The flesh’s evil, affections
By this blossoming tree
This Mother of Christ.
The May Queen was invariably selected as the fairest and best dispositioned of the village maidens, and before being “set in an Arbour on a Holy Day” she was apparently carried on the shoulders of four men or “deacons”:[792] assuredly these parochial deacons were personages of local importance, and they may possibly account for the place-name Maydeacon House which occurs at Patrixbourne, Kent, in conjunction with Kingston, Heart’s Delight, Broome Park, and Barham. The word deacon is Good King or Divine King: we have seen that four kings figured frequently in the wheel of Fortune, and the ceremonious carrying by four deacons was not merely an idle village sport for it formed part of the ecclesiastical functions at the Vatican. An English traveller of some centuries ago speaking of the Pope and his attendant ceremonial, states that the representative of Peter was carried on the back of four deacons “after the maner of carrying whytepot queenes in Western May games”:[793] the “Whytepot Queen” was no doubt representative of Dame Jeanne, the demijohn or Virgin, and the counterpart to Janus or St. Peter.
Fig. 426.—Cretan. From Barthelemy.
One of what Camden would have dubbed the sour kind of critics inquired in 1577: “What adoe make our young men at the time of May? Do they not use night-watchings to rob and steal yong trees out of other men’s grounde, and bring them home into their parish with minstrels playing before? And when they have set it up they will deck it with floures and garlands and dance around, men and women together most unseemly and intolerable as I have proved before.” The scenes around the Maypole (“this stinckyng idoll rather”) were unquestionably sparkled by a generous provision of “ambrosia”:—
From the golden cup they drink
Nectar that the bees produce,
Or the grapes ecstatic juice,