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But as the theft must have been committed with all the publicity that a fixed day, a large crowd, and a full band could ensure, and as we seem to have no record of interference at the time, or prosecutions afterwards, I hope we may infer that the owners of the woods did not grudge one tree for the village Maypole. A quainter vengeance seems to have sometimes followed the trespass. Honesty was at a discount. What had been once stolen was liable to be re-stolen. There seems to have been great rivalry among the villages as to which had the best Maypole. The happy parish which could boast the finest was not left at ease in its supremacy, for the lads of the other villages were always on the watch to steal it. A record of this custom amongst the Welsh reminds one that Wales was at once the land of bards and the home of Taffy the Thief. “If successful,” says Owen, speaking of these Maypole robbers, they “had their feats recorded in songs.”

In old times oxen were commonly used for farmwork, and it seems that they had their share in the May fun. Another Puritan writer says, “They have twentie or fortie yoke of oxen, every oxe having a sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen draw home this Maie poole.”

How well one can imagine their slow swinging pace, unmoved by the shouts and music which would stir a horse’s more delicate nerves! Their broad moist noses; their large, liquid eyes, and, doubtless, a certain sense of pride in their “sweet nosegaies,” like the pride of the Beast of a Regiment in his badge.

Horses, too, came in for their share of May decorations. It was an old custom to give the waggoner a ribbon for his team at every inn he passed on May-day.

In the last century there was a fixed Maypole near Horncastle, in Lincolnshire, to which the boys made a pilgrimage in procession every May-day with May-gads in their hands. May-gads are white willow wands, peeled, and dressed with cowslips.

There was a fixed Maypole in the Strand for many years–or rather a succession of Maypoles. One, when only four years old, was given to Sir Isaac Newton to make a stand for his telescope, and another seems to have had a narrow escape from being handed over to a less celebrated astronomer, some years later.

The wandering Maypole, with its Queen of the May and her chimney-sweeps, is a modern compound of the village Maypole and May Queen with the May games in which (as in the Christmas festivities) morris-dancers played a part. The May-day morris-dancers, like the Christmas mummers, performed sword-dances and sang appropriate doggerels in costume. The characters represented at one time or another were Maid Marian or the May Queen, Robin Hood or Lord of the May, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, Little John Stokesley, Tom the Piper, Mad Moll and her Husband, Mutch, the Fool and the Hobby Horse. Archery was amongst the May-day sports, especially in the company of Robin Hood. The Summer King and Queen were perhaps the oldest characters. They seem to be identical with the Lord and Lady, and sometimes to have been merged in Robin Hood and Maid Marian.

“Maid Marian fair as ivory bone,
Scarlet, and Mutch, and Little John.”

The King and Queen of May are spoken of in the thirteenth century, but morris-dancing at May-time does not seem to date earlier than Henry VII., and is not so old a custom as the immemorial one of going a-Maying

“To bring the summer home
The summer and the May-O!”

This was not confined to young people or to country-folk. Chaucer says that on May-day early “fourth goth al the court, both most and lest, to fetche the flowres fresh, and braunch, and blome,” and Henry VIII. kept May-day very orthodoxly in the early years of his reign.