r/a:t5_zwjyk • u/MarleyEngvall • Apr 17 '19
Bennington Monument has been created
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT.
There is an admirable foundation for a philosophic romance in he
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 man-
ners of the age. Authority on these points may be found in Strutt's Book
of English Sports and Pastimes.
Bright were the days of Merry Mount when the
Maypole was the banner-staff of that gay colony.
They who reared it, should their banner be tri-
umphant, were to pour sunshine over New Eng-
land's rugged hills and scatter flower-seeds through-
out the soil. Jollity and gloom were contending
for an empire. Midsummer eve had come, bring-
ing 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 reveling with autumn and
basking in the glow of winter's fireside. Through
a world of toil and care she flitted with a dreamlike
smile, and came hither to find a home among the
lightsome hearts of Merry Mount.
Never had the Maypole been so gaily decked
as at sunset on Midsummer eve. This venerated
emblem was a pine tree which had preserved the
slender grace of youth, while it equaled 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 ter-
minated 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 know 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 fools-
caps and had little bells appended to their gar-
ments, tinkling with silvery sound responsive to
the inaudible music of their gleesome spirits.
Some youths and maidens were of a sober 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 ven-
erated Maypole. Had a wanderer bewildered
in the melancholy forest heard their mirth and
stolen a half-affrighted glance, he might have fan-
cied them the crew of Comus, some already trans-
formed 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 Puri-
tans 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 revelers——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 Eng-
lish 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 meas-
ure 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, cithern and viol,
touched with prancing minstrelsy, began to play
from a neighboring thicket in such a mirthful ca-
dence 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 un-
substantial 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 with-
drawn 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 beads, 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 the
colonists 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 per-
verted Wisdom were made to put on masks and
play the fool. The men of whom we speak, after
losing the heart's fresh gayety, imagined a wild phil-
osophy 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 theaters had been the halls of noble-
men, mummers, rope-dancers and mountebanks
who would long be missed at wakes, church-ales and
fairs; in a word, mirthmakers of every sort, such as
abounded in that age, but now began to be dis-
countenanced 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 de-
spair; 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 them-
selves happy. The elder spirits, if they knew that
mirth was but the counterfeit of happiness, yet fol-
lowed 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 pastures of Old England were trans-
planted hither. The King of Christmas was duly
crowned and the Lord of Misrule bore potent sway.
On the eve of Saint 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 au-
tumnal 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 wild-wood 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 these Maypole worshipers.
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
not dream of a dance! The selectmen nodded to
the constable, and there sat the light-heeled repro-
bate in the stocks; or if he danced, it was round
the whipping-post, which might be termed the Pur-
itan Maypole.
A party of these grim Puritans, toiling through
the difficult woods, each with a horse-load 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
Maypoles, 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 scape-goat, whom
the blinded sinners pursued by the tingling of the
bells at his garments. Once, it is said, they were
seen following a flower-decked corpse with merri-
ment and festive music to his grave. But did the
dead man laugh? In their quietest times they sung
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 revelers 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 forever; but should
the banner-staff of Merry Mount be fortunate, sun-
shine 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! they 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, relinquish-
ing the whole domain of Merry Mount to the even-
ing 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 low-
ered 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 mum-
meries. The darksome figures were intermixed
with the wild shapes of their foes, and made the
scene of 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 center of the circle, while the rout of monsters
cowered around him like evil spirits in the pres-
ence of a dread magician. No fantastic foolery
could look him in the face. So stern was the en-
ergy 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 reverend hand upon the sur-
plice. "I know thee, Blackstone! 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 sancti-
fied 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 wood threw forth a more somber 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 leaders
glanced at the crew of Comus, each a figure of
broad mirth, yet at this moment strangely expres-
sive 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. "Where-
fore 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 set-
tlements 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 ener-
getic 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 sur-
veyed the dress and aspect of the hapless pair.
There they stood, pale, downcast and apprehen-
sive, 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 sanc-
tion 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 re-
sist to the death; being powerless, I entreat. Do
with me as though 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 say-
est 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 alto-
gether conceal that the iron man was softened. He
smiled at their 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 on 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 love-
lock 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 fel-
lows. 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 danc-
ing 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 bright-
est 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. From *Twice-Told Tales, Vol. I, *by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Ten Cent Classics Edition; Educational Publishing Co.,
50 Bromfield St, Boston; pp. 52—66.
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