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Updated: May 6, 2025
A record of this custom amongst the Welsh reminds one that Wales was at once the land of bards and the home of Taffy the Thief. "If successful," says Owen, speaking of these Maypole robbers, they "had their feats recorded in songs." In old times oxen were commonly used for farmwork, and it seems that they had their share in the May fun.
He lived with his mother on the Maypole farm, tending the poultry and the cattle, working in a garden of his own, and helping everywhere. He was known to every bird and beast about the place, and had a name for every one.
It was a sin to hang garlands on a Maypole, to drink a friend's health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a stag, to play at chess, to wear love-locks, to put starch into a ruff, to touch the virginals, to read the Fairy Queen.
Hugh made no answer, but throwing the bridle to his master, and snatching his wig from his head, in a manner so unceremonious and hasty that the action discomposed Mr Willet not a little, though performed at his own special desire, climbed nimbly to the very summit of the maypole before the house, and hanging the wig upon the weathercock, sent it twirling round like a roasting jack.
"Charley, I have not seen you for a length of time," said Yeobright. "Do you often walk this way?" "No," the lad replied. "I don't often come outside the bank." "You were not at the Maypole." "No," said Charley, in the same listless tone. "I don't care for that sort of thing now." "You rather liked Miss Eustacia, didn't you?" Yeobright gently asked.
And the old custom was for the young men to deck themselves out as Indian bucks and sweep down on the festivities around the Maypole on the town green, or at night to surprise the guests at a ball and force the gentlemen to pay down a shilling, and sometimes a crown apiece, and the host to give them a bowl of punch. Then came June.
But as the theft must have been committed with all the publicity that a fixed day, a large crowd, and a full band could ensure, and as we seem to have no record of interference at the time, or prosecutions afterwards, I hope we may infer that the owners of the woods did not grudge one tree for the village Maypole. A quainter vengeance seems to have sometimes followed the trespass.
Shakespeare is not your poet more than ours. If your ancestors danced round the Maypole, so did our ancestors in your ancestors' shoes. If Old England cherished Christmas and New England did not, Bradford and Endicott and Cotton were Englishmen, not Americans. If old English life and customs and traditions are dear to you, listen to my story, and judge whether they are less dear to us."
And so the thirty set up a Maypole, adorned with bucks' horns, and drank and feasted, and danced like fairies or furies, the livelong day or night. So scandalously did these exiled lords behave that good folks made a wide circuit 'round to avoid their camp. Preaching had been in vain, and prayers for the conversion of the wretches remained unanswered.
'Dear me, nothing, Cousin Ridd; you never do anything to vex me. 'Then I hope I shall do something now, Ruth, when I say good-bye. God knows if we ever shall meet again, Ruth: but I hope we may. 'To be sure we shall, she answered in her brightest manner. 'Try not to look wretched, John: you are as happy as a Maypole. 'And you as a rose in May, I said; 'and pretty nearly as pretty.
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