A Musical May-Day Commemoration
Annually celebrated by this Society, which consists of a concert of music on the top of the Tower, in honour of its founder, Henry VII. It was originally a mass, but since the Reformation, it has been “a merry concert of both vocal and instrumental music, consisting of several merry ketches, and lasts almost two hours (beginning as early as four o’clock in the morning,) and is concluded with ringing the bells.” The performers have a breakfast for their pains. They have likewise singing early on Christmas morning. The custom is similar to one observed at Manheim, in Germany, and throughout the palatinate.
Whoever was the author of the following admirable production, he was certainly not νους-less, and it will “hardly be read with dry lips, or mouths that do not water,” says the author of the Gradus ad Cant.