< May Day
< May Day Fun and Food

Milkmaid's Butter-Making
Buttermilk Cake
Maypole Cake
Flowers to Eat
Mayday Madness
May Day Jig
Merrie May Days
Going A-Maying
Maypole Whirl
Make a Maypole
Junket
Vanilla Ice-Cream with Orange Toffee and Cowslips

Going A-Maying

The traditional name for collecting flowers and branches of hawthorn and blackthorn blossom to decorate the maypole. In the olden days, people used to go out the night before to collect huge piles of blossom before sunrise.

If you're in the country, take a morning walk down the lanes with secateurs in pocket to collect some decorative branches. Or in town, visit your flower shop or even pick some pick wild cow parsley and purple comfrey from common land instead. Put in big vases to bring the summer into the house.