TOMORROW is May Day and one of the ever-present customs associated with this happy time is maypole dancing. In spite of repeated attempts to halt it, this essentially rural ritual has survived with lofty and colourful maypoles continuing to be a feature of several village greens in this region.

Some remain in position throughout the year, while others are erected especially for the occasion, although nowadays any dancing will probably take place on the Saturday or Sunday nearest to May Day rather than upon the day itself.

This year we are fortunate to have the coming Saturday as May Day; I am sure some wonderful examples of maypole dancing will occur either tomorrow or during the rest of the weekend.

One great attempt to ban maypole dancing occurred in 1644 when the Puritans decided it was a pagan custom and set about trying both to ban the dancing and destroy any existing poles. There is one account where a Puritan writer referred to a maypole as a "stinckying idoll". He wrote scathingly of the practice of felling a suitable tree, and then yoking teams of oxen to haul the tree from the wood to its site in the village. All the oxen had bunches of flowers tied to the tips of their horns as they drew the "Maie poole or stinckying idoll" along; the pole itself was also adorned with flowers and garlands and before it was erected, it was painted in bright colours with more garlands tied to it.

Once the pole was in position, our Puritan writer said the people "do banquet and feast, leap and daunce sic about it as the heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles".

There is a record of such an attempted destruction in 1701. A group of Puritans, known as Broadbrims because of their hats, arrived at Sinnington, near Pickering. They were determined to stop the dancing but the local lads were equally determined they would not succeed.

There followed what was described as a "great dordum of a fight" in which the Puritans were beaten off. And there is still a maypole at Sinnington.

I do not have a comprehensive list of local villages where maypoles can be seen, but they have been recorded in Foston; Staithes; Roxby, near Staithes; Slingsby and Langton, near Malton; Masham; Whitby; Goathland; Coneysthorpe and Welburn, near Malton; Upper Poppleton and Clifton, near York; Thorpe and Burnsall in Wharfedale; Bubwith, near Selby; Sinnington, near Pickering; Otley; Nun Monkton and Aldborough, near Boroughbridge; Ovington; Middleton Tyas and Bolton on Swale, near Richmond; Gawthorpe, near Wakefield; and even in the grounds of Ryedale Folk Museum at Hutton le Hole, with perhaps the tallest of all at Barwick in Elmet, near Leeds.

I am sure there must be others although in March this year, the mighty pole at Nun Monkton was demolished during a storm.

Exactly when maypole dancing began is uncertain, but for centuries it was the custom to make use of a tall, straight young tree which was brought from the woods, accompanied by a good deal of ceremonial, for use on May Day.

If the people believed these poles could ward off witches and evil spirits, it is not surprising that some clergymen regarded them as pagan idols. There is a tale of a maypole which, when not in use, was stored by hanging it horizontally under the eaves of a row of houses. A local curate considered it to be an idol and set about chopping it into small pieces, each householder being given that part which hung over his doorway.

The fact that trees were used as maypoles suggests they represented the new bloom of nature and the fecundity of the countryside and there is little doubt the pagans used them as a form of fertility symbol.

It is perhaps not surprising that fervent Puritans considered them as something evil and dangerous and that attacks occurred, although in most cases the dancing and merry-making was nothing more than a means of welcoming the month of May with all its new life and colour.

A delightful yarn concerns the splendid maypole at Burnsall in Wharfedale. It was the focus of much dancing and happiness but the people of nearby Thorpe could never hope to match it. They yearned for a maypole of their own and so in 1804, under cover of darkness, a team of raiders crept into Burnsall and stole the pole.

It was re-erected in Thorpe but a search failed to locate it until almost a year later - and then a raiding party from Burnsall went to recover it. The Thorpe pole plunderers were outnumbered and so the maypole was returned in triumph to Burnsall.

But that is not the end of the story. In 1991, Burnsall repaired its maypole after some storm damage and it lay on the green, awaiting its re-erection ceremony on May Day. Overnight on April 28, it vanished.

The Monday following, a splendid new maypole mysteriously appeared in Thorpe, remarkably similar to the one which was missing from Burnsall. But the local folks are saying nowt.

My daily walk is usually marked with some item of interest and this morning it was the turn of the shrew. For some time I have been aware of shrews in the thick undergrowth along the verges. They make their presence readily known by their rather shrill and aggressive squeaking, invariably because there is another trespassing shrew nearby, but catching sight of one is infinitely more difficult.

Shrews are very skilled at concealing themselves in the vegetation and can hide beneath something as small as the fallen leaf of a tree or within a clump of grass. Their warm brown colour also helps in their concealment but this morning I was fortunate.

Traffic was passing and its noise might have obliterated the sound of my approaching footsteps. I spotted a quick movement on a small patch of bare earth and was in time to identify it as a common shrew.

A common shrew can be easily mistaken for a mouse but the chief identifying feature of a shrew is its long, flexible and whiskery snout and rather small ears which are set very close to the side of the head.

A shrew's eyesight is not particularly good, which might explain why I could walk rather close to this one, helped no doubt by the background noise of passing cars.

I knew there were shrews in that patch of vegetation due to the shrill squeaking noises which heralded my approach - that suggested at least two of these angry little creatures. They would not be shrieking at me, however. They would be verbally abusing one another because one shrew cannot tolerate the presence of another upon its territory, particularly during the breeding season. They scream and scold, almost to the point of ignoring what else might be happening nearby and this is why scolding women are often likened to shrews.

Shakespeare used the word in the title of his comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, which features a notoriously bad-tempered woman called Katherina.

Shrews have a huge appetite and must eat massive quantities of earthworms in order to survive. They rush about feverishly by night and day, expending lots of energy in so doing, and this means they must eat at least every three hours. Shrews snatch only short rests in their continual search for food and, because they consume a lot of worms in addition to other creatures found in the soil, they spend up to threequarters of their lifetime underground.

This explains why they are so rarely seen, although they are among the most numerous of our small mammals.

There are several types of shrew in this country, including the common shrew, the tiny pygmy shrew, the water shrew, the greater white-toothed shrew found on the Channel Isles and the Isle of Scilly, and the lesser white-toothed shrew which is also known as the Scilly shrew because it is found only on that island and on Jersey.

Not long ago, people thought shrews could harm cattle by running over them while they slept, or laming any creature over whose foot they ran. Cures were effected by rubbing the animal with the twig of a shrew ash - an ash tree in which a deep hole had been bored, then sealed after a live shrew had been pushed inside