There is an admirable foundation for a philosophic romance in the
curious history of the early settlement of Mount Wollaston, or Merry
Mount. In the slight sketch here attempted the facts recorded on the
grave pages of our New England annalists have wrought themselves almost
spontaneously into a sort of allegory. The masques, mummeries and
festive customs described in the text are in accordance with the
manners of the age. Authority on these points may be found in Strutt’s
_Book of English Sports and Pastimes_.
Bright were the days at Merry Mount when the Maypole was the
banner-staff of that gay colony. They who reared it, should their
banner be triumphant, were to pour sunshine over New England’s rugged
hills and scatter flower-seeds throughout the soil. Jollity and gloom
were contending for an empire. Midsummer eve had come, bringing deep
verdure to the forest, and roses in her lap of a more vivid hue than
the tender buds of spring. But May, or her mirthful spirit, dwelt all
the year round at Merry Mount, sporting with the summer months and
revelling with autumn and basking in the glow of winter’s fireside.
Through a world of toil and care she flitted with a dream-like smile,
and came hither to find a home among the lightsome hearts of Merry
Mount.
Never had the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on Midsummer
eve. This venerated emblem was a pine tree which had preserved the
slender grace of youth, while it equalled the loftiest height of the
old wood-monarchs. From its top streamed a silken banner colored like
the rainbow. Down nearly to the ground the pole was dressed with
birchen boughs, and others of the liveliest green, and some with
silvery leaves fastened by ribbons that fluttered in fantastic knots of
twenty different colors, but no sad ones. Garden-flowers and blossoms
of the wilderness laughed gladly forth amid the verdure, so fresh and
dewy that they must have grown by magic on that happy pine tree. Where
this green and flowery splendor terminated the shaft of the Maypole was
stained with the seven brilliant hues of the banner at its top. On the
lowest green bough hung an abundant wreath of roses—some that had been
gathered in the sunniest spots of the forest, and others, of still
richer blush, which the colonists had reared from English seed. O
people of the Golden Age, the chief of your husbandry was to raise
flowers!
But what was the wild throng that stood hand in hand about the Maypole?
It could not be that the fauns and nymphs, when driven from their
classic groves and homes of ancient fable, had sought refuge, as all
the persecuted did, in the fresh woods of the West. These were Gothic
monsters, though perhaps of Grecian ancestry. On the shoulders of a
comely youth uprose the head and branching antlers of a stag; a second,
human in all other points, had the grim visage of a wolf; a third,
still with the trunk and limbs of a mortal man, showed the beard and
horns of a venerable he-goat. There was the likeness of a bear erect,
brute in all but his hind legs, which were adorned with pink silk
stockings. And here, again, almost as wondrous, stood a real bear of
the dark forest, lending each of his forepaws to the grasp of a human
hand and as ready for the dance as any in that circle. His inferior
nature rose halfway to meet his companions as they stooped. Other faces
wore the similitude of man or woman, but distorted or extravagant, with
red noses pendulous before their mouths, which seemed of awful depth
and stretched from ear to ear in an eternal fit of laughter. Here might
be seen the salvage man—well known in heraldry—hairy as a baboon and
girdled with green leaves. By his side—a nobler figure, but still a
counterfeit—appeared an Indian hunter with feathery crest and
wampum-belt. Many of this strange company wore foolscaps and had little
bells appended to their garments, tinkling with a silvery sound
responsive to the inaudible music of their gleesome spirits. Some
youths and maidens were of soberer garb, yet well maintained their
places in the irregular throng by the expression of wild revelry upon
their features.
Such were the colonists of Merry Mount as they stood in the broad smile
of sunset round their venerated Maypole. Had a wanderer bewildered in
the melancholy forest heard their mirth and stolen a half-affrighted
glance, he might have fancied them the crew of Comus, some already
transformed to brutes, some midway between man and beast, and the
others rioting in the flow of tipsy jollity that foreran the change;
but a band of Puritans who watched the scene, invisible themselves,
compared the masques to those devils and ruined souls with whom their
superstition peopled the black wilderness.
Within the ring of monsters appeared the two airiest forms that had
ever trodden on any more solid footing than a purple-and-golden cloud.
One was a youth in glistening apparel with a scarf of the rainbow
pattern crosswise on his breast. His right hand held a gilded staff—the
ensign of high dignity among the revellers—and his left grasped the
slender fingers of a fair maiden not less gayly decorated than himself.
Bright roses glowed in contrast with the dark and glossy curls of each,
and were scattered round their feet or had sprung up spontaneously
there. Behind this lightsome couple, so close to the Maypole that its
boughs shaded his jovial face, stood the figure of an English priest,
canonically dressed, yet decked with flowers, in heathen fashion, and
wearing a chaplet of the native vine leaves. By the riot of his rolling
eye and the pagan decorations of his holy garb, he seemed the wildest
monster there, and the very Comus of the crew.
“Votaries of the Maypole,” cried the flower-decked priest, “merrily all
day long have the woods echoed to your mirth. But be this your merriest
hour, my hearts! Lo! here stand the Lord and Lady of the May, whom I, a
clerk of Oxford and high priest of Merry Mount, am presently to join in
holy matrimony.—Up with your nimble spirits, ye morrice-dancers, green
men and glee-maidens, bears and wolves and horned gentlemen! Come! a
chorus now rich with the old mirth of Merry England and the wilder glee
of this fresh forest, and then a dance, to show the youthful pair what
life is made of and how airily they should go through it!—All ye that
love the Maypole, lend your voices to the nuptial song of the Lord and
Lady of the May!”
This wedlock was more serious than most affairs of Merry Mount, where
jest and delusion, trick and fantasy, kept up a continual carnival. The
Lord and Lady of the May, though their titles must be laid down at
sunset, were really and truly to be partners for the dance of life,
beginning the measure that same bright eve. The wreath of roses that
hung from the lowest green bough of the Maypole had been twined for
them, and would be thrown over both their heads in symbol of their
flowery union. When the priest had spoken, therefore, a riotous uproar
burst from the rout of monstrous figures.
“Begin you the stave, reverend sir,” cried they all, “and never did the
woods ring to such a merry peal as we of the Maypole shall send up.”
Immediately a prelude of pipe, cittern and viol, touched with practised
minstrelsy, began to play from a neighboring thicket in such a mirthful
cadence that the boughs of the Maypole quivered to the sound. But the
May-lord—he of the gilded staff—chancing to look into his lady’s eyes,
was wonder-struck at the almost pensive glance that met his own.
“Edith, sweet Lady of the May,” whispered he, reproachfully, “is yon
wreath of roses a garland to hang above our graves that you look so
sad? Oh, Edith, this is our golden time. Tarnish it not by any pensive
shadow of the mind, for it may be that nothing of futurity will be
brighter than the mere remembrance of what is now passing.”
“That was the very thought that saddened me. How came it in your mind
too?” said Edith, in a still lower tone than he; for it was high
treason to be sad at Merry Mount. “Therefore do I sigh amid this
festive music. And besides, dear Edgar, I struggle as with a dream, and
fancy that these shapes of our jovial friends are visionary and their
mirth unreal, and that we are no true lord and lady of the May. What is
the mystery in my heart?”
Just then, as if a spell had loosened them, down came a little shower
of withering rose-leaves from the Maypole. Alas for the young lovers!
No sooner had their hearts glowed with real passion than they were
sensible of something vague and unsubstantial in their former
pleasures, and felt a dreary presentiment of inevitable change. From
the moment that they truly loved they had subjected themselves to
earth’s doom of care and sorrow and troubled joy, and had no more a
home at Merry Mount. That was Edith’s mystery. Now leave we the priest
to marry them, and the masquers to sport round the Maypole till the
last sunbeam be withdrawn from its summit and the shadows of the forest
mingle gloomily in the dance. Meanwhile, we may discover who these gay
people were.
Two hundred years ago, and more, the Old World and its inhabitants
became mutually weary of each other. Men voyaged by thousands to the
West—some to barter glass and such like jewels for the furs of the
Indian hunter, some to conquer virgin empires, and one stern band to
pray. But none of these motives had much weight with thecolonists of
Merry Mount. Their leaders were men who had sported so long with life,
that when Thought and Wisdom came, even these unwelcome guests were led
astray by the crowd of vanities which they should have put to flight.
Erring Thought and perverted Wisdom were made to put on masques, and
play the fool. The men of whom we speak, after losing the heart’s fresh
gayety, imagined a wild philosophy of pleasure, and came hither to act
out their latest day-dream. They gathered followers from all that giddy
tribe whose whole life is like the festal days of soberer men. In their
train were minstrels, not unknown in London streets; wandering players,
whose theatres had been the halls of noblemen; mummers, rope-dancers,
and mountebanks, who would long be missed at wakes, church ales, and
fairs; in a word, mirth makers of every sort, such as abounded in that
age, but now began to be discountenanced by the rapid growth of
Puritanism. Light had their footsteps been on land, and as lightly they
came across the sea. Many had been maddened by their previous troubles
into a gay despair; others were as madly gay in the flush of youth,
like the May Lord and his Lady; but whatever might be the quality of
their mirth, old and young were gay at Merry Mount. The young deemed
themselves happy. The elder spirits, if they knew that mirth was but
the counterfeit of happiness, yet followed the false shadow wilfully,
because at least her garments glittered brightest. Sworn triflers of a
lifetime, they would not venture among the sober truths of life not
even to be truly blest.
All the hereditary pastimes of Old England were transplanted hither.
The King of Christmas was duly crowned, and the Lord of Misrule bore
potent sway. On the Eve of St. John, they felled whole acres of the
forest to make bonfires, and danced by the blaze all night, crowned
with garlands, and throwing flowers into the flame. At harvest time,
though their crop was of the smallest, they made an image with the
sheaves of Indian corn, and wreathed it with autumnal garlands, and
bore it home triumphantly. But what chiefly characterized the colonists
of Merry Mount was their veneration for the Maypole. It has made their
true history a poet’s tale. Spring decked the hallowed emblem with
young blossoms and fresh green boughs; Summer brought roses of the
deepest blush, and the perfected foliage of the forest; Autumn enriched
it with that red and yellow gorgeousness which converts each wildwood
leaf into a painted flower; and Winter silvered it with sleet, and hung
it round with icicles, till it flashed in the cold sunshine, itself a
frozen sunbeam. Thus each alternate season did homage to the Maypole,
and paid it a tribute of its own richest splendor. Its votaries danced
round it, once, at least, in every month; sometimes they called it
their religion, or their altar; but always, it was the banner staff of
Merry Mount.
Unfortunately, there were men in the new world of a sterner faith than
those Maypole worshippers. Not far from Merry Mount was a settlement of
Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their prayers before daylight,
and then wrought in the forest or the cornfield till evening made it
prayer time again. Their weapons were always at hand to shoot down the
straggling savage. When they met in conclave, it was never to keep up
the old English mirth, but to hear sermons three hours long, or to
proclaim bounties on the heads of wolves and the scalps of Indians.
Their festivals were fast days, and their chief pastime the singing of
psalms. Woe to the youth or maiden who did but dream of a dance! The
selectman nodded to the constable; and there sat the light-heeled
reprobate in the stocks; or if he danced, it was round the
whipping-post, which might be termed the Puritan Maypole.
A party of these grim Puritans, toiling through the difficult woods,
each with a horseload of iron armor to burden his footsteps, would
sometimes draw near the sunny precincts of Merry Mount. There were the
silken colonists, sporting round their Maypole; perhaps teaching a bear
to dance, or striving to communicate their mirth to the grave Indian,
or masquerading in the skins of deer and wolves which they had hunted
for that especial purpose. Often the whole colony were playing at
Blindman’s Buff, magistrates and all with their eyes bandaged, except a
single scapegoat, whom the blinded sinners pursued by the tinkling of
the bells at his garments. Once, it is said, they were seen following a
flower-decked corpse with merriment and festive music to his grave. But
did the dead man laugh? In their quietest times they sang ballads and
told tales for the edification of their pious visitors, or perplexed
them with juggling tricks, or grinned at them through horse-collars;
and when sport itself grew wearisome, they made game of their own
stupidity and began a yawning-match. At the very least of these
enormities the men of iron shook their heads and frowned so darkly that
the revellers looked up, imagining that a momentary cloud had overcast
the sunshine which was to be perpetual there. On the other hand, the
Puritans affirmed that when a psalm was pealing from their place of
worship the echo which the forest sent them back seemed often like the
chorus of a jolly catch, closing with a roar of laughter. Who but the
fiend and his bond-slaves the crew of Merry Mount had thus disturbed
them? In due time a feud arose, stern and bitter on one side, and as
serious on the other as anything could be among such light spirits as
had sworn allegiance to the Maypole. The future complexion of New
England was involved in this important quarrel. Should the grisly
saints establish their jurisdiction over the gay sinners, then would
their spirits darken all the clime and make it a land of clouded
visages, of hard toil, of sermon and psalm for ever; but should the
banner-staff of Merry Mount be fortunate, sunshine would break upon the
hills, and flowers would beautify the forest and late posterity do
homage to the Maypole.
After these authentic passages from history we return to the nuptials
of the Lord and Lady of the May. Alas! we have delayed too long, and
must darken our tale too suddenly. As we glance again at the Maypole a
solitary sunbeam is fading from the summit, and leaves only a faint
golden tinge blended with the hues of the rainbow banner. Even that dim
light is now withdrawn, relinquishing the whole domain of Merry Mount
to the evening gloom which has rushed so instantaneously from the black
surrounding woods. But some of these black shadows have rushed forth in
human shape.
Yes, with the setting sun the last day of mirth had passed from Merry
Mount. The ring of gay masquers was disordered and broken; the stag
lowered his antlers in dismay; the wolf grew weaker than a lamb; the
bells of the morrice-dancers tinkled with tremulous affright. The
Puritans had played a characteristic part in the Maypole mummeries.
Their darksome figures were intermixed with the wild shapes of their
foes, and made the scene a picture of the moment when waking thoughts
start up amid the scattered fantasies of a dream. The leader of the
hostile party stood in the centre of the circle, while the rout of
monsters cowered around him like evil spirits in the presence of a
dread magician. No fantastic foolery could look him in the face. So
stern was the energy of his aspect that the whole man, visage, frame
and soul, seemed wrought of iron gifted with life and thought, yet all
of one substance with his headpiece and breastplate. It was the Puritan
of Puritans: it was Endicott himself.
“Stand off, priest of Baal!” said he, with a grim frown and laying no
reverent hand upon the surplice. “I know thee, Blackstone![2] Thou art
the man who couldst not abide the rule even of thine own corrupted
Church, and hast come hither to preach iniquity and to give example of
it in thy life. But now shall it be seen that the Lord hath sanctified
this wilderness for his peculiar people. Woe unto them that would
defile it! And first for this flower-decked abomination, the altar of
thy worship!”
And with his keen sword Endicott assaulted the hallowed Maypole. Nor
long did it resist his arm. It groaned with a dismal sound, it showered
leaves and rosebuds upon the remorseless enthusiast, and finally, with
all its green boughs and ribbons and flowers, symbolic of departed
pleasures, down fell the banner-staff of Merry Mount. As it sank,
tradition says, the evening sky grew darker and the woods threw forth a
more sombre shadow.
“There!” cried Endicott, looking triumphantly on his work; “there lies
the only Maypole in New England. The thought is strong within me that
by its fall is shadowed forth the fate of light and idle mirthmakers
amongst us and our posterity. Amen, saith John Endicott!”
“Amen!” echoed his followers.
But the votaries of the Maypole gave one groan for their idol. At the
sound the Puritan leader glanced at the crew of Comus, each a figure of
broad mirth, yet at this moment strangely expressive of sorrow and
dismay.
“Valiant captain,” quoth Peter Palfrey, the ancient of the band, “what
order shall be taken with the prisoners?”
“I thought not to repent me of cutting down a Maypole,” replied
Endicott, “yet now I could find in my heart to plant it again and give
each of these bestial pagans one other dance round their idol. It would
have served rarely for a whipping-post.”
“But there are pine trees enow,” suggested the lieutenant.
“True, good ancient,” said the leader. “Wherefore bind the heathen crew
and bestow on them a small matter of stripes apiece as earnest of our
future justice. Set some of the rogues in the stocks to rest themselves
so soon as Providence shall bring us to one of our own well-ordered
settlements where such accommodations may be found. Further penalties,
such as branding and cropping of ears, shall be thought of hereafter.”
“How many stripes for the priest?” inquired Ancient Palfrey.
“None as yet,” answered Endicott, bending his iron frown upon the
culprit. “It must be for the Great and General Court to determine
whether stripes and long imprisonment, and other grievous penalty, may
atone for his transgressions. Let him look to himself. For such as
violate our civil order it may be permitted us to show mercy, but woe
to the wretch that troubleth our religion!”
“And this dancing bear?” resumed the officer. “Must he share the
stripes of his fellows?”
“Shoot him through the head!” said the energetic Puritan. “I suspect
witchcraft in the beast.”
“Here be a couple of shining ones,” continued Peter Palfrey, pointing
his weapon at the Lord and Lady of the May. “They seem to be of high
station among these misdoers. Methinks their dignity will not be fitted
with less than a double share of stripes.”
Endicott rested on his sword and closely surveyed the dress and aspect
of the hapless pair. There they stood, pale, downcast and apprehensive,
yet there was an air of mutual support and of pure affection seeking
aid and giving it that showed them to be man and wife with the sanction
of a priest upon their love. The youth in the peril of the moment, had
dropped his gilded staff and thrown his arm about the Lady of the May,
who leaned against his breast too lightly to burden him, but with
weight enough to express that their destinies were linked together for
good or evil. They looked first at each other and then into the grim
captain’s face. There they stood in the first hour of wedlock, while
the idle pleasures of which their companions were the emblems had given
place to the sternest cares of life, personified by the dark Puritans.
But never had their youthful beauty seemed so pure and high as when its
glow was chastened by adversity.
“Youth,” said Endicott, “ye stand in an evil case—thou and thy
maiden-wife. Make ready presently, for I am minded that ye shall both
have a token to remember your wedding-day.”
“Stern man,” cried the May-lord, “how can I move thee? Were the means
at hand, I would resist to the death; being powerless, I entreat. Do
with me as thou wilt, but let Edith go untouched.”
“Not so,” replied the immitigable zealot. “We are not wont to show an
idle courtesy to that sex which requireth the stricter discipline.—What
sayest thou, maid? Shall thy silken bridegroom suffer thy share of the
penalty besides his own?”
“Be it death,” said Edith, “and lay it all on me.”
Truly, as Endicott had said, the poor lovers stood in a woeful case.
Their foes were triumphant, their friends captive and abased, their
home desolate, the benighted wilderness around them, and a rigorous
destiny in the shape of the Puritan leader their only guide. Yet the
deepening twilight could not altogether conceal that the iron man was
softened. He smiled at the fair spectacle of early love; he almost
sighed for the inevitable blight of early hopes.
“The troubles of life have come hastily on this young couple,” observed
Endicott. “We will see how they comport themselves under their present
trials ere we burden them with greater. If among the spoil there be any
garments of a more decent fashion, let them be put upon this May-lord
and his Lady instead of their glistening vanities. Look to it, some of
you.”
“And shall not the youth’s hair be cut?” asked Peter Palfrey, looking
with abhorrence at the lovelock and long glossy curls of the young man.
“Crop it forthwith, and that in the true pumpkin-shell fashion,”
answered the captain. “Then bring them along with us, but more gently
than their fellows. There be qualities in the youth which may make him
valiant to fight and sober to toil and pious to pray, and in the maiden
that may fit her to become a mother in our Israel, bringing up babes in
better nurture than her own hath been.—Nor think ye, young ones, that
they are the happiest, even in our lifetime of a moment, who misspend
it in dancing round a Maypole.”
And Endicott, the severest Puritan of all who laid the rock-foundation
of New England, lifted the wreath of roses from the ruin of the Maypole
and threw it with his own gauntleted hand over the heads of the Lord
and Lady of the May. It was a deed of prophecy. As the moral gloom of
the world overpowers all systematic gayety, even so was their home of
wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest. They returned to it no
more. But as their flowery garland was wreathed of the brightest roses
that had grown there, so in the tie that united them were intertwined
all the purest and best of their early joys. They went heavenward
supporting each other along the difficult path which it was their lot
to tread, and never wasted one regretful thought on the vanities of
Merry Mount.