The chief uses of these May-flowers were for the garlands, the decoration of the Maypole, and the adornment of the home: "To get sweet setywall (red valerian), The honeysuckle, the harlock, The lily, and the lady-smock, To deck their summer hall.

As in other floral rites, the selection of plants varies on the Continent, branches of the elder being carried about in Savoy, and in Austrian Silesia the Maypole is generally made of fir.

After their dam the chickens run, The green leaves glitter in the sun, While youths and maids in merry dance Round rustic maypoles do advance.

About a dozen were thus inspected: short ones with big heavy limbs, tall ones suggesting maypoles, dark ones with coarse stiff hair, fair ones with the whitest of skins, quick ones and slow ones, ugly ones and others who were pleasant-looking.

He had stuck the Twenty First of June next to the Twenty Second of December, and the former looked like a Maypole siding a marrow-bone.

Fly my rhymes as thick as flies in the sun; I think there be never an alehouse in England, not any so base a maypole on a country green, but sets forth some poet's petronels or demi-lances to the paper wars in Paul's Churchyard.

How dost thou, my fine maypole, ha? APP.

I may well be called a maypole, for the Senses do nothing but dance a morrice about me. MEN.

pole, pikestaff, maypole, flagstaff; top mast, topgallant mast.

upland, moorland; hilly, knobby [U.S.]; mountainous, alpine, subalpine, heaven kissing; cloudtopt^, cloudcapt^, cloudtouching^; aerial. overhanging &c v.; incumbent, overlying, superincumbent^, supernatant, superimposed; prominent &c v. 250. tall as a maypole, tall as a poplar, tall as a steeple, lanky &c (thin) 203.

Witness the maypoles, wassails, and wakes of rural life, and the grotesque morris-dance, originating in a kind of Pyrrhic or military dance, and described by Sir William Temple as composed of "ten men, who danced a maid marian and a tabor and pipe."

A large maypole was planted, and on the top was attached a wren.

"No, no, Betty," said the little girl of about nine years, who rode the pony; "it is just here, or a few rods farther on, where we had the Maypole set last year, and I know I can find the herbs which Chloe wants near by on the shore of the pond.

Come, lasses and lads, get leave of your dads, And away to the Maypole hie, For ev'ry fair has a sweetheart there, And the fiddler's standing by; For Willy shall dance with Jane, And Johnny has got his Joan, To trip it, trip it, trip it, trip it, Trip it up and down!

Moreover, we declare that on the first day of May the youth shall have the right to set up a maypole, and any person who shall cut a portion of it shall owe a pail of wine, and the king can compel him to pay it, for such is our wish.

It was the sort of colouring that you associate in your mind with lush green fields, and Jersey cows, and village maids, in Watteau frocks, balancing brimming pails aloft in the protecting curve of one rounded upraised arm, with perhaps a Maypole dance or so in the background.

An alternative road to the Blandford highway follows the river and rail through Shillingstone, an interesting village that had a year or two since (and may still have) a maypole; a beautiful village cross; and a much restored Norman and Early English church containing a pulpit presented by a Londoner who sought sanctuary from the great plague.

Here is an actual village maypole, restored of course, and a beautiful Perpendicular church, also restored, but unspoilt.

Stow says, "that in the moneth of May, the citizens of London, of all estates, lightlie in every parish, or sometimes two or three parishes joyning together, had their severall Mayinges, and did fetch in Maypoles, with divers warlike showes, with good archers, morrice-dancers, and other devices for pastime all the day long, and towards the evening they had stage-playes and bone-fires in the streetes.

Well said, my boys, I must have my lord's livery; what is't, a maypole?

"The King's Head" illustrated here is the inn Dickens had in his mind when describing the "Maypole" in Barnaby Rudge, and the whole of the plot of that work is so wrapped up in Chigwell and its immediate surroundings that one should not visit the village until one has read the story.

The "Maypole" of Dickens's Barnaby Rudge.] WALTHAM ABBEY AND CROSS =How to get there.=Train from Liverpool Street.

Troy and the maypoles.

Troy and the maypoles.

James, before he beheld Betty, was vain of his Strength, a rough Wrestler, and quarrelsome Cudgel-Player; Betty a Publick Dancer at Maypoles, a Romp at Stool-Ball: He always following idle Women, she playing among the Peasants: He a Country Bully, she a Country Coquet.