The Token, 1836 - May-Pole of Merry Mount

"The May-Pole of Merry Mount" is a

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest ...

Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that t ...

. It first appeared in ''

The Token and Atlantic Souvenir ''The Token'' (1829–1842) was an annual, illustrated gift book, containing stories, poems and other light and entertaining reading. In 1833, it became ''The Token and Atlantic Souvenir''. History The annual was chiefly edited by Samuel Griswol ...

'' in 1836. It was later included in ''

Twice-Told Tales ''Twice-Told Tales'' is a short story collection in two volumes by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The first volume was published in the spring of 1837 and the second in 1842. The stories had all been previously published in magazines and annuals, hence th ...

'', a collection of Hawthorne's short stories, in

1837 Events January–March * January 1 – The destructive Galilee earthquake causes 6,000–7,000 casualties in Ottoman Syria. * January 26 – Michigan becomes the 26th state admitted to the United States. * February – Charles Dickens's ...

. It tells the story of the colony of Mount Wollaston, or Merry Mount, a 17th-century British colony located in what is now

Quincy, Massachusetts Quincy ( ) is a coastal U.S. city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the largest city in the county and a part of Greater Boston, Metropolitan Boston as one of Boston's immediate southern suburbs. Its population in 2020 was 1 ...

Plot synopsis

The people of Merry Mount, whom Hawthorne calls the "crew of

Comus In Greek mythology, Comus (; grc, Κῶμος, ''Kōmos'') is the god of festivity, revels and nocturnal dalliances. He is a son and a cup-bearer of the god Dionysus. He was represented as a winged youth or a child-like satyr and represents ana ...

", celebrate the marriage of a youth and a maiden (Edgar and Edith). They dance around a may-pole and are described as resembling forest creatures. Their festivities are interrupted by the arrival of

John Endicott John Endecott (also spelled Endicott; before 1600 – 15 March 1664/1665), regarded as one of the Fathers of New England, was the longest-serving governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which became the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He ser ...

and his Puritan followers. Endicott cuts down the may-pole and orders that the people of Merry Mount be whipped. Stricken by the newlyweds, he spares them but orders they put on more conservative clothing. He also orders that Edgar cut his hair in the "pumpkin shell" style in order to reflect the Puritans' strictness.

Publication history

"The May-Pole of Merry Mount" was first published in ''

'' for 1836, credited only as "by the author of The Gentle Boy". The same issue included Hawthorne's "

The Minister's Black Veil "The Minister's Black Veil" is a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was first published in the 1836 edition of ''The Token and Atlantic Souvenir'', edited by Samuel Goodrich. It later appeared in '' Twice-Told Tales'', a collection of ...

" and "The Wedding Knell".Brown, Nina E. ''A Bibliography of Nathaniel Hawthorne''. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1905: 211. It was later included in the compilation ''

''.

Themes

Endicott and his Puritan followers suppress freedom and individuality, a common theme for Hawthorne. At the beginning of the story "jollity" and "gloom" are said to be contending for an empire, the Merry Mount colonists personifying jollity or mirth and the Puritans being the emblems of gloom. Hawthorne satirizes both parties and the narrative point of view seems to oscillate between them. It is perhaps worth noting that Hawthorne chooses to use "jollity", "mirth" and "gloom" and not "joy", "woe" or "sadness". Real joy, Hawthorne seems to be saying, arises spontaneously out of contrasts. The only time he mentions it is when the youth and maiden suddenly realise that their mirth is visionary and that by truly loving they had subjected themselves "to earth's doom of care and sorrow, and troubled joy, and had no more a home at Merry Mount". The youth and maiden go from being Merry Mounters to, presumably, becoming members of the Puritan community. In this sense it is not clear whether Hawthorne actually sides with the Puritans or the Merry Mount people, or if he is trying to find some middle ground. By his ambiguous point of view and use of allegory, Hawthorne seems to be trying to focus the readers' attention on the fact that certain aspects of the American past were already shrouded and obscured by myth. It is not too difficult to see the Merry Mounters as the precursors of

hippie A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...

s ( Beats, or, perhaps, more accurately

free thinkers Freethought (sometimes spelled free thought) is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and that beliefs should instead be reached by other metho ...

) or the Puritans as the archetype of the establishment. Hawthorne goes against the tradition of casting America as a promised land where people came to act out their dreams or to possess it by portraying both the Puritans and the Merry Mounters as a persecuted minority who sought refuge in the new land. Being a descendant of the earliest arrivals who were seeking freedom over 200 years before, Hawthorne must have known well the stories that typically lie behind official tales, such as those that we find from William Bradford,

John Winthrop John Winthrop (January 12, 1587/88 – March 26, 1649) was an English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading figures in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second major settlement in New England following Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led t ...

, and others. His insight about the interplay of personal freedom and family, or civic, responsibility continues to resonate today. As Nathaniel knew then, these matters of choice, such as whether ' strong watter' leads, by necessity, to debauchery or not, are perpetual issues readdressed with each generation. And he is critical of Merry Mount, suggesting that the Puritan critique of feckless pleasure-seeking has substantial truth, even if the Puritans themselves are a little heavy-handed.

Stage adaptations

The American poet

Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the ''Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects i ...

adapted this story into one of the three plays in his trilogy ''

The Old Glory ''The Old Glory'' is a play written by the American poet Robert Lowell that was first performed in 1964. It consists of three pieces that were meant to be performed together as a trilogy. The first two pieces, " Endecott and the Red Cross" and "M ...

,'' first produced by the

American Place Theatre The American Place Theatre was founded in 1963 by Wynn Handman, Sidney Lanier, and Michael Tolan at St. Clement's Church, 423 West 46th Street in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, and was incorporated as a not-for-profit theatre in that year. Tennesse ...

in New York City in 1964. Lowell's version combines parts of this story with another Hawthorne short story, "Endicott and the Red Cross," and with sections from the early American colonist Thomas Morton's book ''New Canaan''.

Howard Hanson Howard Harold Hanson (October 28, 1896 – February 26, 1981)''The New York Times'' – Obituaries. Harold C. Schonberg. February 28, 1981 p. 1011/ref> was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American class ...

's opera '' Merry Mount'' is loosely based on the story.

References

External links

Original publication
in ''The Token'' (1836) {{DEFAULTSORT:May-pole of Merry Mount, The 1836 short stories Short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne Works adapted into operas Short stories adapted into plays