May Day fiddle player
SKU:
£14.00
£14.00
Unavailable
per item
Gildan
This design is part of an engraving taken from "Memoires, &c. par un Voyageur en Angleterre" published in The Hague in 1698, and reproduced in William Hone's Table Book from the mid nineteenth century.
The complete original depicted a May Day dance in London including, as well as the fiddle player, two young peasant girls with flowers and ribbons on carried in a vessel on their heads. The description reported that "they go dancing from door to door surrounded by young men and children, who follow them in crowds; and every where they are made some little present."
The musician's elegant style of dress reflects the metropolitan setting in London. Bring back the frock coat and jabot I say!
The May Day festival was traditionally an occasion when people would become somewhat disinhibited as the celebration of spring, along with lots of alcohol, emboldened them. Watch below as Angel Clare becomes swept up in the seasonal ritual in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbevilles.
The complete original depicted a May Day dance in London including, as well as the fiddle player, two young peasant girls with flowers and ribbons on carried in a vessel on their heads. The description reported that "they go dancing from door to door surrounded by young men and children, who follow them in crowds; and every where they are made some little present."
The musician's elegant style of dress reflects the metropolitan setting in London. Bring back the frock coat and jabot I say!
The May Day festival was traditionally an occasion when people would become somewhat disinhibited as the celebration of spring, along with lots of alcohol, emboldened them. Watch below as Angel Clare becomes swept up in the seasonal ritual in Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbevilles.
It is also the time of Beltane when the veil between human world and the spirit world is at its' most transparent, and a time of commitment for couples when handfasting ceremonies are carried out.