Gerard’s Hall Maypole.
Basing Lane.
Whence this lane derived its name of Basing, Stow cannot tell. It runs out of Bread-street, and was called the Bakehouse, but, “whether meant for the king’s bakehouse, or bakers dwelling there, and baking bread to serve the market in Bread-street, where the bread was sold, I know not,” says Stow; “but sure I am, I have not read of Basing or of Gerard, the gyant, to have any thing there to doe.”
It seems that this Maypole was fabled to have been “the justing staff of Gerard, a gyant.” Stow’s particulars concerning it, and his account of Gerard’s-hall, which at this time is an inn for Bath and West of England coaches and other conveyances, are very interesting. He says, “On the south side of this (Basing) lane is one great house, of old time builded upon arched vaults, and with arched gates of stone, brought from Cane in Normandie; the same is now a common ostrey for receit of travelers, commonly and corruptly called Gerard’s-hall, of a gyant said to have dwelled there. In the high roofed hall of this house, sometime stood a large Firre-Pole, which reached to the roofe thereof, and was said to be one of the staves that Gerard the gyant used in the warres, to runne withall. There stood also a ladder of the same length, which (as they said) served to ascend to the top of the staffe. Of later yeeres this hall is altered in building, and divers roomes are made in it. Notwithstanding, the pole is removed to one corner of the hall, and the ladder hanged broken upon a wall in the yard. The hosteler of that house said to mee, the pole lacked half a foote of forty in length. I measured the compasse thereof, and found it fifteene inches. Reason of the pole could the master of the hostery give me none, but bade mee reade the Chronicles, for there he heard of it. Which answer,” says Stow, “seemed to me insufficient: for he meant the description of Britaine, for the most part drawne out of John Leyland, his commentaries (borrowed of myselfe) and placed before Reynes Wolfe’s Chronicle, as the labours of another.” It seems that this chronicle has “a chapter of gyants or monstrous men—of a man with his mouth sixteene foote wide, and so to Gerard the gyant and his staffe,” which Stow speaks of as “these fables,” and then he derives the house called Gerard’s-hall, from the owner thereof, “John Gisors, maior of London, in the yeere 1245,” and says, “The pole in the hall might bee used of old time (as then the custome was in every parish) to bee set up in the summer, a Maypole, before the principall house in the parish or streete, and to stand in the hall before the scrine, decked with hollie and ivie at the feast of Christmas. The ladder served for the decking of the Maypole, and reached to the roof of the hall.”
To this is added, that “every mans house of old time was decked with holly and ivie in the winter, especially at Christmas;” whereof, gentle reader, be pleased to take notice, and do “as they did in the old time.”
We think we remember something about milkmaids and their garlands in our boyish days; but even this lingering piece of professional rejoicing is gone; and instead of intellectual pleasures at courts, manly games among the gentry, the vernal appearance every where of boughs and flowers, and the harmonious accompaniment of ladies’ looks, all the idea that a Londoner now has of May-day, is the dreary gambols and tinsel-fluttering squalidness of the poor chimney-sweepers! What a personification of the times;—paper-gilded dirt, slavery, and melancholy, bustling for another penny!
Something like celebrations of May-day still loiter in more remote parts of the country, such as Cornwall, Devonshire, and Westmoreland; and it is observable, that most of the cleverest men of the time come from such quarters, or have otherwise chanced upon some kind of insulation from its more sophisticated common-places.—Should the subject come before the consideration of any persons who have not had occasion to look at it with reference to the general character of the age, they will do a great good, and perhaps help eventually to alter it, by fanning the little sparks that are left them of a brighter period. Our business is to do what we can, to remind the others of what they may do, to pay honours to the season ourselves, and to wait for that alteration in the times, which the necessity of things must produce, and which we must endeavour to influence as genially as possible in its approach.[153]
From Mr. Leslie’s pencil, there is a picture of May-day, “in the old time”—the “golden days of good queen Bess”—whereon a lady, whose muse delights in agreeable subjects, has written the following descriptive lines:—