The primerose, the violete, and the gold.
With freshe garlants party blew and white.”
Philip Stubbes says:—“Against Maie, Whitsondaie, or some other tyme of the yeare, every parishe, towne, and village assemble themselves together, bothe men, women, and children; and either goyng all together, or deviding themselves into companies, they goe some to the woodes and groves, some to the hilles and mountaines, some to one place, some to another, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastymes, and in the mornyng they returne bringing with them, birch, bouwes, and braunches of trees to deck their assemblies withal. But their chiefest jewel they bring from thence is their Maie poole, which they bring home with greate veneration, as thus:—They have twentie or fortie yoke of oxen, every oxe havyng a swete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen drawe home the Maie poole (this stinckyng idoll rather), which is covered all over with flowers and hearbes, bounde rounde aboute with stringes from the top to the bottome, and sometyme painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, women, and children followyng it with greate devotion. And thus being reared up, with handkerchiefes and flagges streamyng on the toppe, they strawe the grounde aboute, binde greene boughs about it, sett up sommer halles, 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.... I have heard it credibly reported,” he sarcastically adds, “by men of great gravity, credite, and reputation, that of fourtie, three score, or a hundred maides goyng to the wood over night, there have scarcely the third parte of them returned home againe as they went.” (The Anatomie of Abuses, 1836 edition, p. 171.)
Herrick says:—
“Get up ... and see
The dew bespangling herbe and tree;
Each flower has wept, and bow’d toward the east,
Above an hour since; ... it is sin,
Nay profanation, to keep in;
When as a thousand virgins on this day,