But, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying.
The lover of old customs owes little to the Puritans, for they did their best to root them out, but he is certainly indebted to them incidentally for some valuable evidence as to those same customs, not otherwise attainable. Stubbs, a Puritan writer of the time of Elizabeth, thus describes the setting up of the Maypole in his time:—“But their cheefest jewell they bring from thence (the woods) in their Maie Poole, whiche they bring home with greate veneration as thus: They have twentie or fourtie yoke of oxen, every oxe havyng a sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen drawe home this Maie poole (this stinckyng idoll rather) which is covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bounde rounde aboute with stringes, from top to bottome, and sometimes painted with variable colours, with twoo or three hundred men, women, and children followyng it with greate devotion. And thus beyng reared up with handkercheifes and flagges streamyng on the toppe, they strawe the grounde aboute, binde greene boughes about it, sett up sommer-haules, bowers, and arbours hard by it. And then fall they to banquet and feast, to leape and daunce aboute it, as the Heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles, whereof this is a perfect patterne, or rather the thyng itself.”[327]
“What adoe make our yong men at the time of May?” cries another Puritan writer. “Do they not use night-watchings to rob and steale young trees out of other men’s grounde, and bring them home into their parishe, with minstrels playing before: and when they have set it up they will decke it with floures and garlands and daunce rounde (men and women togither, moste unseemley and intolerable, as I have proved before) about the tree, like unto the children of Israell that daunced about the golden calfe that they had set up.”[328]
Thomas Hall, another author of the same class, was also moved to eloquence on the subject: “Had this rudeness been acted only in some ignorant 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 profaneness, 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 like disorders (if possible) for the future, but put pen to paper, and discover the sinful use and vile profaneness that attend such misrule.”[329]
As every one knows, the Puritans had their will of the May-poles, and the Long Parliament in April 1644 decreed their removal as “a heathenish vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickednesse.” They were indeed reinstated after the Restoration and the old festivities revived, but the Puritan epoch had left its mark upon the spirit of the people, and May-day was never again quite what it had been, so that the following lament by a writer of Cromwell’s time was not quite out of date even when King Charles had again come to his own:—
Happy the age and harmlesse were the dayes
(For then true love and amity was found)
When every village did a May-pole raise,
And Whitsun-ales and May-games did abound,
And all the lusty yonkers in a rout