Stukeley, in his Itinerarium Curiosum (1724), writes of a May-pole hill near Horn Castle, Lincolnshire, "where probably stood an Hermes in Roman times. The boys annually keep up the festival of the Floralia on May Day, making a procession to this hill with May gads (as they call them) in their hands. This is a white willow wand, the bark peel'd off, ty'd round with cowslips, a thyrsus of the Bacchinals. At night they have a bonefire, and other merriment, which is really a sacrifice, or religious festival." After the Restoration, as has been already noticed, May-poles were permitted to be erected again.* Thomas Hall, however, another of the puritanical writers, published his Funebria Floræ, the Downfall of May Games, so late as 1660. At the end is a copy of verses, from which I make the following selection 'I am Sir May-pole, that's my name; Men, May, and Mirth, give me the same. "And thus hath Flora, May, and Mirth, "under Heaven's cope, When he is chosen? so have I too : Men, women, children, on an heap, For, where 'tis nois'd that I am come, The scum of all the raskall crew • In The Lord's Loud Call to England (1660) is given part of a letter from one of the Puritan party in the North, dated "Newcastle, 7th of May, 1660:" "Sir, the countrey, as well as the town, abounds with vanities; now the reins of liberty and licentiousness are let loose: May-poles, and playes, and juglers, and all things else now pass current. Sin now appears with a brazen face," &c. This writer protests: "The most of these May-poles are stollen, yet they give out that the poles are given them."-"There were two Maypoles set up in my parish [King's-Norton]; the one was stollen, and the other was given by a profest papist. That which was stollen was said to bee given, when 'twas proved to their faces that 'twas stollen, and they were made to acknowledge their offence. This pole that was stollen was rated at five shillings: if all the poles one with another were so rated, which were stollen this May, what a considerable sum would it amount to! Fightings and bloodshed are usual at such meetings, insomuch that 'tis a common saying, that 'tis no festival unless there bee some fightings." "If Moses were angry," he says in another page, "when he saw the people dance about a golden calf, well may we be angry to see people dancing the morrice about a post in honour of a whore, as you shall see anon." "Had this rudeness," he adds, "been acted only in some ignorant * In The Honestie of this Age, by Barnabe Rych (1615), is the following passage: "the country swaine, that will sweare more on Sundaies, dancing about a May Pole, then he will doe all the week after at his worke, will have a cast at me. and obscure parts of the land, I had been silent; but when I perceived that the complaints were general from all parts of the land, and that even in Cheapside itself the rude rabble had set up this ensign of prophaneness, and had put the lord-mayor to the trouble of seeing it pulled down, I could not, out of my dearest respects and tender compassion to the land of my nativity, and for the prevention of the like disorders (if possible) for the future, but put pen to paper, and discover the sinful rise, and vile prophaneness that attend such misrule." In Small Poems of Divers Sorts, written by Sir Aston Cokain (1658), is the following: 33. Of Wakes, and May-poles. "The Zelots here are grown so ignorant, That they mistake Wakes for some ancient Saint, I think, because a Cardinal was a Pole." Stevenson, in The Twelve Moneths, has these observations at the end of May "Why should the Priest against the May-pole preach? Alas! it is a thing out of his reach : How he the errour of the time condoles, And sayes, 'tis none of the cælestial poles; Whilst he (fond man!) at May-poles thus perplext, Having Trees for poles, and Boughs to celebrate; Like Kent's Great walking Grove, shall bring in May." The author of The Way to Things by Words, and Words by Things, in his specimen of an etymological vocabulary, considers the May-pole in a new and curious light. We gather from him that our ancestors held an anniversary assembly on May-day; and that the column of May (whence our May-pole) was the great standard of justice in the Ey-Commons or Fields of May.* Here it was that the people, if they saw cause, deposed or punished their governors, their barons, and their kings. The judge's bough or wand (at this time discontinued, and only faintly represented by a trifling nosegay), and the staff or rod of authority in the civil and in the military (for it was the mace of civil power, and the truncheon of the field officers), are both derived from hence. A mayor, he says, received his name from this May, in the sense of lawful power; the crown, a mark of dignity "At Hesket (in Cumberland) yearly on St. Barnabas's Day, by the highway side under a thorn tree (according to the very ancient manner of holding assemblies in the open air), is kept the court for the whole Forest of Englewood."-Nicolson and Burn's Hist. of Westmor. and Cumb. vol. ii. p. 344. Keysler, says Borlase, thinks that the custom of the May pole took its rise from the earnest desire of the people to see their king, who, seldom appearing at other times, made his procession at this time of year to the great assembly of the states held in the open air. and symbol of power, like the mace and sceptre, was also taken from the May, being representative of the garland or crown, which, when hung on the top of the May or pole, was the great signal for convening the people; the arches of it, which spring from the circlet and meet together at the mound or round bell, being necessarily so formed, to suspend it to the top of the pole. The word May-pole, he observes, is a pleonasm. In French it is called simply the Mai. He farther tells us that this is one of the most ancient customs, which from the remotest ages has been, by repetition from year to year, survived to the present day, not being at this instant totally exploded, especially in the lower classes of life. It was considered as the boundary day, that divided the confines of winter and summer, allusively to which there was instituted a sportful war between two parties; the one in defence of the continuance of winter, the other for bringing in the summer. The youth were divided into troops, the one in winter livery, the other in the gay habit of the spring. The mock battle was always fought booty; the spring was sure to obtain the victory, which they celebrated by carrying triumphantly green branches with May flowers, proclaiming and singing the song of joy, of which the burthen was in these or equivalent terms: "We have brought the summer home." A singular custom used to be annually observed on May day by the boys of Frindsbury and Stroud (Hasted says the boys of Rochester and Stroud)." They met on Rochester Bridge, where a skirmish ensued between them. This combat probably derived its origin from a drubbing received by the monks of Rochester in the reign of Edward I. These monks, on occasion of a long drought, set out on a procession for Frindsbury to pray for rain; but the day proving windy, they apprehended the lights would be blown out, the banners tossed about, and their order much discomposed. They, therefore, requested of the Master of Stroud Hospital leave to pass through the orchard of his house, which he granted without the permission of his brethren; who, when they had heard what the Master had done, instantly hired a company of ribalds, armed with clubs and bats, who waylaid the poor monks in the orchard, and gave them a severe beating. The monks desisted from proceeding that way, but soon after found out a pious mode of revenge, by obliging the men of Frindsbury, with due humility, to come yearly on Whit Monday, with their clubs in procession to Rochester, as penance for their sins. Hence probably came the byword of Frindsbury clubs."-Ireland's Picturesque Views of the Medway, sect. 4. In the British Apollo (1708), to the question "whence is derived the custom of setting up May-poles, and dressing them with garlands; and what is the reason that the milk-maids dance before their customers' doors with their pails dressed up with plate?" it is answered: "It was a custom among the ancient Britons, before converted to Christianity to erect these May-poles, adorned with flowers, in honour of the goddess Flora; and the dancing of the milk-maids may be only a corruption of that custom in complyance with the town." Piers, in his Description of Westmeath, in Ireland, 1682, says: “On May Eve every family sets up before their door a green bush, strewed over with yellow flowers, which the meadows yield plentifully. In countries where timber is plentiful, they erect tall slender trees, which stand high, and they continue almost the whole year; so as a stranger would go nigh to imagine that they were all signs of ale-sellers, and that all houses were ale-houses." TOL MORRIS DANCERS.* MAID MARIAN, OR QUEEN OF THE MAY. `OLLET, in his Account of the Morris Dancers upon his window, describes the celebrated Maid Marian, arrayed as Queen of May, as having a golden crown on her head, and in her left hand a red The Morris dance, in which bells are gingled, or staves or swords clashed, was learned, says Dr Johnson, by the Moors, and was probably a kind of Pyrrhic or military dance. "Morisco," says Blount "(Span.) a Moor; also a Dance, so called, wherein there were usually five men, and a boy dressed in a girl's habit, whom they called the Maid Marrion, or, perhaps, Morian, from the Italian Morione, a head-piece, because her head was wont to be gaily trimmed up. Common people call it a Morris Dance." The Churchwardens' and Chamberlains' Books of Kingston-upon-Thames furnished Lysons with the following particulars illustrative of our subject, under the head of "ROBIN HOOD AND MAY GAME." "23 Hen. VII. To the menstorel upon May-day. For paynting of the Mores garments, and for sarten For paynting of a bannar for Robin-hode For 2 M. and pynnys For 4 plyts and of laun for the Mores garments 24 Hen. VII. For Little John's cote. i Hen. VIII. For silver paper for the Mores dawnsars 2 4 The word Livery was formerly used to signify anything delivered: see the Northumberland Household Book, p. 60. If it ever bore such an acceptation at that time, one might be induced to suppose, from the following entries, that it here meant a badge, or something of that kind "15 C of leveres for Robin-hode o 5 0 O 20 . 0 6 5 Probably these were a sort of cockades, given to the company from whom the money was collected. |