The Maypole of Merry-Mount

Comparing the Writings of Bradford, Hawthorne and Morton

As every coin has two sides, there are always different perceptions to the same story.  In the case of the Maypole of Merry-mount, the American reader has three viewpoints; two of the tales are written contemporarily by participants in the tale, namely William Bradford and Thomas Morton, and the third version is by Nathaniel Hawthorne approximately two hundred years later (Perkins 64, 955).  By discussing the symbolic Maypole, the authors’ accounts of the merriments, and why they wrote about the Maypole, one may discern the differing perspectives.

                             

Taken from ancientlights.org

First of all, what was the Maypole?  While Bradford was the least descriptive in his writings, which is most likely due to his condemnation of the object, authors Morton and Hawthorne wrote at length about it.  Thomas Morton heralded the Maypole as a symbol of good English tradition and revelry, and he wrote that it was “[a] goodly pine tree of 80 foot long reared up, with a pair of buck’s horns nailed on somewhat near unto the top of it, where it stood as a fair sea mark for directions how to find out the way to mine Host of Ma-re Mount” (Perkins 68).  To compare, Nathaniel Hawthorne took the Maypole a step further in both the symbolism and the description of the Maypole by positioning the Maypole to stand for youth, idealistic dreams, self-deception, and perhaps even for the brevity of life and happiness (948).  There is also a substantial amount of detail, as Hawthorne pens,

“Never has the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on midsummer eve.  This venerated emblem was a pine-tree, which has 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 dresses 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 terminated, 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” (945-46).

Taken from wilsonsalmanac.com

                The accounts of what happened at the Maypole of Merry-Mount differentiate as well, for each writer acquires a contradictory tone in his retelling.  To begin with, Nathaniel Hawthorne discusses at length the festivities, and he makes many connotations to Greco-Roman mythology as well as compares the party-goers to animals (Perkins 946).  His ambiance  however, is the most ambiguous of the three, and when reading “The Maypole of Merry Mount,” one wonders if Hawthorne sees the good and bad in both groups.  To contrast, Thomas Morton has a definite, laissez-faire tone to his retelling of the story.  He assumes the air that the entire ordeal was for a little fun and just “harmless mirth made by young men” (69).  Perhaps by belittling their revelries and by establishing the Maypole as part of English tradition, Morton defended himself from other, more negative, accounts.  Indeed, the most disapproving writer of the Maypole was William Bradford, who looked forward to the end of Merry-Mount’s reign.  He wrote,

“They also set up a maypole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting Indian women for their consorts, dancing and frisking together like so many fairies, or furies, rather; and worse practices.  As if they had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of the Roman goddess Flora, or the beastly practices of the mad Bacchanalians.  Morton likewise, to show his poetry composed sundry rhymes and verses, some tending to lasciviousness, and others to the detraction and scandal of some persons, which he affixed to this idle or idol maypole” (62).

Taken from rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com

Last but not least, the possible motivations for writing about the Maypole greatly affect each writer’s perspective.  Conceivably the easiest author to understand is Thomas Morton as he used the pen to defend himself from the accusations of the Puritans and uphold his (good?) reputation.  Both historical accounts and the very tone of Morton affirm this view, for this man was not very popular with the other folks in Plymouth.  Moving on to William Bradford, he is also somewhat simple to comprehend, for while Bradford disliked Morton and his followers for their business deals (i.e. giving weapons to the Indians) and their pagan, immoral behaviors, he primarily recorded the events as a historical evidence to the Puritans’ victory (Perkins 64).  Indeed, perhaps the mention of Morton and his evil actions, combined with the Puritan’s takeover of Merry-Mount, were all to inform and warn the later generations.  Finally, with Nathaniel Hawthorne, he primarily uses the Maypole as the scene for a tale, or a love story, which defines his entire view of the early colonists.  Hawthorne neither supports the Puritans nor Morton and his followers; instead, he finds a middle ground in between.  This is best said during the wedding dance as Hawthorne writes,

“Alas, for the young lovers!  No sooner has 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 the earth’s doom of care and sorrow, and troubled joy, and had no more a home at Merry Mount” (947). 

Cite:

Perkins, George B., and Barbara Perkins. The American Tradition in Literature. 12th ed. Vol. 1. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2009. Print.