Many years ago, there was a custom in New England of children "hanging May baskets". This consisted of their acquiring a small basket, decorating it, and putting candy, etc., in it with a loving note to their mother, then hanging it on the front door knob and ringing the doorbell. Then they hid until their mother came to the door and found it. Then they were invited in for an impromptu party with kisses all around.
I haven't heard of this custom's being observed since the 1930's, Has any one else heard of it since?
I had totally forgotten this, but we sho'nuff did it. Not just for mothers, but for kids around the neighborhood. Woolworth's sold these little crepe-paper baskets, which we would fill with candy and leave outside someone's door. I'm hazy on this ( it was around age 5 or 6), but my recollection is that you were supposed to leave it and run, because if anyone caught you, they might kiss you. Weird!
While we're on it, how did "May Day" become the international call of distress?
The Only WO'N!
mayday = m'aidez (fr.) = help me
MayDay used to be taught to ship radio operators when voice transmission became available, along with SOS, which was easy to send with key "...---..." So "mayday" was chosen by somebody ignorant of French. What would you expect?
Mayday = m'aidez
A source I checked gives this derivation:
[From French (venez) m'aider, (come) help me!.]
Getting back to the original subject, were Dr. Bill and I really the only ones exposed to this pagan ritual?
slithy
were Dr. Bill and I really the only ones exposed to this pagan ritual?
The only pagan ritual I had to suffer through was being paired off with some grubby girl, always one named Ernestine or Thomasine or Earline or the like, who outweighed me two to one, and I had to dance around a large lingam that the grownups called a Maypole.
I assume, my dear Geoff, that eventually the parents discovered that the kids were participating in a pagan fertility ritual and put a stop to it. I can hear you at the breakfast table, "I want my May pole. I want my May pole."
the kids were participating in a pagan fertility ritual
In the movie The Wicker Man the school kids explain the significance of the Maypole dance to the visiting mainlander policeman.
Yet the police refused to incarcerate the bloke. Certainly there's no arrest for the wicker.
"I want my May pole. I want my May pole."I wouldn't touch that one with a ten foot.....!
The Only WO'N!
Dear WO'N: What you were supposed to be teasing for was "I want my Maypo" a long since lost cereal.
Dear Dr. Bill: You seem to have embarked on some poleless polemic about polenta being the poleward thrust of the pun on pole...are you attempting to polarize this conversation with polistic introspection? I think I smell a polecat!
The Only WO'N!
Dear WO'N: your mouth should be lavaged with a big bowl of Maypo.
I can hear you at the breakfast table, "I want my May pole. I want my May
pole."Actually, Ted, it wasn't the breakfast table, but the bed, as I cursed that nearsighted moyle.
Hysterical Note: May 1 1624. The May Pole at Mare Mount in what is now Quincy Thomas Morton and otheres set up a May Pole engaged in drinking and dancing with Indian women and celebrated "The Feast of the Roman Goddes Glora, or the beastly practices of the Madd Bacchinalians" according to Plymouth governor William Bradford (my ancestor) Morton was deported to England.
It was years before I figured out what my father meant when he said at a briss the rabbi gets the fee but the tip goes to the moyle.
Here is a URL where you can learn about "Briss" and "moyel". The only thing that is not clear TEd. there must be two tips involved. What happens to the one the moyel removes?
http://chutzpah.homestead.com/files/dictionary.html
at a briss the rabbi gets the fee but the
tip goes to the moyle.
Does your father often make cutting remarks? This is a case wheren the direct object is also the object of the prepuse-ition.