THE MAY-GAME
[_Bibliographical Note._--The festal character of primitive
dance and song is admirably brought out by R. Wallaschek,
_Primitive Music_ (1893); E. Grosse, _Die Anfänge der Kunst_
(1894, French transl. 1902); Y. Hirn, _The Origins of Art_
(1900); F. B. Gummere, _The Beginnings of Poetry_ (1901). The
popular element in French lyric is illustrated by A. Jeanroy,
_Les Origines de la Poésie lyrique en France au Moyen Âge_
(1889), and J. Tiersot, _Histoire de la Chanson populaire en
France_ (1889). Most of such English material as exists is
collected in Mrs. Gomme’s _Traditional Games_ (1896-8) and G. F.
Northall, _English Folk-Rhymes_ (1892). For comparative study E.
Martinengo-Cesaresco, _Essays in the Study of Folk-Songs_ (1886),
may be consulted. The notices of the May-game are scattered
through the works mentioned in the bibliographical note to ch. vi
and others.]
The foregoing chapter has illustrated the remarkable variety of modes
in which the instinct of play comes to find expression. But of all such
the simplest and most primitive is undoubtedly the dance. Psychology
discovers in the dance the most rudimentary and physical of the arts,
and traces it to precisely that overflow of nervous energies shut off
from their normal practical ends which constitutes play[528]. And
the verdict of psychology is confirmed by philology; for in all the
Germanic languages the same word signifies both ‘dance’ and ‘play,’ and
in some of them it is even extended to the cognate ideas of ‘sacrifice’
or ‘festival[529]’. The dance must therefore be thought of as an
essential part of all the festivals with which we have to deal. And
with the dance comes song: the rhythms of motion seem to have been
invariably accompanied by the rhythms of musical instruments, or of the
voice, or of both combined[530].
The dance had been from the beginning a subject of contention between
Christianity and the Roman world[531]; but whereas the dances of
the East and South, so obnoxious to the early Fathers, were mainly
those of professional entertainers, upon the stage or at banquets,
the missionaries of the West had to face the even more difficult
problem of a folk-dance and folk-song which were amongst the most
inveterate habits of the freshly converted peoples. As the old worship
vanished, these tended to attach themselves to the new. Upon great
feasts and wake-days, choruses of women invaded with wanton _cantica_
and _ballationes_ the precincts of the churches and even the sacred
buildings themselves, a desecration against which generation after
generation of ecclesiastical authorities was fain to protest[532].
Clerkly sentiment in the matter is represented by a pious legend,
very popular in the Middle Ages, which told how some reprobate folk
of Kölbigk in Anhalt disobeyed the command of a priest to cease their
unholy revels before the church of Saint Magnus while he said mass on
Christmas day, and for their punishment must dance there the year round
without stopping[533]. The struggle was a long one, and in the end the
Church never quite succeeded even in expelling the dance from its own
doors. The chapter of Wells about 1338 forbade _choreae_ and other
_ludi_ within the cathedral and the cloisters, chiefly on account of
the damage too often done to its property[534]. A seventeenth-century
French writer records that he had seen clergy and singing-boys dancing
at Easter in the churches of Paris[535]; and even at the present day
there are some astounding survivals. At Seville, as is well known, the
six boys, called _los Seises_, dance with castanets before the Holy
Sacrament in the presence of the archbishop at Shrovetide, and during
the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and Corpus Christi[536]. At
Echternach in Luxembourg there is an annual dance through the church
of pilgrims to the shrine of St. Willibrord[537], while at Barjols
in Provence a ‘tripe-dance’ is danced at mass on St. Marcel’s day in
honour of the patron[538].
Still less, of course, did dance and song cease to be important
features of the secular side of the festivals. We have already seen
how _cantilenae_ on the great deeds of heroes had their vogue in the
mouths of the _chori_ of young men and maidens, as well as in those
of the minstrels[539]. The _Carmina Burana_ describe the dances
of girls upon the meadows as amongst the pleasures of spring[540].
William Fitzstephen tells us that such dances were to be seen in
London in the twelfth century[541], and we have found the University
of Oxford solemnly forbidding them in the thirteenth. The _romans_ and
_pastourelles_ frequently mention _chansons_ or _rondets de carole_,
which appear to have been the _chansons_ used to accompany the choric
dances, and to have generally consisted of a series of couplets sung
by the leader, and a refrain with which the rest of the band answered
him. Occasionally the refrains are quoted[542]. The minstrels borrowed
this type of folk _chanson_, and the conjoint dance and song themselves
found their way from the village green to the courtly hall. In the
twelfth century ladies _carolent_, and more rarely even men condescend
to take a part[543]. Still later _carole_, like _tripudium_, seems
to become a term for popular rejoicing in general, not necessarily
expressed in rhythmical shape[544].
The customs of the village festival gave rise by natural development
to two types of dance[545]. There was the processional dance of the
band of worshippers in progress round their boundaries and from field
to field, from house to house, from well to well of the village. It
is this that survives in the dance of the Echternach pilgrims, or in
the ‘faddy-dance’ in and out the cottage doors at Helston wake. And
it is probably this that is at the bottom of the interesting game of
‘Thread the Needle.’ This is something like ‘Oranges and Lemons,’ the
first part of which, indeed, seems to have been adapted from it. There
is, however, no sacrifice or ‘tug-of-war,’ although there is sometimes
a ‘king,’ or a ‘king’ and his ‘lady’ or ‘bride’ in the accompanying
rhymes, and in one instance a ‘pancake.’ The players stand in two long
lines. Those at the end of each line form an arch with uplifted arms,
and the rest run in pairs beneath it. Then another pair form an arch,
and the process is repeated. In this way long strings of lads and
lasses stream up and down the streets or round and about a meadow or
green. In many parts of England this game is played annually on Shrove
Tuesday or Easter Monday, and the peasants who play it at Châtre in
central France say that it is done ‘to make the hemp grow.’ Its origin
in connexion with the agricultural festivals can therefore hardly be
doubtful[546]. It is probable that in the beginning the players danced
rather than ran under the ‘arch’; and it is obvious that the ‘figure’
of the game is practically identical with one familiar in _Sir Roger de
Coverley_ and other old English ‘country’ dances of the same type.
Just as the ‘country’ dance is derived from the processional dance, so
the other type of folk-dance, the _ronde_ or ‘round,’ is derived from
the comparatively stationary dance of the group of worshippers around
the more especially sacred objects of the festival, such as the tree
or the fire[547]. The custom of dancing round the May-pole has been
more or less preserved wherever the May-pole is known. But ‘Thread
the Needle’ itself often winds up with a circular dance or _ronde_,
either around one of the players, or, on festival occasions, around
the representative of the earlier home of the fertilization divinity,
the parish church. This custom is popularly known as ‘clipping the
church[548].’
Naturally the worshippers at a festival would dance in their festival
costume; that is to say, in the garb of leaves and flowers worn for the
sake of the beneficent influence of the indwelling divinity, or in the
hides and horns of sacrificial animals which served a similar purpose.
Travellers describe elaborate and beautiful beast-dances amongst savage
peoples, and the Greeks had their own bear- and crane-dances, as well
as the dithyrambic goat-dance of the Dionysia. They had also flower
dances[549]. In England the village dancers wear posies, but I do not
know that they ever attempt a more elaborate representation of flowers.
But a good example of the beast-dance is furnished by the ‘horn-dance’
at Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire, held now at a September wake,
and formerly at Christmas. In this six of the performers wear sets
of horns. These are preserved from year to year in the church, and
according to local tradition the dance used at one time to take place
in the churchyard on a Sunday. The horns are said to be those of the
reindeer, and from this it may possibly be inferred that they were
brought to Abbots Bromley by Scandinavian settlers. The remaining
performers represent a hobby-horse, a clown, a woman, and an archer,
who makes believe to shoot the horned men[550].
The _motifs_ of the dances and their _chansons_ must also at first
have been determined by the nature of the festivals at which they
took place. There were dances, no doubt, at such domestic festivals
as weddings and funerals[551]. In Flanders it is still the custom to
dance at the funeral of a young girl, and a very charming _chanson_
is used[552]. The development of epic poetry from the _cantilenae_
of the war-festival has been noted in a former chapter. At the
agricultural festivals, the primary _motif_ is, of course, the desire
for the fertility of the crops and herds. The song becomes, as in the
Anglo-Saxon charm, so often referred to, practically a prayer[553].
With this, and with the use of ‘Thread the Needle’ at Châtre ‘to make
the hemp grow,’ may be compared the games known to modern children,
as to Gargantua, in which the operations of the farmer’s year, and in
particular his prayer for his crops, are mimicked in a _ronde_[554].
Allusions to the process of the seasons, above all to the delight of
the _renouveau_ in spring, would naturally also find a place in the
festival songs. The words of the famous thirteenth-century lyric were
perhaps written to be sung to the twinkling feet of English girls in a
round. It has the necessary refrain:
‘Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wdë nu,
Sing cuccu!
‘Awë bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calvë cu.
Bulloc sterteth, buckë verteth,
Murie sing cuccu!
‘Cuccu, cuccu, wel singës thu, cuccu;
Ne swik thu naver nu.
Sing cuccu nu. Sing cuccu.
Sing cuccu. Sing cuccu nu!’[555]
The savour of the spring is still in the English May songs, the French
_maierolles_ or _calendes de mai_ and the Italian _calen di maggio_.
But for the rest they have either become little but mere _quête_ songs,
or else, under the influence of the priests, have taken on a Christian
colouring[556]. At Oxford the ‘merry ketches’ sung by choristers on the
top of Magdalen tower on May morning were replaced in the seventeenth
century by the hymn now used[557]. Another very popular Mayers’ song
would seem to show that the Puritans, in despair of abolishing the
festival, tried to reform it.
‘Remember us poor Mayers all,
And thus we do begin
To lead our lives in righteousness,
Or else we die in sin.
‘We have been rambling all this night,
And almost all this day:
And now returned back again,
We have brought you a branch of May.
‘A branch of May we have brought you,
And at your door it stands;
It is but a sprout, but it’s well budded out,
By the work of our Lord’s hands,’ &c.[558]
Another religious element, besides prayer, may have entered into
the pre-Christian festival songs; and that is myth. A stage in the
evolution of drama from the Dionysiac dithyramb was the introduction of
mythical narratives about the wanderings and victories of the god, to
be chanted or recited by the _choragus_. The relation of the _choragus_
to the _chorus_ bears a close analogy to that between the leader of
the mediaeval _carole_ and his companions who sang the refrain. This
leader probably represents the Keltic or Teutonic priest at the head
of his band of worshippers; and one may suspect that in the north and
west of Europe, as in Greece, the pauses of the festival dance provided
the occasion on which the earliest strata of stories about the gods,
the hieratic as distinguished from the literary myths, took shape. If
so the development of divine myth was very closely parallel to that of
heroic myth[559].
After religion, the commonest _motif_ of dance and song at the village
festivals must have been love. This is quite in keeping with the
amorous licence which was one of their characteristics. The goddess
of the fertility of earth was also the goddess of the fertility of
women. The ecclesiastical prohibitions lay particular stress upon the
_orationes amatoriae_ and the _cantica turpia et luxuriosa_ which
the women sang at the church doors, and only as love-songs can be
interpreted the _winileodi_ forbidden to the inmates of convents by a
capitulary of 789[560]. The love-interest continues to be prominent
in the folk-song, or the minstrel song still in close relation to
folk-song, of mediaeval and modern France. The beautiful wooing
_chanson_ of _Transformations_, which savants have found it difficult
to believe not to be a _supercherie_, is sung by harvesters and by
lace-makers at the pillow[561]. That of _Marion_, an ironic expression
of wifely submission, belongs to Shrove Tuesday[562]. These are modern,
but the following, from the _Chansonnier de St. Germain_, may be a
genuine mediaeval folk-song of Limousin _provenance_:
‘A l’entrada dal tems clar, eya,
Per joja recomençar, eya,
Et per jelos irritar, eya,
Vol la regina mostrar
Qu’el’ es si amoroza.
Alavi’, alavia jelos,
Laissaz nos, laissaz nos
Ballar entre nos, entre nos[563].’
The ‘queen’ here is, of course, the festival queen or lady of the May,
the _regina avrillosa_ of the Latin writers, _la reine_, _la mariée_,
_l’épousée_, _la trimousette_ of popular custom[564]. The defiance
of the _jelos_, and the desire of the queen and her maidens to dance
alone, recall the conventional freedom of women from restraint in May,
the month of their ancient sex-festival, and the month in which the
mediaeval wife-beater still ran notable danger of a _chevauchée_.
The amorous note recurs in those types of minstrel song which are
most directly founded upon folk models. Such are the _chansons à
danser_ with their refrains, the _chansons de mal mariées_, in
which the ‘_jalous_’ is often introduced, the _aubes_ and the
_pastourelles_[565]. Common in all of these is the spring setting
proper to the _chansons_ of our festivals, and of the ‘queen’ or
‘king’ there is from time to time mention. The leading theme of
the _pastourelles_ is the wooing, successful or the reverse, of a
shepherdess by a knight. But the shepherdess has generally also a lover
of her own degree, and for this pair the names of Robin and Marion seem
to have been conventionally appropriated. Robin was perhaps borrowed by
the _pastourelles_ from the widely spread refrain
‘Robins m’aime, Robins m’a:
Robins m’a demandée: si m’ara[566].’
The borrowing may, of course, have been the other way round, but the
close relation of the _chanson à danser_ with its refrain to the
dance suggests that this was the earliest type of lyric minstrelsy
to be evolved, as well as the closest to the folk-song pattern. The
_pastourelle_ forms a link between folk-song and drama, for towards
the end of the thirteenth century Adan de la Hale, known as ‘le
Bossu,’ a minstrel of Arras, wrote a _Jeu de Robin et Marion_, which
is practically a _pastourelle par personnages_. The familiar theme
is preserved. A knight woos Marion, who is faithful to her Robin.
Repulsed, he rides away, but returns and beats Robin. All, however,
ends happily with dances and _jeux_ amongst the peasants. Adan de la
Hale was one of the train of Count Robert of Artois in Italy. The play
may originally have been written about 1283 for the delectation of the
court of Robert’s kinsman, Charles, king of Naples, but the extant
version was probably produced about 1290 at Arras, when the poet was
already dead. Another hand has prefixed a dramatic prologue, the _Jeu
du Pèlerin_, glorifying Adan, and has also made some interpolations in
the text designed to localize the action near Arras. The performers
are not likely to have been villagers: they may have been the members
of some _puy_ or literary society, which had taken over the celebration
of the summer festival. In any case the _Jeu de Robin et Marion_ is the
earliest and not the least charming of pastoral comedies[567].
It is impossible exactly to parallel from the history of English
literature this interaction of folk-song and minstrelsy at the French
_fête du mai_. For unfortunately no body of English mediaeval lyric
exists. Even ‘Sumer is icumen in’ only owes its preservation to the
happy accident which led some priest to fit sacred words to the secular
tune; while the few pieces recovered from a Harleian manuscript of the
reign of Edward I, beautiful as they are, read like adaptations less of
English folk-song, than of French lyric itself[568]. Nevertheless, the
village summer festival of England seems to have closely resembled that
of France, and to have likewise taken in the long run a dramatic turn.
A short sketch of it will not be without interest.
I have quoted at the beginning of this discussion of folk-customs the
thirteenth-century condemnations of the _Inductio Maii_ by Bishop
Grosseteste of Lincoln and of the _ludi de Rege et Regina_ by Bishop
Chanteloup of Worcester. The _ludus de Rege et Regina_ is not indeed
necessarily to be identified with the _Inductio Maii_, for the harvest
feast or _Inductio Autumni_ of Bishop Grosseteste had also its
‘king’ and ‘queen,’ and so too had some of the feasts in the winter
cycle, notably Twelfth night[569]. It is, however, in the summer
feast held usually on the first of May or at Whitsuntide[570], that
these rustic dignitaries are more particularly prominent. Before the
middle of the fifteenth century I have not come across many notices
of them. That a summer king was familiar in Scotland is implied by
the jest of Robert Bruce’s wife after his coronation at Scone in
1306[571]. In 1412 a ‘somerkyng’ received a reward from the bursar of
Winchester College[572]. But from about 1450 onwards they begin to
appear frequently in local records. The whole _ludus_ is generally
known as a ‘May-play’ or ‘May-game,’ or as a ‘king-play[573],’
‘king’s revel[574],’ or ‘king-game[575].’ The leading personages
are indifferently the ‘king’ and ‘queen,’ or ‘lord’ and ‘lady.’ But
sometimes the king is more specifically the ‘somerkyng’ or _rex
aestivalis_. At other times he is the ‘lord of misrule[576],’ or takes
a local title, such as that of the ‘Abbot of Marham,’ ‘Mardall,’
‘Marrall,’ ‘Marram,’ ‘Mayvole’ or ‘Mayvoll’ at Shrewsbury[577], and the
‘Abbot of Bon-Accord’ at Aberdeen[578]. The use of an ecclesiastical
term will be explained in a later chapter[579]. The queen appears to
have been sometimes known as a ‘whitepot’ queen[580]. And finally
the king and queen receive, in many widely separated places, the
names of Robin Hood and Maid Marian, and are accompanied in their
revels by Little John, Friar Tuck, and the whole joyous fellowship
of Sherwood Forest[581]. This affiliation of the _ludus de Rege et
Regina_ to the Robin Hood legend is so curious as to deserve a moment’s
examination[582].
The earliest recorded mention of Robin Hood is in Langland’s _Piers
Plowman_, written about 1377. Here he is coupled with another great
popular hero of the north as a subject of current songs:
‘But I can rymes of Robyn hood, and Randolf erle of Chestre[583].’
In the following century his fame as a great outlaw spread far and
wide, especially in the north and the midlands[584]. The Scottish
chronicler Bower tells us in 1447 that whether for comedy or tragedy
no other subject of romance and minstrelsy had such a hold upon
the common folk[585]. The first of the extant ballads of the cycle,
_A Gest of Robyn Hode_, was probably printed before 1500, and in
composition may be at least a century earlier. A recent investigator
of the legend, and a very able one, denies to Robin Hood any traceable
historic origin. He is, says Dr. Child, ‘absolutely a creation of the
ballad muse.’ However this may be, the version of the Elizabethan
playwright Anthony Munday, who made him an earl of Huntingdon and
the lover of Matilda the daughter of Lord Fitzwater, may be taken
as merely a fabrication. And whether he is historical or not, it is
difficult to see how he got, as by the sixteenth century he did get,
into the May-game. One theory is that he was there from the beginning,
and that he is in fact a mythological figure, whose name but faintly
disguises either Woden in the aspect of a vegetation deity[586], or
a minor wood-spirit Hode, who also survives in the Hodeken of German
legend[587]. Against this it may be pointed out, firstly that Hood is
not an uncommon English name, probably meaning nothing but ‘à-Wood’ or
‘of the wood[588],’ and secondly that we have seen no reason to suppose
that the mock king, which is the part assigned to Robin Hood in the
May-game, was ever regarded as an incarnation of the fertilization
spirit at all. He is the priest of that spirit, slain at its festival,
but nothing more. I venture to offer a more plausible explanation. It
is noticeable that whereas in the May-game Robin Hood and Maid Marian
are inseparable, in the early ballads Maid Marian has no part. She
is barely mentioned in one or two of the latest ones[589]. Moreover
Marian is not an English but a French name, and we have already seen
that Robin and Marion are the typical shepherd and shepherdess of the
French _pastourelles_ and of Adan de la Hale’s dramatic _jeu_ founded
upon these. I suggest then, that the names were introduced by the
minstrels into English and transferred from the French _fêtes du mai_
to the ‘lord’ and ‘lady’ of the corresponding English May-game. Robin
Hood grew up independently from heroic _cantilenae_, but owing to the
similarity of name he was identified with the other Robin, and brought
Little John, Friar Tuck and the rest with him into the May-game. On
the other hand Maid Marian, who does not properly belong to the heroic
legend, was in turn, naturally enough, adopted into the later ballads.
This is an hypothesis, but not, I think, an unlikely hypothesis.
Of what, then, did the May-game, as it took shape in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, consist? Primarily, no doubt, of a _quête_
or ‘gaderyng.’ In many places this became a parochial, or even a
municipal, affair. In 1498 the corporation of Wells possessed moneys
‘_provenientes ante hoc tempus de Robynhode_[590].’ Elsewhere the
churchwardens paid the expenses of the feast and accounted for the
receipts in the annual parish budget[591]. There are many entries
concerning the May-game in the accounts of Kingston-on-Thames during
some half a century. In 1506 it is recorded that ‘Wylm. Kempe’ was
‘kenge’ and ‘Joan Whytebrede’ was ‘quen.’ In 1513 and again in 1536
the game went to Croydon[592]. Similarly the accounts of New Romney
note that in 1422 or thereabouts the men of Lydd ‘came with their may
and ours[593],’ and those of Reading St. Lawrence that in 1505 came
‘Robyn Hod of Handley and his company’ and in 1507 ‘Robyn Hod and his
company from ffynchamsted[594].’ In contemporary Scotland James IV
gave a present at midsummer in 1503 ‘to Robin Hude of Perth[595].’ It
would hardly have been worth while, however, to carry the May-game from
one village or town to another, had it been nothing but a procession
with a garland and a ‘gaderyng’; and as a matter of fact we find that
in England as in France dramatic performances came to be associated
with the summer folk-festivals. The London ‘Maying’ included stage
plays[596]. At Shrewsbury _lusores_ under the Abbot of Marham acted
interludes ‘for the glee of the town’ at Pentecost[597]. The guild of
St. Luke at Norwich performed secular as well as miracle plays, and the
guild of Holy Cross at Abingdon held its feast on May 3 with ‘pageants,
plays and May-games,’ as early as 1445[598]. Some of these plays were
doubtless miracles, but so far as they were secular, the subjects of
them were naturally drawn, in the absence of _pastourelles_, from the
ballads of the Robin Hood cycle[599]. Amongst the Paston letters is
preserved one written in 1473, in which the writer laments the loss
of a servant, whom he has kept ‘thys iij yer to pleye Seynt Jorge and
Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Nottyngham[600].’ Moreover, some specimens
of the plays themselves are still extant. One of them, unfortunately
only a fragment, must be the very play referred to in the letter just
quoted, for its subject is ‘Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham,’
and it is found on a scrap of paper formerly in the possession of Sir
John Fenn, the first editor of the _Paston Letters_[601]. A second
play on ‘Robin Hood and the Friar’ and a fragment of a third on ‘Robin
Hood and the Potter’ were printed by Copland in the edition of the
_Gest of Robyn Hode_ published by him about 1550[602]. The Robin Hood
plays are, of course, subsequent to the development of religious drama
which will be discussed in the next volume. They are of the nature of
interludes, and were doubtless written, like the plays of Adan de la
Hale, by some clerk or minstrel for the delectation of the villagers.
They are, therefore, in a less degree folk-drama, than the examples
which we shall have to consider in the next chapter. But it is worthy
of notice, that even in the hey-day of the stage under Elizabeth
and James I, the summer festival continued to supply motives to the
dramatists. Anthony Munday’s _Downfall and Death of Robert Earl of
Huntingdon_[603], Chapman’s _May-Day_, and Jonson’s delightful fragment
_The Sad Shepherd_ form an interesting group of pastoral comedies,
affinities to which may be traced in the _As You Like It_ and _Winter’s
Tale_ of Shakespeare himself.
As has been said, it is impossible to establish any direct affiliation
between the Robin Hood plays and earlier _caroles_ on the same theme,
in the way in which this can be done for the _jeu_ of Adan de la Hale,
and the Robin and Marion of the _pastourelles_. The extant Robin Hood
ballads are certainly not _caroles_; they are probably not folk-song at
all, but minstrelsy of a somewhat debased type. The only actual trace
of such _caroles_ that has been come across is the mention of ‘Robene
hude’ as the name of a dance in the _Complaynt of Scotland_ about
1548[604]. Dances, however, of one kind or another, there undoubtedly
were at the May-games. The Wells corporation accounts mention _puellae
tripudiantes_ in close relation with _Robynhode_[605]. And particularly
there was the morris-dance, which was so universally in use on May-day,
that it borrowed, almost in permanence, for its leading character the
name of Maid Marian. The morris-dance, however, is common to nearly
all the village feasts, and its origin and nature will be matter for
discussion in the next chapter.
In many places, even during the Middle Ages, and still more
afterwards, the summer feast dropped out or degenerated. It became a
mere beer-swilling, an ‘ale[606].’ And so we find in the sixteenth
century a ‘king-ale[607]’ or a ‘Robin Hood’s ale[608],’ and in modern
times a ‘Whitsun-ale[609],’ a ‘lamb-ale[610]’ or a ‘gyst-ale[611]’
beside the ‘church-ales’ and ‘scot-ales’ which the thirteenth-century
bishops had already condemned[612]. On the other hand, the village
festival found its way to court, and became a sumptuous pageant under
the splendour-loving Tudors. For this, indeed, there was Arthurian
precedent in the romance of Malory, who records how Guenever was taken
by Sir Meliagraunce, when ‘as the queen had mayed and all her knights,
all were bedashed with herbs, mosses, and flowers, in the best manner
and freshest[613].’ The chronicler Hall tells of the Mayings of Henry
VIII in 1510, 1511, and 1515. In the last of these some hundred and
thirty persons took part. Henry was entertained by Robin Hood and the
rest with shooting-matches and a collation of venison in a bower; and
returning was met by a chariot in which rode the Lady May and the
Lady Flora, while on the five horses sat the Ladies Humidity, Vert,
Vegetave, Pleasaunce and Sweet Odour[614]. Obviously the pastime
has here degenerated in another direction. It has become learned,
allegorical, and pseudo-classic. At the Reformation the May-game and
the May-pole were marks for Puritan onslaught. Latimer, in one of his
sermons before Edward VI, complains how, when he had intended to preach
in a certain country town on his way to London, he was told that he
could not be heard, for ‘it is Robyn hoodes daye. The parishe are gone
a brode to gather for Robyn hoode[615].’ Machyn’s _Diary_ mentions the
breaking of a May-pole in Fenchurch by the lord mayor of 1552[616],
and the revival of elaborate and heterogeneous May-games throughout
London during the brief span of Queen Mary[617]. The Elizabethan
Puritans renewed the attack, but though something may have been done by
reforming municipalities here and there to put down the festivals[618],
the ecclesiastical authorities could not be induced to go much beyond
forbidding them to take place in churchyards[619]. William Stafford,
indeed, declared in 1581 that ‘May-games, wakes, and revels’ were
‘now laid down[620],’ but the violent abuse directed against them
only two years later by Philip Stubbes, which may be taken as a fair
sample of the Puritan polemic as a whole, shows that this was far from
being really the case[621]. In Scotland the Parliament ordered, as
early as 1555, that no one ‘be chosen Robert Hude, nor Lytill Johne,
Abbot of vnressoun, Quenis of Maij, nor vtherwyse, nouther in Burgh
nor to landwart in ony tyme to cum[622].’ But the prohibition was not
very effective, for in 1577 and 1578 the General Assembly is found
petitioning for its renewal[623]. And in England no similar action was
taken until 1644 when the Long Parliament decreed the destruction of
such May-poles as the municipalities had spared. Naturally this policy
was reversed at the Restoration, and a new London pole was erected in
the Strand, hard by Somerset House, which endured until 1717[624].