May Day Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
49 free May Day trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
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 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01May Day falls roughly halfway between which two astronomical points of the Northern Hemisphere year?
Spring equinox and midsummer solstice
Halfway between the spring equinox and midsummer solstice is why old European festivals treated May Day as the first day of summer, not mid-spring.
Q 02Walpurga, the saint behind Walpurgis Night, became a missionary abbess in Germany; where was she born?
England
England: Walpurga was born in Devon around 710, went to Germany as a missionary and became abbess of Heidenheim; the eve of her 1 May feast became Walpurgis Night.
Q 03At Beltane on 1 May, cattle were driven between two bonfires before being sent where?
To summer pastures
At Beltane, cattle were driven between two bonfires for protection before being sent to summer pastures; people also walked between the fires or leapt the embers for luck.
Q 04Which German writer put a wild Walpurgis Night revel on a mountaintop into his most famous play?
Goethe
Goethe sends Faust up a mountain with Mephistopheles for a Walpurgis Night revel in Faust, Part One (1808), and the scene made both the night and its peak widely famous.
Q 05In parts of Europe, bonfires are lit on Walpurgis Night to ward off what?
Witches
Witches were believed to hold their great gathering that night, so villagers lit hillside fires and made a din to drive them and other evil spirits away from homes and livestock.
Q 06Which of these is a traditional May Day custom in England?
Crowning a queen for the day
Crowning a queen for the day is the centrepiece: a girl is chosen as May Queen and paraded through the village before the maypole dancing begins.
Q 07Britain's earliest recorded maypole is a birch in a 14th-century poem from Llanidloes, a town where?
Wales
Wales: in Gruffudd ab Adda's mid-14th-century poem a birch is cut down to serve as the maypole at Llanidloes and ends up standing, ruined, beside the town pillory.
Q 08Who banned May Day celebrations in England during the Interregnum, before Charles II restored them?
The Puritan parliaments
The Puritan parliaments went after the maypole itself: a 1644 ordinance called it 'a Heathenish vanity' and ordered parish constables to take every one down.
Q 09Which scientist obtained a felled Strand maypole to mount a giant telescope at Wanstead, Essex?
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton bought the Strand maypole when it came down and sent it to his friend James Pound at Wanstead, where it held up a huge Huygens telescope lens lent by the Royal Society.
Q 10On May Morning in Oxford, crowds gather at 6 a.m. beneath the tower of which college to hear its choir sing?
Magdalen College
Magdalen College Choir sings the Hymnus Eucharisticus from the top of its tower; so many revellers were hurt leaping from Magdalen Bridge into the shallow river that the bridge was shut on several May Mornings.
Q 11Morris dancing, a May Day fixture, takes its name from an old word meaning what?
Moorish
Moorish: the 15th-century 'moreys daunce' meant Moorish dance, though why an English folk dance took the name is unclear; one old guess points to dancers blacking their faces as a disguise.
Q 12Padstow parades its Old and Blue Ribbon 'Obby 'Osses through the streets each May Day in which English county?
Cornwall
Cornwall's fishing port of Padstow follows each 'Oss and its club-waving Teaser through the streets all day, until the two meet at the maypole and are sung to their 'death' 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
Q 21On 1 May, the Czech holiday of love, what do couples traditionally kiss beneath?
A blossoming tree
A blossoming tree, usually a cherry, apple or birch: the custom is thought to be only about a century old, perhaps inspired by Karel Hynek Mácha's love poem 'Máj'.
Q 22Bulgaria's May Day festival of Irminden involves rituals to protect people from what?
Snakes and lizards
Snakes and lizards are the fear: villagers hold rites to chase them off, and folk belief warns that anyone who works the fields that day will be bitten in summer; the name honours the prophet Jeremiah.
Q 23The old custom of 'bringing in the May' meant going out to gather what?
Flowers and green branches
Chimney sweeps made Jack in the Green their own in the 19th century, parading the leaf-covered figure to collect money on May Day; the custom grew out of 17th-century milkmaids' flower-decked garland processions.
Q 14On 1 May 1515, Henry VIII's royal guard appeared at a woodland breakfast disguised as whom?
Robin Hood and his men
Robin Hood and his men were the royal guard in disguise: they met Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon in a wood at Shooter's Hill, where an arbour had been built for breakfast, a pageant and a masque.
Q 15In France it is traditional to give a sprig of which flower on 1 May, a custom traced to King Charles IX?
Lily of the valley
Lily of the valley is said to have reached the young Charles IX as a lucky charm around 1561, after which he handed sprigs to the ladies of his court each spring.
Q 16Nazi Germany made 1 May an official national holiday in 1933; what did the regime do the very next day?
Abolished free trade unions
Abolished free trade unions: having courted workers with a state-run 'Day of National Work', the regime crushed their independent unions a day later, all but destroying the German workers' movement.
Q 17Which British horror film builds to a May Day festival on a remote Scottish island?
The Wicker Man
The Wicker Man sends a devout mainland policeman to the island to look for a missing girl, only for him to learn on May Day that she was the bait and the islanders wanted him all along.
Q 18Germany's Walpurgisnacht celebrations are traditionally strongest in which mountain range?
The Harz
The Harz: folklore made its highest peak, the Brocken, the night's great gathering place, so towns around the range still light hillside bonfires and dance into May.
Q 19In Sweden and Swedish-speaking Finland, the maypole is raised not on May Day but at which festival?
Midsummer
Midsummer is when Swedes raise the midsommarstång, a pole dressed in leaves and flowers, and dance around it, hopping like frogs to the song 'Små grodorna'.
Q 20Which homemade lemon-flavoured mead is the traditional drink of Vappu, Finland's 1 May carnival?
Sima
Sima is brewed at home with lemon, sugar and yeast; a couple of raisins go into each bottle, and when they float to the top the batch is ready for Vappu.
Flowers and green branches were carried home to decorate buildings, a rite that may once have been meant to bring fertility to crops and livestock.
Q 24Edinburgh's modern Beltane Fire Festival, started in 1988, is held at which spot in the city?
Calton Hill
Calton Hill was picked in 1988 as more central and easier to reach than Arthur's Seat, home of Edinburgh's older Beltane gatherings.
Q 25Which Welsh name for 1 May means 'first of summer'?
Calan Haf
Calan Haf, 'first day of summer', is the Welsh May Day, also called Calan Mai; bonfires were lit for it, as they were for the Irish and Scottish Beltane.
Q 26In Hawaii, 1 May is celebrated as what?
Lei Day
Lei Day began on 1 May 1927 with a few people wearing lei in downtown Honolulu; the idea, floated by poet Don Blanding, caught on, and 'May Day is Lei Day' became the islands' slogan.
Q 27Which fading American May Day custom involved leaving small containers of sweets or blossoms on doorsteps?
May baskets
May baskets of sweets or flowers were hung on a neighbour's door in secret, the giver knocking and running, since anyone caught in the act could be chased down for a kiss.
Q 28International Workers' Day commemorates an 1886 general strike and deadly rally in which American city?
Chicago
The Haymarket affair took place in Chicago on 4 May 1886, at a rally called after police had killed strikers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company the day before.
Q 29The 1886 strike that led to the Haymarket affair was demanding what?
An eight-hour working day
An eight-hour working day was the demand when American unions struck on 1 May 1886; that start date is why socialists later made 1 May the workers' day worldwide.
Q 30Which Roman goddess's festival, held from late April into early May, is often linked to the origins of May Day?
Flora
Flora, the goddess of flowers, was honoured with the Floralia, games that Romans began on the advice of the Sibylline Books in the hope she would protect the spring blossom.