‘‘NUTS IN MAY” is a jolly little English paradox, such as are common in children’s singing games. Other examples associate roses with sneezing and mulberries with one’s morning toilette. There are no fresh nuts to gather in May in England.
I have seen the reading “knots of may,” recommended on the grounds that in folk-magic, posies of may blossom formerly had power to stoke venery; but the theory seems contrived, and the standard text is convincingly
