When the school-children on the platform rose and came forward to sing they, also, were applauded; but their performance and those of the young ladies were but the lettuce in the salad; all the flavour was in the comic items.

Now, Miss Shepherd was a poet, and had several times turned out a neat verse to supplement those of a song she considered too short. One year she took the National Anthem in hand and added a verse. It ran:

May every village school

Uphold Victoria’s rule,

To Church and State be true,

God save the Queen.

Which pleased Squire so much that he talked of sending it to the newspapers.

Going home with lanterns swinging down the long dark road, the groups would discuss the evening’s entertainment. Squire’s Minstrels and the curate’s songs were always unreservedly praised and the young ladies’ performances were tolerated, although, often, a man would complain, “I don’t know if I be goin’ deaf, or what; but I couldn’t hear a dommed word any of ‘em said.” As to the school-children’s efforts, criticism was applied more to how they looked than to their musical performance. Those who had scuffled or giggled, or even blushed, heard of it from their parents, while such remarks were frequent as: “Got up to kill, that young Mary Ann Parish was!” or “I declare I could see the hem o’ young Rose Mitchell’s breeches showin’,” or “That Em Tuffrey made a poor show. Whatever wer’ her mother a thinkin’ on?” Taken all in all, they enjoyed the concert almost as much as their grandchildren enjoy the cinema.

13

May Day

After the excitement of the concert came the long winter months, when snowstorms left patches on the ploughed fields, like scrapings of sauce on left-over pieces of Christmas pudding, until the rains came and washed them away and the children, carrying old umbrellas to school, had them turned inside out by the wind, and cottage chimneys smoked and washing had to be dried indoors. But at last came spring and spring brought May Day, the greatest day in the year from the children’s point of view.

The May garland was all that survived there of the old May Day festivities. The maypole and the May games and May dances in which whole parishes had joined had long been forgotten. Beyond giving flowers for the garland and pointing out how things should be done and telling how they had been done in their own young days, the older people took no part in the revels.