 cries another Puritan
writer. "Do they not use night-watchings to rob and steale young trees
out of other men's grounde, and bring them home into their parishe, with
minstrels playing before: and when they have set it up they will decke
it with floures and garlands and daunce rounde (men and women togither,
moste unseemley and intolerable, as I have proved before) about the
tree, like unto the children of Israell that daunced about the golden
calfe that they had set up."[328]

Thomas Hall, another author of the same class, was also moved to
eloquence on the subject: "Had this rudeness been acted only in some
ignorant and obscure parts of the land I had been silent; but when I
perceived that the complaints were general from all parts of the land,
and that even in Cheapside itself the rude rabble had set up this ensign
of profaneness, and had put the Lord Mayor to the trouble of seeing it
pulled down, I could not, out of my dearest respects and tender
compassion to the land of my nativity, and for the prevention of like
disorders (if possible) for the future, but put pen to paper, and
discover the sinful use and vile profaneness that attend such
misrule."[329]

As every one knows, the Puritans had their will of the May-poles, and
the Long Parliament in April 1644 decreed their removal as "a heathenish
vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickednesse." They were
indeed reinstated after the Restoration and the old festivities revived,
but the Puritan epoch had left its mark upon the spirit of the people,
and May-day was never again quite what it had been, so that the
following lament by a writer of Cromwell's time was not quite out of
date even when King Charles had again come to his own:--

  Happy the age and harmlesse were the dayes
  (For then true love and amity was found)
  When every village did a May-pole raise,
  And Whitsun-ales and May-games did abound,
  And all the lusty yonkers in a rout
  With merry lasses daunc'd the rod about.
  Then Friendship to their banquets bid the guests
  And poor men