A delightfully pretty print of a merry-making “round about the Maypole,” supplies an [engraving] on the next page illustrative of the prevailing tendency of this work, and the simplicity of rural manners. It is not so sportive as the dancings about the Maypoles near London formerly; there is nothing of the boisterous rudeness which must be well remembered by many old Londoners on May-day.
The Country Maypole.
It is a pleasant sight, to see
A little village company
Drawn out upon the first of May
To have their annual holiday:—
The pole hung round with garlands gay;
The young ones footing it away;
The aged cheering their old souls
With recollections and their bowls;
Or, on the mirth and dancing failing,
Their oft-times-told old tales re-taleing.
*
The innocent and the unaspiring may always be happy. Their pleasures like their knitting needles, and hedging gloves, are easily purchased, and when bestowed are estimated as distinctions. The late Dr. Parr, the fascinating converser, the skilful controverter, the first Greek scholar, and one of the greatest and most influential men of the age, was a patron of May-day sports. Opposite his parsonage-house at Hatton, near Warwick, on the other side of the road, stood the parish Maypole, which on the annual festival was dressed with garlands, surrounded by a numerous band of villagers. The doctor was “first of the throng,” and danced with his parishioners the gayest of the gay. He kept the large crown of the Maypole in a closet of his house, from whence it was produced every May-day, with fresh flowers and streamers preparatory to its elevation, and to the doctor’s own appearance in the ring. He always spoke of this festivity as one wherein he joined with peculiar delight to himself, and advantage to his neighbours. He was deemed eccentric, and so he was; for he was never proud to the humble, nor humble to the proud. His eloquence and wit elevated humility, and crushed insolence; he was the champion of the oppressed, a foe to the oppressor, a friend to the friendless, and a brother to him who was ready to perish. Though a prebend of the church with university honours, he could afford to make his parishoners happy without derogating from his ecclesiastical dignities, or abatement of self-respect, or lowering himself in the eyes of any who were not inferior in judgment, to the most inferior of the villagers of Hatton.
Formerly a pleasant character dressed out with ribands and flowers, figured in village May-games under the name of
