w that the Maypoles were not always honestly
come by! However, the Puritan writers (from whose bitter and detailed
complaints we learn most of what we know about the early English May-day
customs) are certainly prejudiced, and perhaps not quite trustworthy
witnesses. One good man groans lamentably: "What adoe make our young men
at the time of May? Do they not use night watchings to rob and steale
young trees out of other men's grounde, and bring them into their
parishe, with minstrels playing before?"

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 c