The Traditional Children's Games of England Scotland
& Ireland In Dictionary Form - Volume 1

With Tunes(sheet music), Singing-rhymes(lyrics), Methods Of Playing with diagrams and illustrations.

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	NUTS IN MAY	43i
	tured by the one sent to fetch her. Some Barnes children/ also say that this is the proper way to play. When boys and girls play the boys are always sent to " fetch away " the girls. In Sheffield (a version collected by Mr. S. O. Addy) a boy is( chosen to fetch the girl away; and in the Earls Heaton version the line runs, "We'll have a girl for nuts in May." (e) There is some analogy in the game to marriage by capture, and to the marriage customs practised at May Day festivals and gatherings. For the evidence for marriage by capture in the game there is no element of love or courtship, though there is the obtaining possession of a member of an opposing party. But it differs from ordinary contest-games in the fact that one party does not wage war against another party for posses­sion of a particular piece of ground, but individual against individual for the possession of an individual. That the player sent to fetch the selected girl is expected to conquer seems to be implied—first, by a choice of a certain player being made to effect the capture; secondly, by the one sent " to fetch " being always successful; and thirdly, the " crowning in the Symondsbury game. Through all the games I have seen played this idea seems to run, and it exactly accords with the conception of marriage by capture. For examples of the actual survivals in English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish customs of marriage by capture see Gomme's Folk-lore Relics of Early Village Life, pp. 204-210. The question is, How does this theory of the origin of the game fit in with the term " Nuts in May" ? I attribute this, to the gathering by parties of young men of bunches of May ati the May festivals and dances, to decorate not only the May­pole, May "kissing-bush," but the doors of houses. "Knots of May " is a term used by children, meaning bunches of May.' Thus, a note by Miss Fowler in the MS. of the games she had collected says, " In Bucks the children speak of ' knots of May,' meaning each little bunch of hawthorn blossom." The gather­ing of bunches of May by parties of young men and maidens to make the May-bush round which the May Day games were held, and dancing and courting, is mentioned by Wilde (Irish Popular Superstitions, p. 52), the game being "Dance in the
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