d their faces with dew. They believed this made them beautiful for a year after that. Also on May Day the young men of each village tried to win prizes with their bows and arrows. People put up a striped maypole decorated with flowers and danced round it. Some English villages still have maypole dancing on May 1st.
SUMMER
The Trooping of the Colour. The Queen is the only person in Britain with two birthdays. Her real birthday is on April 21st, but she has an official birthday, too. Thats on the second Saturday in June. And on the Queens official birthday, there is a traditional ceremony called the Trooping of the Colour. Its a big parade with brass bands and hundreds of soldiers at Horse Guards Parade in London. The Queens soldiers, the Guards, march in front of her. At the front of the parade is the flag or colour. The Guards are trooping the colour. Thousands of Londoners and visitors watch Horse Guards Parade. And millions of people at home watch it on television.
Swan Upping. Heres a very different royal tradition. On the River Thames there are hundreds of swans. A lot of these beautiful white birds belong, traditionally, to the King or Queen. In July the young swans on the Thames are about two months old. Then the Queens swankeeper goes, in a boat, from London Bridge to Henley. He looks at all the young swans and marks the royal ones. The name of this custom is Swan Upping.
Highland Games. In summer, Scottish people traditionally meet together for competitions called Highland Games. After Queen Victoria visited the games at Braemar in 1848, the Braemar games became the most famous tradition in Scotland. Today thousands of visitors come to see sports like tossing the caber (a tall pole is thrown into the air as a test of strength) or throwing the
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