Many of the ballads sung nowadays, in country places, by the village children, on May morning, as they carry their garlands from door to door, undoubtedly refer to the old practice of going a-Maying, although fallen into disuse.
In olden times nearly every village had its May-pole, around which, decorated with wreaths of flowers, ribbons, and flags, our merry ancestors danced from morning till night. The earliest representation of an English May-pole is that published in the “Variorum Shakespeare,” and depicted on a window at Betley, in Staffordshire, then the property of Mr. Tollet, and which he was disposed to think as old as the time of Henry VIII. The pole is planted in a mound of earth, and has affixed to it St. George’s red-cross banner and a white pennon or streamer with a forked end. The shaft of the pole is painted in a diagonal line of black colors upon a yellow ground, a characteristic decoration of all these ancient May-poles, as alluded to by Shakespeare in “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream” (iii. 2), where it gives point to Hermia’s allusion to her rival Helena as “a painted May-pole.”[657] The popularity of the May-pole in former centuries is shown by the fact that one of our London parishes, St. Andrew Undershaft, derives its name from the May-pole which overhung its steeple, a reference to which we find made by Geoffrey Chaucer, who, speaking of a vain boaster, says:
“Right well aloft, and high ye bear your head,
As ye would bear the great shaft of Cornhill.”
London, indeed, had several May-poles, one of which stood in Basing Lane, near St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was a large fir pole, forty feet high and fifteen inches in diameter, and fabled to be the justing staff of Gerard the Giant. Only a few, however, of the old May-poles remain scattered here and there throughout the country. One still supports a weathercock in the churchyard at Pendleton, Manchester; and in Derbyshire, a few years ago, several were to be seen standing on some of the village greens. The rhymes made use of as the people danced round the May-pole varied according to the locality, and oftentimes combined a curious mixture of the jocose and sacred.
Another feature of the May-day festivities was the morris-dance, the principal characters of which generally were Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Scarlet, Stokesley, Little John, the Hobby-horse, the Bavian or Fool, Tom the Piper, with his pipe and tabor. The number of characters varied much at different times and places. In “All’s Well that Ends Well” (ii. 2), the clown says: “As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney ... a morris for May-day.”[658]
In “2 Henry VI.” (iii. 1) the Duke of York says of Cade:
“I have seen
Him caper upright, like a wild Morisco,
Shaking the bloody darts, as he his bells.”
In the “Two Noble Kinsmen” (iii. 5) Gerrold, the schoolmaster, thus describes to King Theseus the morris-dance:
“If you but favour, our country pastime made is.
We are a few of those collected here,
That ruder tongues distinguish villagers;
And, to say verity and not to fable,
We are a merry rout, or else a rable,
Or company, or, by a figure, choris,
That ’fore thy dignity will dance a morris.
And I, that am the rectifier of all,
By title Pædagogus, that let fall
The birch upon the breeches of the small ones,
And humble with a ferula the tall ones,
Do here present this machine, or this frame:
And, dainty duke, whose doughty dismal fame,
From Dis to Dædalus, from post to pillar,
Is blown abroad, help me, thy poor well willer,
And, with thy twinkling eyes, look right and straight
Upon this mighty morr—of mickle weight—
Is—now comes in, which being glu’d together
Makes morris, and the cause that we came hether,
The body of our sport, of no small study.
I first appear, though rude, and raw, and muddy,
To speak, before thy noble grace, this tenner;
At whose great feet I offer up my penner:
The next, the Lord of May and Lady bright,
The chambermaid and serving-man, by night
That seek out silent hanging: then mine host
And his fat spouse, that welcomes to their cost
The galled traveller, and with a beck’ning,
Inform the tapster to inflame the reck’ning:
Then the beast-eating clown, and next the fool,
The bavian, with long tail and eke long tool;
Cum multis aliis that make a dance:
Say ‘Ay,’ and all shall presently advance.”
Among the scattered allusions to the characters of this dance may be noticed that in “1 Henry IV.” (iii. 3): “and for womanhood, Maid Marian may be the deputy’s wife of the ward to thee”—the allusion being to “the degraded Maid Marian of the later morris-dance, more male than female.”[659]