The same combination of Maytide and Whitsuntide Revels is seen at Oxford in 1598, in an account of a " town-and-gown " riot on May 27th: "The inhabitants assembled on the two Sundays before Ascension Day, and on that day, with drum and shot and other weapons, and men attired in women's apparel, brought into the town a woman bedecked with garlands and flowers named by them the Queen of May. They also had Morrishe dances and other disordered and unseemly sports, and intended the next Sunday to continue the same abuses."[1]
And Anthony Wood shows how easy was the transference of May Day ceremonies to Holy Thursday, in his account of the annual visit of the Fellows of New College to the well at St. Bartholomew's Hospital outside Oxford: "Before, it was on May Day. New College men made choice of Holy Thursday, because Magdalen College men and the rabble of the towne came on May Day to their disturbance."[2]]
The Fifth of November.—The following words were sung at Headington, on the Fifth of November, by the boys who went about collecting fuel for their bonfires:
Remember, remember,
The fifth of November
Bonfire night
We want a faggot
To make it alight.
Hatchets and duckets,
Beetles and wedges,
If you don't give us some,
We'll pull your old hedges.
If you won't give us one,
We'll take two;
The better for us,
And the worse for you.
From Beckley:
Don't you know
'Tis the fifth of November,
Gunpowder Plot?
We're come to beg
A stick or a stake,
