Twice-told tales
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light is now withdrawn, relinquishing the whole domain of Merry Mount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.
THE GENTLE BOY
In the course of the year 1656 several of the people called
Quakers—led, as they professed, by the inward movement of the
spirit—made their appearance in New England. Their reputation as
holders of mystic and pernicious principles having spread before them,
the Puritans early endeavored to banish and to prevent the further
intrusion of the rising sect. But the measures by which it was intended
to purge the land of heresy, though more than sufficiently vigorous,
were entirely unsuccessful. The Quakers, esteeming persecution as a
divine call to the post of danger, laid claim to a holy courage unknown
to the Puritans themselves, who had shunned the cross by providing for
the peaceable exercise of their religion in a distant wilderness.
Though it was the singular fact that every nation of the earth rejected
the wandering enthusiasts who practised peace toward all men, the place
of greatest uneasiness and peril, and therefore in their eyes the most
eligible, was the province of Massachusetts Bay.
The fines, imprisonments and stripes liberally distributed by our pious
forefathers, the popular antipathy, so strong that it endured nearly a
hundred years after actual persecution had ceased, were attractions as
powerful for the Quakers as peace, honor and reward would have been for
the worldly-minded. Every European vessel brought new cargoes of the
sect, eager to testify against the oppression which they hoped to
share; and when shipmasters were restrained by heavy fines from
affording them passage, they made long and circuitous journeys through
the Indian country, and appeared in the province as if conveyed by a
supernatural power. Their enthusiasm, heightened almost to madness by
the treatment which they received, produced actions contrary to the
rules of decency as well as of rational religion, and presented a
singular contrast to the calm and staid deportment of their sectarian
successors of the present day. The command of the Spirit, inaudible