CT RILEY (HAS, May 5) says the May Day festival “is believed to be over 900 years old”. Actually, it’s much older than that.

Its origins have been lost in the remote mists of pre-Christian antiquity.

In those days, May Day was undoubtedly celebrated as a fertility rite – hence the obviously phallic nature of the Maypole, around which people danced and got drunk.

When everyone had drunk their fill, both men and women retired to the woods, where further riotous behaviour ensued. Children born nine months later often had no clearly identifiable father, so it was customary to say Robin Goodfellow – the well-known woodland fairy – had sired them.

That’s why “Robinson” is such a popular surname to this very day.

Tony Kelly, Crook.