11

* containing flowers and a clever verse,







’ wreath on her head and shouts of ap-

‘” with their hoops, before the scholar-

THE COLLEGE NEWS

%

. ¢ »

Page Eleven





Little May Day
Brings Relaxation
From Daily Grind

Senior Class President Crowns’
Miss Park as Queen With
Floral \Wreath

ee

SCHOLARSHIP HONORS
ARE READ IN CHAPEL

May-1.—In the midst of the turbu-
lent, nerye-wracking preparations for
Big May Day, the undergraduates of
Bryn Mawr took a five-hour recre-
ation to carry on one of the nicest
traditions that Bryn Mawr now pos-
sesses—Little May Day.

Five a. m. found the sophomores
rising reluctantly from their beds to
peer out the window at a darkened
sky which,yfor all its unwelcome
obscurity, gave promise of an early
dawn passing on to a warm and sunny
day.
~ Soon the hails were echoing with
loud, and sometimes sour, notes .of
the sophomores’ Waking Song which
woke not only the intended seniors,
but also every other i a
sessing normal auditory ability. ak-
ing the seniors with 4 lusty challenge
to “wake up all” and a May basket



e



was not sufficient to arouse some of
them from their beds to which they
had so recently retired. The added
stimulus of coffee and rolls proved
more effective at: the specified hour
of 6 o’clock.

It was the seniors’ turn next to
wake Miss Park and conduct her with
a double column procession to Rocke-
feller Tower, where, a little after 7
a. m., the seniors greeted the sun with
a Latin hymn while the lesser under-
graduates and a few of the faculty
watched from below.

Headed by Eleanor Fabyan and the
Bryn Mawr band, famous for such
gatherings as Parade Night and other
traditional ceremonies, after a special
breakfast the seniors ‘‘one, two, three-
hopped” from Rockefeller Arch around
in front of Taylor, down Senior Row
and onto the upper hockey field, where
five Maypoles stood in formation wait-
ing to be wound—each by a different
class. Making a large circle outside
the Maypoles the rest of the college
hopped, skipped and jumped to the
strains of To the. Maypole.

After sufficient winding of the various
Maypoles, everyone closed in on the
largest one in the center, where Jane
Matteson, president of the Senior
Class, was presented with a necklace,
a floral crown and an invitation to
breakfast a year from that date by
Miss Park.-

Miss Matteson thanked Miss Park
and accepted her invitation on behalf
of the class. She ended her speech
by placing her floral crown on Miss
Park’s head, saying: “I don’t want
to make next week seem like an anti-
climax, or take Robin Hood’s job away
from him, but I should like to crown
the real Maid Marion May Queen.”

The speech over, Miss Park
emerged from the mob with a May

plause on every side. The crowd soon
dispersed and went by various paths
to Goodhart, where the seniors, in
time to accompanying clapping, danced
and skipped around the auditorium

ships, graduate and undergraduate,
were announced.

The list of awards was long and
distinguished—too long to be reprinted
in full in this issue of the News—
but there were two outstanding

this time. The Charles S.'Hinchman
Memorial Scholarship, awarded to the
student whose record shows the great-
est“ability in her major subject, was
given this year to Leigh Davis Stein-
hardt, ’87,.a philosophy major. The
Maria L. Eastman Brooke Hall
Memorial Scholarship, given each
year on the ground of scholarship to
the member of the junior class with
the highest average, was awarded this
year to Elizabeth Duncan Lyle,’ of
Lennox, Mass.

After Chapel was over, the student
body repaired to Senior Row, where

of hoops, sticks and everything else
imaginable were accomplished. We
note that Dr. Nahm was the recipient
of a relic well known all over the

.|campus—Pauline Manship’s blue cape.

Making a square with sister classes
opposite each other, each class was
called upon to sing her May Day songs
and finally “Thou Gracious Inspira-
tion”’—whereupon Little May Day
with all its colored trappings was over
for another year, and 10 o’clock classes
were next in the order of the day.



Worship of Spring is

Ancient Celebration



Continued from Page One

in every year, they were always deco-
rated in this same way, and around
them the people always danced with
a-great abandon. The wantonness of
their merrymaking, in fact, so shocked
the Puritans that it caused them to
brand the pole as a very “stinckyng
idoll.” Justified or not, however, they
put no damper on the enthusiasm of
the villagers for their customary
revelling. They even failed to subdue
the ardor of the reverend clergy, for
one honest priest, delivering his ser-
mon on May morning and finding his
pews suddenly emptied at the sound
of music on the Green, with no re-
criminations simply up and followed
the throng, as eager as any of them
to see the Maypole reared. ;
Origin of Morris Dancing Celtic
Besides the circular dancing around
the pole, another sort of dance was
commonly associated with the festival.
This was the Morris dance, named
from “Morisco,” the Spanish word for
Moor. Although it is,said by some
to have been introduced into England
from Spain in the reign of Edward
IV, there is another explanation of
its presence which makes it a far
older tradition and a completely na-
tive one. It goes back to, the pre-
Roman age when the Celts ‘built their
sacrificial fires on the Druid’s mounds.
Just as they imitated the burning of
human victims by drawing each other
through the, blaze, so the revellers
imitated the slaughter of: human off-
erings by sword-dances where the ges-
ture of killing was made. By some
miracle, the dancer thus symbolically
put to death was usually revived again
as the summer revives from winter,
for it was this changing of the sea-
sons that the dance was meant to
represent and it was the deity of sum-
mer that the dance was meant to
honor. As further insurance of the
blessing of the god, the performers
also blackened their faces with ashes
from the mounds where likewise he
had been honored. These rites they
continued for generation after gen-
eration, after the Romans had con-
quered their country and after Chris-
tianity had become their. religion,
until the significance of the move-
ments they went through were for-
gotten and the movements themselves
changed. For the clangor of the
swords they substituted the jingle of
bells which they bound about their



awards which bear some mention at

Montgomery Avenue Bryn Mawr





Are you curious about Culottes?

Come in and try them on.

See how they flatter the “figger.”

Yet give the freedom of shorts.

Linen Suede Cloth—Flannel
$2.95. up

KITTY McLEAN

BRYN MAWR, PA.

Seat 3

When you come to Bryn Mawr -
.00 : MONTGOMERY INN

_. PHILADELPHIA’S FINEST SUBURBAN HOTEL

legs and wrists, and although they
ELUTE
Stop at

3 Minutes
From the
College



J. K. Winters, Prop.
PT TT





the hoop-rolling and ‘the .bequeathing





Kingly s plendor

Lucia Holiday as King Richard
in the first May Day.



still smeared their faces, they did. not
know why.
St. George Once Symbolic Dance
From the same source of symbolical
dancing was derived another May
Day ceremony, the play of St. George
and the Dragon. Here, however, the
swords were retained, the revivifica-
tion .was..embodied into. the story
rather than discarded as an unneces-
sary gesture, and although made
comic and Christian, the whole play
gave evidence of its origin. When
individual characters were separated
from the drama to appear alone as
figures in a procession or even as
Morris dancers, their significance was
of course obscured, yet because the
play remained to supplement them,
they never became quite disconnected
from their traditional beginning. And
almost always a St. George or a hob-
by-horse, a man wearing a pasteboard
effigy of a horse about his waist so
that he seemed to be riding, did take
part in the Morris dance, while ‘some-
times a dragon followed along, too,
with whom the Horse kept up a desul-
tory battle. Nor were these two the
only extraneous actors in the Morris
performance. Robin Hood and Maid
Marian came to be the leading people
in it, although originally they were
even less, connected with it than St.
George.

Féte Demands “Lord and Lady”

Since no country folk could hold a
festival without a festival leader, the
May Day dances, both Morris and
Maypole, were early ruled by a lord
and lady. Eventually they became
known to everyone as Robin and
Marian in addition to their loftier
titles. That these two names and
no others should have been attached
to them, was a result of the popu-
larity during the twelfth century
of certain French pastourelles deal-
ing with the loves of a Robin and
a Marian, type shepherds like the
English May leaders. As soon as the
name of Robin became widespread, it
was at once associated with the purely

-English Robin Hood, whom the Vision

of Piers Plowman mentioned and
whose praises the ballads were begin-
ning to sing. The shepherd was










transformed into the outlaw, and the
shepherdess, although Robin . Hood
had: at first ho swéetheart to match
her, was transformed into an outlawed
lady whose character was gradually
created to meet the occasion.

Decline of May Day Traditions

When at last the Puritans gained
control of the government, they put
their léng-continued resentment into
action and banned the Maypole with
its accompanying wantonness.

After the Restoration of Charles
II, the king who loved his pleasure so
well, the Maypole was restored to its
former freedom, but the best of its
spirit was gone. The old gay songs
had been dulled with Puritanical
strains- of sin and Hell; the Maid
Marian had degenerated into a boy
clown; and the Morris dances had
been taken over by chimney sweeps
because their sooty skins well suited
the black faces of the dancers. The
Maypoles disappeared from the cities
and villages one by one; in 1717 the
last in London was taken down.
Enough of the ancient tradition re-
mained for Pepys to be able to record
in his diary that his wife had gone
to wash her face in the May dew like
the Elizabethan country girls, and in
certain districts the customs were
still unadulterated. But in these dis-
tricts, too, the strength of the prac-
tice waned when factories began to
invade the fields and the Maypoles
stood in sight of smoky factories. Only
recently, since a greater consciousness
of the value of popular traditions has
arisen, have the ceremonies been to
some extent revived. Directed by peo-
ple well learned in the histories of the
old rites, those customs which were
slowly dying have been preserved and
those already scarcely more than re-
membered have been given a new life.
Not with quite the same spontaneity,
yet with the same symbolism of dance
‘and flowers and sacred sacrifice and
tree, England still does observance to
May and the vitality of a new year.



William Kempe Famous Fool

William Kempe, the fool who ac-
companies one band of Morris dancers,
was a famous fool in Shakespeare’s
company of actors, as well as a noted
composer of jigs. His association
with the Morris men comes from the
fact that he won much notoriety by
dancing a Morris dance from London
to Norwich.

SS a ee





MARINELLO GUILD
APPROVED SALON

National Bank Building
Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Bryn Mawr 809

ge a ae ee

Beauty Craft in all its branches













Sa i i i i a a a ee ll el









HAPPY MAY DAYS

topped off by wearing a cool chiffon printed with flowers from
garden and field, or a gay gingham evening dress at $22.75 from
new arrivals of daytime’ and dinner gowns at

JEANNE BETTS
30 Bryn Mawr Avenue

|

“"

&®













Club Breakfast ..........

Table d’Hote Luncheons. .



Telephone: Bryn Mawr 386



BRYN MAWR COLLEGE INN
_ TEA ROOM

MAY DAY SPECIALS

whan ceed ede ses s0l—Elo-~ICE
Served from 7:30—11 A. M.

12 to 2:30 P. M.

Table d’Hote Dinmers.........eeceeee0s
6:30 to 8:30 P. M.

Meals served on the Terrace when weather permits

The. Public is Invited

wee ee DOC—75C

a







Eight Choir Members
Broadcast Over WOR

Continued from Page One



ner played Sacrapant in Old Wive’s
Tale, and he himself was the cdstume
director.

After Mr. Skinner’s short talk, the
Bryn Mawr singers, accompied per. |
Willoughby on the piano, sang the
Harvestors Song from Old Wive’s
Tale, Here is a Pottell of Malmsey,
the drinking song of the Gossips in
The Deluge, and one verse of Down in.
a Leafy Dell, a sentimental ballad to
the familiar strains of Gathering
Peascods. A most amusing dialogue,
which Mr. Skinner said reminded him
of Eddie Cantor, followed between
Mrs. Wrench and Mrs. Jacobs, who
played the parts of two mothers at

again, two songs from Robin Hood,
one verse of Alan-a-Dale’s song, The
Bailiff's Daughter of Islington, ac-
companied by Mr. Willoughby, and
the round Follow, Follow, unaccom-
panied. The program closed with To
the Maypole, the last part of which
was hummed to make a real fade-out.



————
BUSINESS 3
SCIENCE

COURSES

® Specialized Training for
College Men and Women.

@ Summer Session of six
weeks, begins June 29th.

@ Placement Service.

PEIRCE SCHOOL

OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Gees PHILADELPHIA ee

sana
—















HAVE YOU CONSIDERED
LIBRARY WORK AS
A PROFESSION?

Carnegie Library School of Car-
negie Institute of Technology,

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, _ offers
fully dccredited one year courses

which will interest- you.

Send for Bulletin











Old Covered Wagon Inn

on the Lincoln Highway
at Strafford, Pa.

10 minutes from Bryn Mawr
i College

Quality Food

Daily Luncheons and Dinners



Res. Phone: Wayne 1169 — 1969





We make

obeisance

We, too, celebrate
May Day!

For 30 years it has been
our ptivilege to serve Bryn
Mawr College — for 30
more years, and longer, we
hope to warrant a continu: ©

ance of that privilege.
*

"The John C. Winston Co.
Printers and Publishers
Philadelphia









: cee elas icles ein Zi
RE NOM MG Pee rita sea =, Se

Big May Day. The singers then sang/ —

aa