50 free May Day trivia questions with answers. May Day is really several holidays sharing a date, and this May Day trivia quiz covers all of them. There is the ancient spring festival: the Roman Floralia, Gaelic Beltane, Walpurgis Night, maypoles and May Queens, Oxford's May Morning, Padstow's 'Obby 'Oss, Jack in the Green and the Puritans who tried to ban the lot. There is the workers' holiday: the 1886 Chicago strike, the Haymarket bomb, the Second International, Red Square parades and why Americans keep Labor Day in September instead. Then the odd corners: lily of the valley in France, maypoles delivered to girls' doors in the Rhineland, Finnish sima, Czech kisses under blossom, Hawaii's Lei Day, May baskets, Loyalty Day, and the Croydon radio officer who invented the 'mayday' distress call. It works for a pub quiz, a classroom, or a family that has just spent the morning dancing round a pole. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic or primary source and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01May Day, 1 May, falls roughly halfway between which two points of the year?
Spring equinox and midsummer solstice
That is why the old European festivals treated it as the first day of summer, not the middle of spring.
Q 02The earliest known May celebrations were the Floralia, a Roman festival honouring Flora, goddess of what?
Flowers
Ovid records that hares and goats were released during the festivities, which ran from 27 April to 3 May.
Q 03At Beltane on 1 May, cattle were driven between two bonfires before being sent where?
To summer pastures
People also walked between the fires or leapt the embers for protection and luck.
Q 04Walpurgis Night on 30 April commemorates the canonisation of Saint Walpurga in which year?
870
Her relics were moved to Eichstätt on the same day, and pilgrims still collect vials of 'Saint Walpurga's oil' there.
Q 05In parts of Europe, bonfires are lit on Walpurgis Night to ward off what?
Witches
Saint Walpurga was invoked against 'pest, rabies, and whooping cough, as well as against witchcraft'.
Q 06Which of these is a traditional May Day custom in England?
Crowning a May Queen
The Queen of May was often given a male companion decked head to toe in greenery.
Q 07The earliest records of maypole celebrations in Britain date from which century?
14th
By the 1580s Philip Stubbs described poles hauled home by forty yoke of oxen with flowers tied to their horns.
Q 08Who banned May Day celebrations in England during the Interregnum, before Charles II restored them?
The Puritan parliaments
The Long Parliament's 1644 ordinance called maypoles 'a Heathenish vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickedness'.
Q 09London's tallest ever maypole blew down in 1672 and was reused as a mount for whose telescope?
Isaac Newton
It was moved to Wanstead in Essex for the purpose.
Q 10On May Morning in Oxford, crowds gather beneath the tower of which college to hear its choir?
Magdalen College
The hymn is the Hymnus Eucharisticus, and students used to jump off Magdalen Bridge into the Cherwell until the bridge was closed on May Morning.
Q 11Morris dancing is first mentioned in a 1448 record of a payment by which London livery company?
The Goldsmiths
The word probably comes from morisco, meaning Moorish, and dancers traditionally wear bells on their legs.
Q 12Padstow in Cornwall celebrates May Day with two 'Obby 'Osses; what are they stylised depictions of?
Horses
The 'Old' and 'Blue Ribbon' 'Osses parade all day and meet at the maypole in the evening before 'dying' until next May Eve.
Q 13By the 19th century, the May Day figure Jack in the Green was chiefly associated with which trade?
Chimney sweeps
The custom grew out of a 17th-century procession in which milkmaids carried pails decorated with flowers.
Q 21In the Czech Republic, May Day is a holiday of love; what do couples do on 1 May?
Kiss under a blossoming tree
May is regarded there as the month of love.
Q 22Bulgaria's May Day festival of Irminden involves rituals to protect people from what?
Snakes and lizards
The name comes from the prophet Jeremiah, though the roots are almost certainly pagan.
Q 23In Ireland, a Bealtaine May Bush was traditionally a thorn bush decked with blossoms, ribbons and what?
Bright shells
Household fires were doused and relit from the communal Bealtaine bonfire.
Q 14On 1 May 1515, Henry VIII's royal guard appeared at a woodland breakfast disguised as whom?
Robin Hood and his men
They met at Shooter's Hill after riding from Greenwich Palace.
Q 15In France, it is traditional to give a sprig of which flower on 1 May?
Lily of the valley
King Charles IX received one as a lucky charm in 1561 and began giving them to the ladies of the court each year.
Q 16In France, labour groups and private sellers may sell the 1 May flower without paying what?
Sales tax
The exemption applies on that day only; the plant itself is highly poisonous, which does not stop anyone.
Q 17In the German Rhineland, what does a young man deliver overnight to a girl's house for 1 May?
A maypole wrapped in streamers
A tree wrapped only in white streamers signals dislike, and in leap years the women do the delivering.
Q 18Germany's Walpurgisnacht celebrations are traditionally strongest in which mountain range?
The Harz
The night's motto is 'Tanz in den Mai', dance into May.
Q 19In Sweden and Swedish-speaking Finland, the maypole is raised not on May Day but at which festival?
Midsummer
The Swedish name is midsommarstång; the word 'maja' there means to dress or decorate, not the month.
Q 20Finland's Walpurgis carnival, Vappu, traditionally centres on drinking which homemade fermented drink?
Sima
It counts as one of Finland's five biggest holidays, alongside Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve and Easter.
Q 24Edinburgh's modern Beltane Fire Festival, started in 1988, is held at which spot in the city?
Calton Hill
It was meant for Arthur's Seat, home of older Edinburgh Beltane customs, but moved for practical reasons.
Q 25What is the Welsh name for the first of May, paralleling Beltane?
Calan Mai
It is also called Calan Haf, meaning first of summer.
Q 26In Hawaii, 1 May is celebrated as what?
Lei Day
Poet Don Blanding proposed it, the first was held in Honolulu in 1927, and it became an official holiday in 1929.
Q 27Which fading American May Day custom involved leaving small containers of sweets or blossoms on doorsteps?
May baskets
They were usually left anonymously; early European settlers brought the tradition with them.
Q 28International Workers' Day commemorates an 1886 strike and bombing in which American city?
Chicago
Ironically the United States itself keeps its Labor Day in September.
Q 29The 1886 strike that led to the Haymarket affair was demanding what?
An eight-hour working day
Australian stonemasons in Victoria had won the eight-hour day back in 1856, inspiring the American campaign.
Q 30What was thrown at police at the Haymarket rally on 4 May 1886?
A dynamite bomb
Seven police officers and at least four civilians died in the blast and the gunfire that followed.