The milkmaids’ procession at Chepstow

At Chepstow the milkmaids’ garland was a procession of more than thirty young people dancing and singing round an old man crowned with wild flowers, who carried a blossoming hawthorn and blew a cow’s horn at each house. Behind came Aunt Nelly with a scoured brass kettle of cream and a basket of wild strawberries for anyone who held out a basin, six goats harnessed in flowers carrying the milking and butter gear, and the farmer riding a garlanded bull with a cheese and a hatchet hung behind him. The correspondent Jehoiada saw it after sailing up the Wye, and sent it as a note to Hone’s account of the May Day milkmaids’ garland.