The intense New England autumn comes with the first swift frost, the long winter follows, snow lies deep on the great field, and beyond the field, ice flats cover the bay to open water of the bitterest, coldest green. “The aire doth begett good stomacks,” said Mine Host of Merry-Mount. In the log house on the knoll, so many worlds apart in spirit from the log house by shallow Plymouth Bay, fires leap merrily, ducks turn on the spits, pannikins of wine grow warm on the embers’ edge; Morton sits with his hand over the arm of his chair, and strokes the head of his “dogge.” The Forest of Arden it is, and winter no such dread enemy after all.
Then, with its strange passion and violence, arrives the New England spring. The country gentleman from England will show the “precise separatists” how in Merry England of Church and King, is freely kept an honest holiday. The first of May is approaching; he will go to the wood and find a tree worthy to be the first Maypole in New England! Such a one shall brew a barrel of ale, and such one shall roll out the latest barrel of “good Rosa Solis” to the new born splendour of the sun!
The first of May in the year 1627, a fresh New England morning with the sky still cool and silvery blue, and the trees thrusting out little, cautious leaf tips “the size of a mouse’s ear.” Music in the greenwood, merry music with an honest tune, the old, sweet, human music one might hear in Master William Shakespeare’s comedies in London over the sea. As the light ripens over the tawny eastern marsh now interwoven with the faint emerald green of the new growth, and his good majesty the sun climbs into the bright New England air, “Mine Host” steps from his house of logs to proclaim an English holiday! Heigho, be jolly, under the greenwood tree, for icicles shall no more hang by the wall; it is the first of May!
The New England robins pipe, and cock their heads to one side as Mine Host reads his proclamation, and their piping dies in a great shout as the merry advocate completes the mock solemnity. Guests have already arrived, more are coming across the bay in their little boats, some are hastening to the Merry-Mount along the brambly woodland trails. The ever hungry crew from Wessagusset is at hand, stray planters arrived within the year, and perhaps the captain of a trading ship and his chorusing, sunburnt tars. One hears the music, the wholesome, natural gaiety, the knock of pewter mugs on wooden table tops, and men singing. To these exiles, the festival meant the first touch of home they had in the wilderness. That tall, soldier-like lad of Morton’s company, Tom Gibbons, will “get religion,” and end his days as a pillar of the Puritan state; little does he foresee such a change as he waves his pewter mug about! A health to Master Thomas Morton of the Merry-Mount, and a fig for all who doubt that laughter is the truest distinguishing mark twixt man and beast! “Mine Host” was well prepared, he had brewed a huge barrel of “excellent beare and provided a case of bottles, to be spent, with other good cheare for all comers of the day.”
Higher climbs the spring tide sun, lower sinks the good liquor in “barrell and botel”; it is time to sweep together up the knoll to the Maypole of New England!
The pole lay upon the ground, on the height of a knoll commanding the field and the sea. It was a noble pine mast, some eighty feet high, wreathed about with flowers and garlands of the New England spring, and somewhere near the top of it, a fine pair of garlanded antlers served as a rustic crown. Amid a thousand, noisy, contradictory counsels the pole is raised, the gods alone know how, and now comes a young lad of Morton’s company to sing the song the merry advocate has composed in honor of the day.
“Drinke and be merry, merry, merry boyes!
Let all your delight be in the Hymen’s ioyes;
Io to Hymen, now the day is come
About the merry Maypole take a Roome.