaction at the returned glory of the earth; in the
wish to establish a link that could be seen and felt--if only that
of holding a green bough or of wearing a daffodil crown--between
the children of men and the new and beautiful growth of nature. The
sentiment is the same everywhere, but the manner of its expression
varies. In warmer lands it finds a vent long before the coming of
May. March, in fact, rather than May, seems to have been chosen as the
typical spring month in ancient Greece and Rome; and when we see the
almond-trees blooming down towards Ponte Molle in the earliest week in
February, even March strikes us as a little late for the beginning
of the spring festival. A few icicles next morning on the Trevi, act,
however, as a corrective to our ideas. In a famous passage Ovid tells
the reason why the Romans kept holiday on the first of March: "The
ice being broken up, winter at last yields, and the snow melts away,
conquered by the sun's gentle warmth; the leaves come back to the
trees that were stripped by the cold, the sap-filled bud swells with
the tender twig, and the fertile grass, that long lay unseen, finds
hidden passages and uplifts itself in the air. Now is the field
fruitful, now is the time of the birth of cattle, now the bird
prepares its house and home in the bough." (_Fastorum_, lib. iii.)
March day is still kept in Greece by bands of youngsters who go
from house to house in the hopes of getting little gifts of fruit or
cheese. They take with them a wooden swallow which they spin round to
the song:
The swallow speeds her flight
O'er the sea-foam white,
And then a-singing she doth slake her wing.
"March, March, my delight,
And February wan and wet,
For all thy snow and rain thou yet
Hast a perfume of the spring."
Or perhaps to the following variant, given by Mr Lewis Sergeant in
_New Greece_:
She is here, she is here,
The swallow that brings us the beautiful year;
Open wide the door,
We are children again, we are old no more.
These little swallow-songs are worth the attention of the Folk-Lore
student, since they are of a greater antiquity than can be proved on
written evidence in the case, so far as I know, of any other folk-song
still current. More than two thousand years ago they existed in the
form quoted from Theognis by Athenaeus as "an excellent song sung by
the children of Rhodes."
The swallow comes! She comes, she brings
Glad days and hours upon her wings.
See on her back
Her plumes are black,
But all below
As white as snow.
Then from your well-stored house with haste,
Bring sweet cakes of dainty taste,
Bring a flagon full of wine,
Wheaten meal bring, white and fine;
And a platter load with cheese,
Eggs and porridge add--for these
Will the swallow not decline.
Now shall we go, or gifts receive!
Give, or ne'er your house we leave,
Till we the door or lintel break,
Or your little wife we take;
She so light, small toil will make.
But whate'er ye bring us forth,
Let the gift be one of worth.
Ope, ope your door, to greet the swallow then,
For we are only boys, not bearded men.
In AEgina the children's prattle runs: "March is come, sing, ye hills
and ye flowers and little birds! Say, say, little swallow, where hast
thou passed? where hast thou halted?" And in Corfu: "Little swallow,
my joyous one, joyous my swallow; thou that comest from the desert,
what good things bringest thou? Health, joy, and red eggs." Yet
another version of the swallow song deals in scant compliments to the
month of March, which was welcomed so gladly at its first coming:
From the Black Sea the swallow comes,
She o'er the waves has sped,
And she has built herself a nest
And resting there she said:
"Thou February cold and wet,
And snowy March and drear,
Soft April heralds its approach,
And soon it will be here.
The little birds begin to sing,
Trees don their green array,
Hens in the yard begin to cluck,
And store of eggs to lay.
The herds their winter shelter leave
For mountain-side and top;
The goats begin to sport and skip,
And early buds to crop;
Beasts, birds, and men all give themselves
To joy and merry heart,
And ice and snow and northern winds
Are melted and depart.
Foul February, snowy March,
Fair April will not tarry.
Hence, February! March, begone!
Away the winter carry!"
When they leave off singing, the children cry "Pritz! Pritz!"
imitating the sound of the rapid flight of a bird. Longfellow
translated a curious Stork-carol sung in spring-time by the Hungarian
boys on the islands of the Danube:
Stork! Stork! Poor Stork!
Why is thy foot so bloody?
A Turkish boy hath torn it,
Hungarian boy will heal it,
With fiddle, fife, and drum.
Before the sun was up on May-day morning, the people of Edinburgh
assembled at Arthur's Seat to "meet the dew." May-dew was thought to
possess all kinds of virtues. English girls went into the fields at
dawn to wash their faces in it, in order to procure a good complexion.
Pepys speaks of his wife going to Woolwich for a little change of air,
and to gather the May-dew. In Croatia, the women get from the woods
flowers and grasses which they throw into water taken from under a
mill-wheel, and next morning they bathe in the water, imagining that
thus the new strength of Nature enters into them. There is said to
also exist a singular rain-custom in Croatia. When a drought threatens
to injure the crops, a young girl, generally a gipsy, dresses herself
entirely in flowers and grasses, in which primitive raiment she is
conducted through the village by her companions, who sing to the skies
for mercy. In Greece, too, there are many songs and ceremonies in
connection with a desire for the rain, which never comes during the
whole pitiless summer.
If there be a part of the world where spring plays the laggard, it is
certainly the upper valley of the Inn. Nevertheless the children
of the Engadine trudge forth bravely over the snow, shaking their
cow-bells and singing lustily:
Chalanda Mars, chaland'Avrigl
Lasche las vachias our d'nuilg.
Were the cows to leave their stables as is here enjoined, they would
not find a blade of grass to eat--but that does not matter. The
children have probably sung that song ever since their forefathers
came up to the mountains; came up in all likelihood from sunny
Tuscany. The Engadine lads, after doing justice to their March-day
fare, set out for the boundaries of their commune, where they are met
by another band of boys, with whom they contend in various trials
of strength, which sometimes end in hand-to-hand fights. This may be
analogous to the old English usage of beating the younger generation
once a year at the village boundaries in order to impress on them a
lasting idea of local geography. By the Lake of Poschiavo it is the
custom to "call after the grass"--"chiamar l'erba"--on March-day.
In the end, as has been seen, March gets an ill-word from the Greek
folk-singer, who is not more constant in his praise of April. It is
the old fatality which makes the Better the Enemy of the Good.
May is coming, May is coming, comes the month so blithe and gay;
April truly has its flowers, but all roses bloom in May;
April, thou accurst one, vanish! Sweet May-month I long to see;
May fills all the world with flowers, May will give my love to me.
May is pre-eminently the bridal month in Greece; a strange
contradiction to the prejudice against May marriages that prevails
in most parts of Europe. "Marry in May, rue for aye." The Romans have
been held responsible for this superstition. They kept their festival
of the dead during May, and while it lasted other forms of worship
were suspended. To contract marriage would have been to defy the
fates. Traces of a spring feast of souls survive in France, where, on
Palm Sunday, _Paques fleuries_ as it is called, it is customary to set
the first fresh flowers of the year upon the graves. Nor is it by any
means uninteresting to note that in one great empire far outside of
the Roman world the _fete des morts_ is assigned not to the quiet
close of the year but to the delightful spring. The Chinese festival
of Clear Weather which falls in April is the chosen time for
worshipping at the family tombs.
The marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and James Bothwell was celebrated
on the 16th of May; an unknown hand wrote upon the gate of Holyrood
Palace Ovid's warning:
Si te proverbia tangunt,
Mense malas Maio nubere vulgus ait.
Of English songs treating of that "observance" or "rite" of May to
which Chaucer and Shakespeare bear witness, there are unfortunately
few. The old nursery rhyme:
Here we go a-piping,
First in spring and then in May,
tells the usual story of house-to-house visiting and expected largess.
In Devonshire, children used to take round a richly-dressed doll; such
a doll is still borne in triumph by the children of Great Missenden,
Bucks, where a doggerel is sung, of which these are the concluding
verses:
A branch of May I have you brought,
And at your door I stand;
'Tis but a spray that's well put out
By the works of the mighty Lord's hand.
If you have got no strong beer,
We'll be content with small;
And take the goodwill of your house,
And give good thanks for all.
God bless the master of this house,
The mistress also;
Likewise the little children
That round the table go.
My song is done, I must be gone,
No longer can I stay;
God bless you all, both great and small,
And send you a joyful May.
The poets of Great Missenden not being prolific, the two middle
stanzas are used at Christmas as well as on May-day.
May-poles were prohibited by the Long Parliament of 1644, being
denounced as a "heathenish vanity generally abused to superstition and
wickedness." A long while before, the Roman Floralia, the feast when
people carried green boughs and wore fresh garlands, had been put
down for somewhat the same reasons. With regard to May-poles I am not
inclined to think too harshly of them. They died hard: an old Essex
man told me on his death-bed of how when he was a lad the young folks
danced regularly round the May-pole on May-day, and in his opinion it
was a good time. It was a time, he went on to say, when the country
was a different thing; twice a day the postillion's horn sounded down
the village street, the Woolpack Inn was often full even to the attics
in its pretty gabled roof, all sorts of persons of quality fell out
of the clouds, or to speak exactly, emerged from the London coach.
The life of the place seemed to be gone, said my friend, and yet "the
place" is in the very highest state of modern prosperity.
The parade of sweeps in bowers of greenery lingered on rather longer
in England than May-poles. It is stated to have originated in this
way. Edward Wortley Montagu (born about 1714), who later was destined
to win celebrity by still stranger freaks, escaped when a boy from
Westminster School and borrowed the clothes of a chimney sweep,
in whose trade he became an adept. A long search resulted in his
discovery and restoration to his parents on May 1; in recollection
of which event Mrs Elizabeth Montagu is said to have instituted
the May-day feast given by her for many years to the London
chimney-sweepers.
In the country west of Glasgow it is still remembered how once the
houses were adorned with flowers and branches on the first of May,
and in some parts of Ireland they still plant a May-tree or May-bush
before the door of the farmhouse, throwing it at sundown into a
bonfire. The lighting of fires was not an uncommon feature of May-day
observance, but it is a practice which seems to me to have strayed
into that connection from its proper place in the great festival of
the summer solstice on St John's Eve. Among people of English speech,
May-day customs are little more than a cheerful memory. Herrick wrote:
Wash, dress, be brief in praying,
Few beads are best when once we go a-maying.
People neglect their "beads" or the equivalents now from other
motives.
May night is the German Walpurgis-nacht. The witches ride up to the
Brocken on magpies' tails, not a magpie can be seen for the next
twenty-four hours--they are all gone and they have not had time to
return. The witches dance on the Brocken till they have danced away
the winter's snow. May-brides and May-kings are still to be heard of
in Germany, and children run about on May-day with buttercups or
with a twist of bread, a _Bretzel_, decked with ribbons, or holding
imprisoned may-flies, which they let loose whilst they sing:
Maikaeferchen fliege,
Dein Vater ist in kriege,
Deine Mutter ist in Pommerland,
Pommerland ist abgebrannt,
Maikaeferchen fliege.
May chafer must fly away home, his father is at the wars, his mother
is in Pomerania, Pomerania is all burnt. May chafer in short is the
brother of our ladybird. Dr Karl Blind is of opinion that "Pommerland"
is a later interpolation for "Holler-land"--the land of Freya--Holda,
the Teutonic Aphrodite; and he and other German students of mythology
see in the conflagration an allusion to the final end and doom of the
kingdom of the gods. It is pointed out that the ladybird was Freya's
messenger, whose business it was to call the unborn from their
tranquil sojourn amongst celestial flowers, into the storms of human
existence. There is an airy May chafer song in Alsace--Teutonic in
tradition, though French in tongue:
Avril, tu t'en vas,
Car Mai vient la-bas,
Pour balayer ta figure
De pluie, aussi de froidure.
Hanneton, vole!
Hanneton, vole!
Au firmament bleu
Ton nid est en feu,
Les Turcs avec leur epee
Viennent tuer ta couvee.
Hanneton, vole!
Hanneton, vole!
Dr Blind recollects taking part, as a boy, in an extremely curious
children's drama, which is still played in some places in the open
air. It is an allegory of the expulsion of winter, who is killed and
burnt, and of the arrival of summer, who comes decked with flowers and
garlands. The children repeat:
Now have we chased death away,
And we bring the summer weather;
Summer dear and eke the May,
And the flowers all together:
Bringing summer we are come,
Summer tide and sunshine home.
With this may be compared an account given by Olaus Magnus, a Swedish
writer of the fifteenth century, of how May Day was celebrated in
his time. "A number of youths on horseback were drawn up in two lines
facing each other, the one party representing 'Winter' and the other
'Summer.' The leader of the former was clad in wild beasts' skins,
and he and his men were armed with snow-balls and pieces of ice.
The commander of the latter--'Maj Greve,' or Count May--was, on the
contrary, decorated with leaves and flowers, and his followers had
for weapons branches of the birch or linden tree, which, having been
previously steeped in water, were then in leaf. At a given signal, a
sham fight ensued between the opposing forces. If the season was cold
and backward, 'Winter' and his party were impetuous in their attack,
and in the beginning the advantage was supposed to rest with them;
but if the weather was genial, and the spring had fairly set in, 'Maj
Greve' and his men carried all before them. Under any circumstances,
however, the umpire always declared the victory to rest with 'Summer.'
The winter party then strewed ashes on the ground, and a joyous
banquet terminated the game." Mr L. Lloyd, author of "Peasant Life
in Sweden" (1870), records some lines sung by Swedish children when
collecting provisions for the _Maj gille_ or May feast, which recall
the "Swallow-song":
"Best loves from Mr and Mrs Magpie,
From all their eggs and all their fry,
O give them alms, if ever so small,
Else hens and chickens and eggs and all,
A prey to 'Piet' will surely fall."
The Swedes raise their _Maj st[)a]ng_ or May-pole, not on May, but
on St John's Eve, a change due, I suspect, to the exigencies of the
climate.
German _Mailieder_ are one very much like the other; they are full of
the simple gladness of children who have been shut up in houses, and
who now can run about in the sunny air. I came across the following in
Switzerland:
"Alles neu macht der Mai,
Macht die Seele frisch und frei.
Lasst dans Haus!
Kommt hinaus!
Windet einen Strauss!
"Rings erglaenzet Sonnenschein,
Dustend pranget Flur und Hain.
Voegel-sang,
Lust'ger Klang
Toent den Wald entlang."
In Lorraine girls dressed in white go from village to village
stringing off couplets, in which the inhabitants are turned into
somewhat unmerciful ridicule. The girls of this place enlighten the
people of that as to their small failings, and so _vice versa_. All
the winter the village poets harvest the jokes made by one community
at the expense of another, in order to shape them into a consecutive
whole for recital on May Day. The girls are rewarded for their part in
the business by small coin, cakes and fruit. The May-songs of Lorraine
are termed "Trimazos," from the fact that they are always sung to the
refrain,
"O Trimazot, c'at lo Maye;
O mi-Maye!
C'at lo joli mois de Maye,
C'at lo Trimazot."
The derivation of _Trimazo_ is uncertain; someone suggested that _Tri_
stands for three, and _mazo_ for maidens; but I think _mazo_ is more
likely to be connected with the Italian _mazzo_, "nosegay." The word
is known outside Lorraine: at Islettes children say:
"Trimazot! en nous allant
Nous pormenes eddans les champs
Nous y ons trouve les bles si grands
Les Aubepin' en fleurissant."
They beg for money to buy a taper for the Virgin's altar; for it
must not be forgotten that the month of May is the month of Mary.
The villagers add a little flour to their pious offering, so that the
children may make cakes. Elsewhere in Champagne young girls collect
the taper money; they cunningly appeal to the tenderness of the young
mother by bringing to her mind the hour "when she takes her pretty
child up in the morning and lays him to sleep at night." There was
a day on which the girls of the neighbourhood of Remiremont used to
way-lay every youth they met on the road to the church of Dommartin
and insist on sticking a sprig of rosemary or laurel in his cap,
saying, "We have found a fine gentleman, God give him joy and health;
take the May, the pretty May!" The fine gentleman was requested to
give "what he liked" for the dear Virgin's sake. In the department of
the Jura there are May-brides, and in Bresse they have a May-queen who
is attended by a youth, selected for the purpose, and by a little
boy who carries a green bough ornamented with ribands. She heads the
village girls and boys, who walk as in a marriage procession, and who
receive eggs, wine, or money. A song still sung in Burgundy recalls
the prae-revolutionary aera and the respect inspired by the seigneurial
woods:--
"Le voila venu le joli mois,
Laissez bourgeonner le bois;
Le voila venu le joli mois,
Le joli bois bourgeonne.
Il faut laisser bourgeonner le bois,
Le bois du gentilhomme."
The young peasants of Poitou betake themselves to the door of each
homestead before the dawn of the May morning and summon the mistress
of the house to waken her daughters:--
"For we are come before hath come the day
To sing the coming of the month of May."
But they do not ask the damsels to stand there listening to
compliments; "Go to the hen-roost," they say, "and get eighteen, or
still better, twenty new laid eggs." If the eggs cannot be had, they
can bring money, only let them make haste, as day-break is near and
the road is long. By way of acknowledgment the spokesman adds a sort
of "And your petitioners will ever pray;" they will pray for the
purse which held the money and for the hen that laid the eggs. If St
Nicholas only hears them that hen will eat the fox, instead of the fox
eating the hen. The gift is seemly. Now the dwellers in the homestead
may go back to their beds and bar doors and windows; "as for us, we go
through all the night singing at the arrival of sweet spring."
The antiquary in search of May-songs will turn to the Motets and
Pastorals of that six-hundred-year-old Comic Opera "Li gieus de
Robin et de Marion." Its origin was not illiterate, but in Adam de la
Halle's time and country poets who had some letters and poets who
had none did not stand so widely apart. The May month, the summer
sweetness, the lilies of the valley, the green meadows--these
constituted pretty well the whole idea which the French rustic had
formed to himself of what poetry was. It cannot be denied that he
came to use these things occasionally as mere commonplaces, a tendency
which increased as time wore on. But he has his better moods, and
some of his ditties are not wanting in elegance. Here is an old song
preserved in Burgundy:
Voici venu le mois des fleurs
Des chansons et des senteurs;
Le mois qui tout enchante
Le mois de douce attente.
Le buisson reprend ses couleurs
Au bois l'oiseau chante.
Il est venu sans mes amours
One j'attends, helas, toujours;
Tandis que l'oiseau chante
Et que le mai l' on plante
Seule en ces bois que je parcours
Seule je me lamente.
In the France of the sixteenth century, the planting of the May took a
literary turn. At Lyons, for instance, the printers were in the habit
of setting up what was called "Le Mai des Imprimeurs" before the door
of some distinguished person. The members of the illustrious Lombard
house of Trivulzi, who between them held the government of Lyons
for more than twenty-five years, were on several occasions chosen as
recipients of the May-day compliment. "Le Grand Trivulce," marshal of
France, was a great patron of literature, and the encouragement of the
liberal arts grew to be a tradition in the family. In 1529 Theodore
de Trivulce had a May planted in his honour bearing a poetical address
from the pen of Clement Marot, and Pompone de Trivulce received a like
distinction in 1535, when Etienne Dolet wrote for the occasion an
ode in the purest Latin, which may be read in Mr R. C. Christie's
biography of its author.
Giulio Cesare Croce, the famous ballad-singer of Bologna (born 1550),
wrote a "Canzonetta vaga in lode del bel mese di maggio et delle
regine o contesse che si fanno quel giorno in Bologna," and in 1622, a
small book was published at Bologna, entitled: "Ragionamenti piacevoli
intorno alle contesse di maggio; piantar il maggio; nozze che si
fanno in maggio." The author, Vincenzo Giacchiroli, observes: "These
countesses, according to what I have read, the Florentines call Dukes
of May--perhaps because there they have real dukes." The first of May,
he continues, the young girls select one from among them and set her
on a high seat or throne in some public street, adorned and surrounded
with greenery, and with such flowers as the season affords. To
this maiden, in semblance like the goddess Flora, they compel every
passer-by to give something, either by catching him by his clothes, or
by holding a cord across the street to intercept him, singing at the
same time, "Alla contessa, alla contessa!" They who pass, therefore,
throw into a plate or receptacle prepared for the purpose, money, or
flowers, or what not, for the new countess. In some places it was the
custom to kiss the countess; "neither," adds the author, "is this
to be condemned, since so were wont to do the ancients as a sign of
honour."
Regarding a similar usage at Mantua, Merlinus Coccaius (Folengo)
wrote:
"Accidit una dies qua Mantua tota bagordat
Prima dies mensis Maii quo quisque piantat
Per stradas ramos frondosos nomine mazzos." &c.
Exactly the same practice lingers in Spain. In the town of Almeria,
improvised temples are raised at the street corners and gateways,
where, on an altar covered with damask or other rich stuff, a girl
decked with flowers is seated, whilst around her in a circle stand
other girls, also crowned with flowers, who hold hands, and intone,
like a Greek chorus--
"Un cuartito para la Maya,
Que no tiene manto ni saya."
"A penny for the May who has neither mantle nor petticoat."
Lorenzo de' Medici says in one of his ballads:
Se tu vuo' appiccare un maio.
A qualcuna che tu ami....
In his day "Singing the May" was almost a trade; the country folk
flocked into Florence with their May trees and rustic instruments and
took toll of the citizens. The custom continues along the Ligurian
coast. At Spezia I saw the boys come round on May-day piping and
singing, and led by one, taller than the rest, who carried an Italian
flag covered with garlands. The name of the master of the house before
which they halt is introduced into a song that begins:
Siam venuti a cantar maggio,
Al Signore ----
Come ogn' anno usar si suole,
Nella stagion di primavera.
Since Chaucer, who loved so dearly the "May Kalendes" and the "See of
the day," no one has celebrated them with a more ingenuous charm than
the country lads of the island of Sardinia, who sing "May, May, be
thou welcome, with all Sun and Love; with the Flower and with the
Soul, and with the Marguerite." A Tuscan and a Pisan _Rispetto_ may be
taken as representative of Italian May-song:
'Twas in the Calends of the month of May,
I went into the garden for a flower,
A wild bird there I saw upon a spray,
Singing of love with skilled melodious power.
O little bird, who dost from Florence speed
Teach me whence loving doth at first proceed?
Love has its birth in music and in songs
Its end, alas! to tears and grief belongs.
Era di maggio, se ben mi ricordo
Quando c'incominciammo a ben volere
Eran fiorite le rose dell'orto,
E le ciliege diventavan nere;
Ciliege nere e pere moscatelle,
Siete il trionfo delle donne belle
Ciliege nere e pere moscatate.
Siete il trionfo delle innamorate
Ciliege nere e pere moscatine.
Siete il trionfo delle piu belline.
The child's or lover's play of words in this last baffles all attempt
at translation: it is not sense but sweetness, not poetry but music.
It is as much without rule or study or conventionality as the song of
birds when in Italian phrase, _fanno primavera_.
In the Province of Brescia the Thursday of Mid-Lent is kept by what
is called "Burning the old women." A doll made of straw or rags,
representing the oldest woman, is hung outside the window; or, if in
a street, suspended from a cord passed from one side to the other.
Everyone makes the tour of town or village to see _le Vecchie_ who at
sundown are consigned to the flames, generally with a distaff placed
in their hands. It is a picturesque sight at Salo, when the bonfires
blaze at different heights up the hills, casting long reflections
across the clear lake-water. The sacrifice is consummated--but what
sacrifice? I was at first disposed to simply consider the "old woman"
as a type of winter, but I am informed that by those who have studied
relics of the same usage in other lands, she is held to be a relative
of the "harvest-man" or growth-genius, who must be either appeased or
destroyed. Yet a third interpretation occurs to me, which I offer for
what it is worth. Might not the _Vecchia_ be the husk which must be
cast off before the miracle of new birth is accomplished? "The seed
that thou sowest shall not quicken unless it die." Hardly any idea has
furnished so much occasion for symbolism as this, that life is death,
and death is life.
Professor d'Ancona believes, that to the custom of keeping May by
singing from house to house and collecting largess of eggs or fruit or
cheese, may be traced the dramatic representations, which, under the
name of _Maggi_, can still be witnessed in certain districts of the
Tuscan Hills and of the plain of Pisa. These May-plays are performed
any Sunday in Spring, just after Mass; the men, women, and children,
hastening from the church-door to the roughly-built theatre which has
the sky for roof, the grey olives and purple hills for background.
The verses of the play (it is always in verse) are sung to a sort of
monotonous but elastic chant, in nearly every case unaccompanied
by instruments. No one can do more than guess when that chant was
composed; it may have been five hundred years ago and it may have been
much more. Grief or joy, love and hate, all are expressed upon the
same notes. It is possible that some such recitative was used in the
Greek drama. A play that was not sung would not seem a play to
the Tuscan contadino. The characters are acted by men or boys, the
peasants not liking their wives and daughters to perform in public.
A considerable number of _Maggi_ exist in print or in MS. carefully
copied for the convenience of the actors. The subjects range from
King David to Count Ugolino, from the siege of Troy to the French
Revolution. They seem for most part modern compositions, cast in a
form which was probably invented before the age of Dante.