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Elizabethan maypole with dancers accompanied by
pipe and drum player.
The Betley window may have been created as long
ago as 1509 and shows a stripy maypole in the centre
A painting of around 1750 in Elmbridge museum, Weybridge showing
maypole dancing on Monument Green. This unknown amateur artist has
portrayed ordinary people enjoying themselves .Click
on this picture to enlarge it
May Day in Kings Lynn. The maypole is carried and
bears a garland with a doll in the middle (The May Queen?)
London children (1892) improvise a maypole dance
around a lamp post on their street
corner. |
The earliest Maypoles were part of a celebration of Summer which
would be linked in with mystical things like tree worship and more
basic things like an excuse for dancing and having a good time.
They were probably just simple trees cut down and re-erected in the
centre of a village green. We know that by the 16th and 17th
centuries they were often very tall as we have paintings showing
people dancing around them and the Puritans, who hated them,
described in great detail what they were destroying, although the
actual dances were not recorded.
After the
Restoration many Maypoles were re-instated and a notable one was in
the Strand. This was 134 foot high (41m) and stood there until Sir
Isaac Newton used parts of it as a base for his telescope! Some of
the maypoles from that period still survive in villages around the
country. None of these maypoles had ribbons so the dances were
probably any circular dances that were popular at the time.
Other
countries also had maypoles and there are pictures from Germany
showing Maypoles with ribbons and from France and the court of Louis
XIV. There were also pictures showing Maypoles with Ribbons at
Vauxhall Gardens in the 18th century.
The
Maypole Dancing that people know today, happened because John Ruskin
introduced it at Whitelands College in 1881 and created a series of
dances and a May Pageant.
Generations of teachers learnt all about these and took them
wherever they went on to teach and by the middle of the 20th century
it had become a major tradition, much of which survives to the
present day but for some years had been dying out as fewer teachers
knew the dances.
Fortunately over the last few years Maypole Dancing has had a bit of
a revival for all sorts of reasons to do with a greater awareness of
our own culture and the sheer enjoyment by dancers and audience
alike. The difference now is that there is a far greater degree of
creativity with new dances and styles being invented all the time.
Music
In the early days the music would have been played on instruments
like the Pipe & Tabor or the English Bagpipes and we can see these
in those early paintings. By the time John Ruskin came along the
concertina or the fiddle would have been added and then later
instruments would have included the accordion, flutes or any
instruments that were loud enough to work in the open air. That
still hold true but now often people dance to recorded music,
whether recordings of country dance music and instruments like those
mentioned or even pop songs and rap.
Costume
Originally
children would have worn their best clothes. By the time we reached
Victorian times there was a deliberate attempt to re-create an image
of “Merrie England” (which never really existed) and so costumes
would have been chosen to reflect that.
Nowadays
anything goes. There are Tudor Peasants, Victorian Gentlemen &
Ladies, Medieval Costumes which can be quite grand, Sports Kit,
Simple variations on school uniform or just sashes to identify
dancers from spectators.
Other Maypoles & Traditions
While Maypoles are regarded as something very English they exist in
many other parts of the world , although sometimes in slightly
different forms. We have already mentioned Germany & France. There
are traditions in Galicia (in Spain), Finland & Mexico. We have come
across people who learnt Maypole Dancing 60 or more years ago in
Jamaica and Trinidad. We have also heard about a tradition
in Iran.
For more May traditions click here |
A country
maypole.
The Rotunda, Ranelagh Gardens, Chelsea, London, May 1759. Earliest known depiction of ribbon and pole dance in England.
Ribbon plaiting was performed in pleasure gardens
such as Vauxhall, Ranelagh and Cremorne Gardens(above) in the
late 18th and early 19th century.
A traditional English maypole is shown in this
18th century print. The dancers hold hands and circle around the pole
Whitelands teacher training college 1889. The
May Queen ceremony was instigated by John Ruskin, the Victorian art critic
and writer. It was from here that the ribbon dance spread through schools
up and down the country
This traditional tall maypole is raised at Barwick-in-Elmet, Yorkshire, 1951. When it was raised some brave soul
would climb the pole and spin the weather vane at the top. |
