May songs of Bedfordshire . by F B Hamer . the village blacksmith of Harrold , a well known character , gave me the May carol he used to sing , with his parents and family , round the village , including the numerous country houses of that neighbourhood . the tune was the same as that published by Lucy Broadwood in her traditional songs and carols , and , except for some transposition of verses and the addition of a wish for a joyful May , it was the same song . years later , after I had come across other versions of the song , I discovered why . Mr Crouch , the blacksmith , as a child , had been in the party that gave the song to Sir Ernest Clarke at Hinwick Hall in the first decade of the century , and it was Sir Ernest who had sent it to Lucy Broadwood . it was the Church family of Biddenham who first brought home to me the fact that there were other versions of this carol still known , and sometimes still sung , in Bedfordshire . Mrs E Church gave me the one she used to sing in Kimbolton and the villages on the Bedfordshire border with Huntingdonshire . her father-in-law , Walter Paddy Church , told me that when he was a boy in Bromham ( c 1880 ) the custom was for the young men to gather thorn branches the night before May day , and these they planted in front of the door of all the unmarried women of the village . during May day morning they went round again , this time to collect their reward in the form of money and sometimes beer or food . they sang on each of these perambulations , using the same tune , but having two sets of words . I have since found that this was the custom at other places in the county . at Keysoe the bushes were graded according to the degree of eligibility of the lady , and the unwanted spinster had a briar bush instead . at Wrestlingworth it appears to have been a male custom too , and Northill , with its magnificent maypole and unique records of sixteenth-century May games , boasted a more elaborate ceremony . they had a set of moggies attending the May bush cart on its journey . the mayers or moggies , usually about eight or ten young men , carried tall , beribboned staves like tutti poles and had as leaders a lord and lady , and included a shabbily dressed , black-faced man and woman , carrying besoms - these last the moggies who gave their name to the whole party . Elstow too had its moggies and its own song before these were submerged in the present-day Whitelands-sponsored Ruskinade with its miniature pole and the full Queen-of-the-May ceremony . the more usual custom is for children , usually girls only , to take round a decorated garland made of a flower-decked hoop or double hoop with a doll dressed in white suspended in the centre . sometimes a pram or chair , carrying a doll and decorated with flowers , takes the place of the hoops . the song is usually shorter than the full Harrold version and often contains only a verse or two about the branch or garland of May and the qu&amp;ecirc;te verses . the Eaton Bray song is an example . in the north of the county another tune appears , sometimes in the same village as the more usual one . it is used by children with a garland . here are two versions of it . I have not attempted a systematic survey of the county . the examples I have came to me almost by chance , which accounts for the fact that there are extensive gaps in the south . I count it a very fortunate chance which brought me the very lovely song sung in Buckworth ( Hunts ) and the northern borders of Bedfordshire . here it is as given to me by Mrs Johnstone who now lives in Bedford . some additional May songs from the east midlands . the foregoing are only a few of Mr Hamer &apos;s extensive collection of May songs from Bedfordshire and the neighbouring counties . he has , however , kindly consented to some further examples from other collections being appended to his article . Mrs Ruth Craufurd of Aldbury , near Tring , has recently contributed to the Vaughan Williams memorial Library seven versions from the south-west of Hertfordshire . two of these , representing the two distinct types which she has found in this restricted area , are here reproduced . the Aldbury melody is very close to that of the King &apos;s Langley , Herts , May day song the moon shines bright ( L E Broadwood , English county songs , p 108 ) . the Marsworth song may be compared with Mr Hamer &apos;s north Bedfordshire versions . Mrs Craufurd writes : one of the interesting comparisons between these two neighbouring May songs is the complete difference in both airs and words . although Marsworth is barely five miles from Aldbury , villages were almost isolated from each other in the days before cars and bicycles and had only a market town in common , so that they lived in a little world of their own . another point of interest is the money asked . Aldbury , a village with a great house and a rich parsonage , asks for a little silver , but Marsworth , a poor marshland village , only hopes for a ha&apos;penny . Marsworth also makes an interesting reference to the Tring chimney sweeps who come a-dancing all May-day , which refers to the Jack-in-the-Green , the May garland in the far-off days of the little climbing boys and in still further off days when the dancer in it represented the spirit of vegetation visiting each house to bring fertility in the coming year . Miss Beattie Burch , one of the Aldbury Mayers from whom I got the song , told me : we used to get up at six in the morning on May day and make our garlands , and then go with them to the bigger houses and farms before school . if they resisted the temptation to play truant from school on May day they were rewarded the following Saturday by a festivity which consisted in a procession round the pond , ending up at the Rectory or Stocks ( the great house ) where we were each given a bun and a penny . their garlands were often a little doll with a wreath of flowers in her hair , sitting in a child &apos;s arm-chair decorated with ribbons and flowers and curtained all round so that only those who gave us money could see the May doll when we pulled the curtains back for them . these and other local versions of the May song are now sung annually at the Aldbury women &apos;s institute May festival held on Whit-Saturday . the following examples from the editor &apos;s collection represent , firstly , the version generally current in the south of Northamptonshire and the adjacent part of Buckinghamshire and , secondly , the night song from Gravely on the Cambridgeshire-Huntingdonshire border . a very similar version of the May song used to be current in the nearby villages , such as Deanshanger and Wicken ( Northants ) . the May garlanding by the children of Leckhampstead is not school-sponsored and was kept up regularly on May 1 at least until 1954 . the children told me that they did not go out in 1955 because May 1 was a Sunday . there used to be three separate parties , each with a garland , but there was then only one consisting of about five girls from eight to eleven years of age . the substitution of good evening for the usual good morning in verse 1 resulted from the closing of the village school , since when the children go to Buckingham and no longer have a holiday on May day . except on a Saturday the garlanding has therefore to be postponed until after school . at Gravely the custom was that a party of four or five men - one with an accordion - went round the village about midnight on May day eve with branches of may cut from the hedges . at each house where they sang the song they left a branch ( May bush ) , and money was then thrown down from the bedroom windows ; but people who were disliked were left a briar - a briar indicated a liar , said Mrs Howlett - and those of bad moral character were left a branch of elder , or hemlock and stinging nettle . thus the full implication of the first verse becomes apparent . it will be noticed that , in contrast to Mr Hamer &apos;s Bromham example , there was here no second visiting and that verses of the night and day songs have been combined . Mrs Howlett , however , mentioned that her mother made very good May garlands with a doll hung inside , so it would appear that the day-time May garlanding was also carried on at Gravely . the Gravely melody is related to the twice noted Fowlmere , Cambs , version ( L E Broadwood , J Folk Song society , 1902 , 1 , 180 ; R Vaughan Williams , eight traditional carols , 1919 , reprinted in the Oxford book of carols , no 47 ) . further references are given by M Dean-Smith , a guide to English folk song collections , 1954 ( May day carols , the moon shines bright , etc ) . the main purpose of these additional notes is to indicate the need for a detailed survey of the various May song tunes and their related customs . the most recent study of this kind seems to have appeared as long ago as 1904 , and this was confined to a single county ( W B Gerish , the Mayers and their song , or some account of the first of May and its observance in Hertfordshire , printed by S Austin &amp; Sons , Hertford ) . editor . the international folk music council . the fourteenth annual conference of the international folk music council was held in the Universit&amp;eacute; Laval in Quebec from August 28 to September 3 , 1961 . the conference was organized by a special Canadian committee which included the University and the Canadian folk music society . the leading spirit in this enterprise was Dr Marius Barbeau , the President of the society and the grand old man of French-Canadian and red Indian folk music , known throughout the world from the work done when he was attached to the national Museum in Ottawa . this conference attracted musicians , folk-lorists and dancers from all over the world , with a particularly strong contingent from the United States . it met in the mornings and afternoons and the members were entertained in various ways during the evenings with concerts and performances . there was an opportunity for one excursion to the Indian reservation in Lorette , where a programme of Huron and Iroquois ceremonies was given under Dr Barbeau &apos;s direction . the University of Laval is itself a strong centre of French-Canadian folk-lore and the members of the conference were fortunate in having this opportunity to have the folk-lore section with its archives explained to them by Professor Luc Lacourci&amp;egrave;re and his colleagues . hospitality was generous throughout the period of the conference , culminating in a Canadian supper in the old part of the University in the heart of the City of Quebec . the daily sessions were held in a building in the new University some four or five miles out of the city , where new buildings are springing up on an extensive campus which only a short time ago was virgin forest . the conference had all the modern facilities at its disposal and as there was little else to distract the attention the sessions were very well attended . from the musical point of view the contemporary work of Dr Charles Seeger and Mr Alan Lomax , each making use of modern technical equipment , posed the most challenging questions . Dr Seeger &apos;s Melograph , capable of analysing melodic structure in great detail , opened a good many eyes to the fluidity of folk music and revealed how incomplete was the conventional picture of folk music depending on a few modes derived from the pentatonic scale . Alan Lomax , using another type of scientific instrument , provided graphs of vocal technique from which he deduced a number of factors each affecting singing style which he described as a self-perpetuating culture trait . he argued that there were three or four main styles which had coalesced in America shaping singing habits and influencing the preservation of traditional pieces and the choice of new material . 