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VOL. XXII, No. 23

BRYN MAWR AND WAYNE, PA., MAY DAY, 1936

Copyright BRYN MAWR
COLLEGE NEWS, 1936

~ PRICED CENTS





* Costume Committee

Stresses Brilliance,
Variation for 1936

English Clothes 330 Years Ago
Were Colorful Assortment
From. Everywhere





OLD STYLES SUGGEST
PRESENT DAY TASTE

In the Merchant of Venice, Portia
says of the Englishman: “I think he
bought his doublet in Italy, his round



‘ hose in France, his bonnet in Ger-

many and his behavior everywhere.”
In other words, Elizabethan England
was a period of travel and discovery
in which fashions were interborrowed
from other countries and re-created
even to eccentricity. So much money
left England for brilliant finery that
Elizabeth decreed a limitation of ex-
penses. Ruffs grew to such tremendous
sizes that ladies and gentlemen neces-
sarily held téte-a-tétes four feet apart.

For the May Day féte the Eliza-
bethans decked themselves out in the
brightest finery which they possessed.
Miss Grayson has introduced into the
1936 May Day this festive brilliancy,
which accords with the modern taste
for color. In 1900 the costumes were
made of simple cheesecloth; gradually

‘they became richer, although dark in

tone, until 1920, when the May Day
was more extravagant than it has ever
been. When Miss Skinner was super-
vising in the twenties, the costumes
were mainly pastel shades.

Queen Elizabeth’s: court circle are
newly dressed in costumes designed
by Miss Grayson in her New York
workshop. The Queen’s dress with its
flame-coloreq overdress and sunburst
of pearls, is a composite picture of
the Queen’s innumerable gowns—one
which her dressmaker, given another
opportunity, might have designed. The
ladies-in-waiting are dressed from pic-
tures or ‘descriptions of noble . Eng-
lishwomen of the period, all of whom
vied with one another in width of
farthingale and embroidered bodices
so stiff “that they resembled trussed

Continued on Page Hight

One of New Plays is
Old University Farce





Gammer Gurton’s Needle Cut
For Campus Ears; Comedy
Spirit Remains



PLOT INCONSEQUENTIAL



“A Ryght Pithy, Pleasaunt and
Merie Comedie: Intytuled Gammer
Gurton’s Needle:”; so reads the title
page of the first printed edition of
one of the plays new to Bryn Mawr
with the current May Day. Produced
for the first time at Christ’s College,
Cambridge, in the latter half of the
sixteenth century, Gammer Gurton’s
Needle is the earliest university play
in English which has come down to
us.

Unfortunately, Elizabethan humor’

at its best is a little vigorous for the
tender sensibilities of a contemporary
May Day audience, and frequent ex-
purgations of the original script were
necessary before Gammer Gurton’s
Needle could go into. production. It
will be evident, however, to anyone
who stops before Radnor or the Li-
brary to see the play performed, that
such judicious cutting has not de-
stroyed its native spirit. From begin-
ning to end it is a consistently humor-
ous and vulgar picture of the lowest
rustic manners in rural Elizabethan
England.

Unlike Ralph Roister Doister, its
immediate predecessor in the comedy
of the period, Gammer Gurton’s
Needle has no plot in the strict sense
of the word. The play is made up of
a succession of comic incidents which
arise from a simple initial situation,
and end in a burlesque denouement.

Gammer Gurton loses her needle,
and Dame Chat, the ale wife, is ac-
cused by Diccon the Bedlam of steal-
ing it. The loss and the accusation

Continued on Page Two



AS WE WERE



Frances Reane as Maid Marian and Madge Miller as Alan-a-Dale in the first May Day, 1900.



Spontaneous Worship of Spring Season
Rooted in Celebration Old As Earth

Joy in Returning Year Expressed in Ancient Fertility Ritual When Man
Symbolized in Dance and Sacrifice His Delight in Sun

ELIZABETHAN FETE EMBODIES PAGAN VITALITY

The May Day celebration’is as old
as the earth, for it is a symbol of the
coming in of spring. From different
customs and superstitions, from dif-
ferent times and peoples, the festival
we know has gradually sprung, but
the beginnings everywhere were
rooted in. the joy of the returning
year. Men paid homage to the gods
who gave fertility to the earth and
to their bodies; they honored the sun
for bringing them light and heat once
more; they represented in dance and
sacrifice the casting off of winter and
of all barren things. As spontane-
ously as the season itself, the May
Day rites to observe it arose.

In pagan times, the Romans held
festivities on the last four days of
April and the first of May in honor
of Maia, mother of Mercury, for whom
the month was named, and in honor
of Flora, the goddess of the fruitful
soil. They -danced, they wore gar-
lands, and they scattered flowers along
the streets to signify the blessing
which the goddess was giving them.
When they took possession of Britain,
they introduced: these customs among
the people there, so that the Britons
likewise celebrated the return of their
summer by praising the Roman Flora.
Before the Romans came, however,
the natives of the island had origi-
nated a practice of their own which
they still continued in spite of the
new observances they learned. Every
May Day they were accustomed to
light fires on the Druid’s mounds and
to draw each other through the flames
as if in sacrifice. Although the cere-
mony was a mere game as they per-
formed it, nevertheless it was prob-
ably the result of a tradition of hu-
man offerings, a giving up of old and
out-worn life for the receiving of
new vitality from the spirit thus
propitiated.

Both Roman and Celtic ways of
honoring the spring were almost for-
gotten when the Germanic tribes in-
vaded Britain. These tribes had their
own observances for May: feasting
and dancing to welcome the sun as it
came nearer to them from the South,



Art Club Exhibit

The college Art Club will hold
an exhibition of drawings and.
sculpture made during the past ©
winter,.over May Day weekend,
Friday and Saturday, May 8
and 9. Common Room. No ad-
mission. Everyone welcome.













and a mock battle between summer
and winter in which the leaf-crowned
summer was always the conqueror.
Yet the earlier customs were not
wiped out entirely, nor were the Ger-
manic customs when Christianity was
wat last brought into Britain. Instead,
the strains of all three traditions were
preserved within the precincts of the
new religion. Despite the protests of
the clergy, the dancing and singing
of the pagan festivals remained a
practice of the Christian people.
Chaucer Mentions Old Customs
Until the period of Chaucer, no
definite information about the May
Day which developed out of these
various strains can be found in Eng-
lish literature, but when he spoke of
it, he did not imply that it was any-
thing either recently revived or re-
cently begun. Rather he made it a
matter of course, a procedure exist-



Eight Choir Members
Broadcast Over WOR



Otis Skinner Relates His Experience
With Pageant of 1920



Friday, May 1.—Eight members of
the Bryn Mawr Choir with their lead-
er, Mr. Willoughby, paid a flying
visit to New York to sing seven songs
from Big May Day on a special Bryn
Mawr broadcast from WOR. The
following students went on the expedi-
tion: First sopranos: Agnes Halsey,
’36; Maryallis Morgan, 736; Doris
Russell, ’38. Second sopranos: Esther
Hearne, ’38; Lois Marean, ’37; Elea-
inor Shaw, ’38. First alto: Cornelia
Kellogg, ’39. Second alto: Helen Kel-
logg, ’36.

Upon arrival in New York they
were whisked to the WOR studios
at 1440 Broadway, where they
were ushered into a sound-proof room
and told to practice their songs. So
that the proper relation of voices
would be heard over the air, each
singer had her own special. square of
the patterned linoleum floor on which
to stand around the microphone.

At 3.15 sharp, the man in the con-
trol room signalled to Mr. Willoughby,
who struck a chord on the piano, and
the singers sang one verse of Now is
the month of Maying. Mr. Skinner
then told the history of Bryn Mawr’s
May Day, dwelling especially on the
1920 performance, whéh Mrs. Skinner
was the Director, Cornelia Otis Skin-

Continued on Page Eleven







ing from time immemorial, as indeed
it had. He referred to one of the
London Maypoles as a thing that
everyone must know.

Going out into the woods to gather
flowers,. especially the hawthorn or
the “may,” continued to be an essen-
tial part of the May Day. rites even
when, as time went on, these rites
were elaborated with countless other
activities. By the reigns of Henry
VIII and Elizabeth, the morning of
the first of May had become an occa-
sion for a grand pageant, yet still
“both most and lest” rose before dawn
and sallied forth into the country.
They made wreaths of blossoms and
broke off sprays from the blooming
trees to decorate their houses. While
the peasants walked, however, blowing
on whistles, shouting and _ tustling
with each other on their way, the no-
bility rode horseback and made a
dignified excursion. It was not decor-
ous for kings and counsellors to de-
scend from their horses and wash
their venerable countenances in the
hawthorn dew. Yet by this means,
the peasant girls firmly believed they
could keep their cheeks rosy and
comely all the year, and every May
morning they pressed their faces
among the wet flowers of the haw-
thorn trees.

Maypole Important Feature

Still another purpose than making
garlands and touching the dew
prompted all sorts of people to go
wandering in the forests. They had
to cut down some straight, tall tree
and make their Maypole from it. This,
“their chiefest jewel,’ as an old
writer called it, they dragged home
with twenty or forty yoke of oxen,
every ox having a nosegay tied to the
tip of his horns. When they had
bound the pole with flowers and pen-
nants and sometimes painted it in
diagonal stripes, they reared it on
the village green and fell to dancing
wildly about it.

Although the poles were sometimes
permanently set up in the villages in-
stead of being freshly cut and carried

Continued on Page Eleven



Munich Scholarships
There is a possibility that sev-
eral additional scholarships to
be ‘held in Munich next summer
will be available. Anyone wish-
ing to apply or to get further
information should report to

Dean Schenck immediately.









Morley Impressed .
~ By Intricacy, Art
Of May Day Revel



“|O0ld English Custom at Quaker

College Termed “Pleasant

Paradox”



MAN FROM STRATFORD
WOULD FEEL AT HOME



By: Christopher Morley
(Reprinted with permission from
the Saturday Review of Literature,
May 2nd “Bowling Green.”’)

When fields were dight with blossoms
white and leaves of lively green,
The May-pole reared its flowery head,
‘and dancing round were seen
A youthful band, joined hand in hand,
with shoon and kirtle trim,
And softly rose the melody of Flora’s
morning hymn.
Which reminds me of the pleasant
paradox that Bryn Mawr College,
founded by Quakers, has in its May
Day revel the prettiest paganism to
be seen anywhere. It comes every
four years and turns the. whole col-
lege into a Merry England seminar.
Was it the influence of Miss Thomas,
herself so Queen Elizabeth in tem-
perament, that started this unique
pageant? It began in 1900; I myself
haven’t seen it since 1906, but I know
by photograph and hearsay that it
has grown steadily both in scholarship
and sprightliness. Perhaps it’s as
well it comes only every fourth year,
for,Bryn Mawr always does what she
does with the brio of Pallas Athene,
and a May Day annually would leave
faculty, students and alumnae little
time for anything else.

Merrily danced the Quaker’s wife
And merrily danced the Quaker
says the old song. It pleases me to
think of the great-granddaughters of

those old Philadelphia squaretoes
doing their tumbling on Merion
Greene. “Among the pastimes.on the

Greene,” says the program, “the tum-
blers perform certain pretty feats of
agility . . . turnings and castings,
springs, gambauds, somersaults, ca-
Continued on Page Fourteen



Every Undergraduate

Performs on Greene



Dances Began in Olden Times
From Religious Ceremonies’

And Ritual Games



MORRIS DANCE COMPLEX



A great cheer goes up, rising again
and again; hands are clapped and
more cheers echo over the campus.
And then a milling, swarming group
of May Day revellers, having paid
homage to Maid Marian, their queen,
stroll off in groups and pairs, all
singing The Twenty-ninth of May. By
the end of the song the aspect of the
mob is miraculously transformed:
along. the Greene stretch perfectly
straight lines of gaily-clad couples,
framed by the four Maypoles with
their circles of revellers who hold
brightly-colored streamers. For a
moment the lines and circles are com-
pletely still; then with apparent aban-
don (which never is allowed to dis-
rupt the perfect symmetry of the

* eroups), the dancers swing into ac-

tion — whirling, skipping, whirling
again. The traditional preface to
May Day, in which the whole college
takes part, has begun once more, set-
ting the tone of the celebration by an
elaborate and colorful spectacle.

The dancing on the Greene, has,
since the very first May Day, been an
integral part of the festival and _ its
character has changed little, although)
new dances are added from time to
time. Thus this year, after the gen-
eral dances, Twenty-ninth of May,
Peascods,’ Sellinger’s Round and All
In, are concluded and the “Little
Greene”’ entertainment has begun, a
new Sword Dance and a Horn Dance
will be introduced into the program of
Morris, Sword and special Country
Dances and tumbling.

Continued on Page Seven

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