Folklore maintains that dew gathered in May is special. For one thing, it is supposed to give you a flawless complexion. In 1667, Samuel Pepys’ wife went to Woolwich to collect May dew, “the only thing in the world to wash her face with”.
While purists only gathered dew on 1 May, others believed the power persisted for the whole month. The Royal Society took May dew seriously, the mathematician John Pell telling a meeting about a man whose warts it had cured. The chemist Robert Boyle mentioned a recipe for making vinegar from May dew, and copious quantities were harvested for experimentation.
Some samples may not have been entirely pure. The physician Nathaniel Henshaw observed a tub of May dew putrefy to produce first jelly and then a mass of “those insects, commonly called hog-lice or millipedes”.
Science gradually started to get a grip and myths were exploded. Robert Hooke, the society’s curator of experiments, showed that May dew, “commonly accounted the lightest and most volatile” of waters, weighed the same as ordinary water.
Whatever science may say, modern-day witches still collect May dew for their recipes. Perhaps the only wonder is that it is not bottled and marketed at extravagant prices.
