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He had, it is true, fancied that the May-pole should be in the centre of the green; but the manner in which the waves of population swept here and there, swallowing up open spaces and so forth, would account to a philosophical person for the fact that the May-poles were now close to the village-shops.
But where are the old abbeys, and the York Minsters, and the lord mayors, and coronations, and the May-poles, and fox-hunters, and Derby races, and the dukes and duchesses, and the Count d'Orsays, which, from all my reading, I had been in the habit of associating with England? Not the most distant glimpse of them was to be seen. Alas!
They had their Bacchanalia; and we have our Wakes, answering to them: They their Saturnalia, and we our Carnevalls, and Shrove-tuesdays liberty of Servants: They their Procession of Priapus; wee our fetching in, erection, and dancing about May-poles; and Dancing is one kind of Worship: They had their Procession called Ambarvalia; and we our Procession about the fields in the Rogation Week.
When in former days I lived the most wild, malignant rakehell in Oxfordshire, frequenting wakes and fairs, dancing around May-poles, and showing my lustihood at football and cudgel-playing Yea, when I was called, in the language of the uncircumcised, Philip Hazeldine, and was one of the singers in the choir, and one of the ringers in the steeple, and served the priest yonder, by name Rochecliffe, I was not farther from the straight road than when, after long reading, I at length found one blind guide after another, all burners of bricks in Egypt.
It was enacted "for his good people's lawful recreation, after the end of Divine service, that his good people be not disturbed, or discouraged, from any lawful recreation, such as dancing for men and women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any such harmless recreations; nor from having May games, Whitsun ales, and morris dances, and the setting up of May-poles, and other sports therewith used, so as the same be had in due and convenient time, without impediment or neglect of Divine service.
May-poles, wrestling-matches, bear-baitings, puppet-shows, bowls, horse-racing, betting, rope-dancing, romping under the mistletoe on Christmas, eating boars' heads, attending the theatres, health-drinking, all these old-fashioned ways, in which the English sought merriment, were restored.
Oh how lovely were the works of God upon that bright May Day, as from village church and forest sanctuary the population of Sussex poured out from the portals, after the mass of Saints Philip and James; the children bearing garlands and dressed in a hundred fantastic hues, the May-poles set up on every green, the Queen of May chosen by lot from amongst the village maidens.
Until comparatively recent years there was a May-pole in one of the squares of London, and Samuel Pepys, writing of his time, speaks of seeing May-poles in the front yards of the prominent citizens of Holland. A festival much the same as this was held in Ancient Rome and also in India. The May-pole properly pierces a disc and thus conforms with the lingam-yoni of India.
And then, swifter than any weather-cock ever turned: "You are a good creature: why should I be rude to you? I ought to be ashamed of myself. It is that little wretch." "Not our friend Fitzroy?" "Why, what other little wretch is there about? We are all Grenadiers and May-poles in this house except him. Well, let him go.
Rather than subscribe to divinely-anointed kings and pious monks, church charities and May-day holidays and May-poles for the people, I would sooner affix my signature to railways, electric telegraphs, and the wild, bold, and raving aspirations of a Shelley in fact, to plunge anywhere head foremost, than back again into the past.
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