Twice-told tales
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