From the Archives: Men (and Women) Behaving Badly: May Poles

Isabella reporting:

We've just begun the merry month of May Day and May poles. While most of us today think of May poles with school children clutching the ribbons, that sweetly pretty version is a Victorian invention. Earlier May poles were much less innocent, with pagan antecedents so distant that no one knows exactly when the first was, ahem, erected.

But there's no mistaking their symbolism: a phallic pole firmly planted in Mother Earth, part of the annual celebration of fertility, procreation, and returning spring. Most May Rites were in that spirit, too, with much drinking and bawdy carousing. Puritanical Christians were appalled, as this description from Anatomy of Abuses (1583) by conservative pamphleteer Philip Stubbs (c.1555-1610) attests:

"All the young men and maids, old men and wives, run gadding over night to the woods, grove, hills, and mountains, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes; and in the morning they return, bringing with them...their May pole, which they bring home with great veneration, as thus: they have twenty or forty yoke of oxen, every ox having a sweet nose-gay of flowers placed on the tip of his horns, and these oxen draw home this May pole (this stinking idol, rather) which is covered allover with flowers and herbs, bound round with strings, from the top to the bottom, and sometimes painted with variable colours, with three hundred men, women, and children following with great devotion. And thus being reared up...they fall to dance about it, like as the heathen people did at the dedication of the Idols....I have heard it credibly reported (viva voce)...that of forty, three-score, or a hundred maids going to the wood over night, there have scarcely the third part of them returned home again undefiled. These be the fruits with which these cursed pastimes bring forth."

Could there be any coincidence that May with its May pole and night-long "gadding" is soon followed by June, the traditional month of weddings? 

Above: The May-pole Dance, c. 1620. While there are many written descriptions of 17th c. May poles, both in their favor and against them, this demure illustration is the only contemporary one that I could find. Perhaps all the artists were too busy running into the woods?

Breakfast Links: Week of April 25, 2016

Breakfast Links are served - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Ownership and imprints: famous hands and famous gloves.
• Even a genius has to sell himself: the remarkable resume of Leonardo daVinci.
• Wealthy boys from Eton who were accustomed to getting their own way: The Eton College Riot, 1818.
• "I don't know whether to kiss you or spank you": a half-century of fear of an unspanked woman.
• Image: 17thc blocks for printing playing cards.
• The golden age of the classic high heel: Ferragamo, Vivier, and the stiletto.
• The extraordinary life of Marianne North, Victorian explorer, naturalist, and painter.
• A history of virility, and why it's different (and maybe better than) mere manliness.
• Blue men, the bean-nighe, and a brownie: more mythical creatures of Scotland.
• Image: Postcard of American tourists in Europe, 1910.
• Why the colors you see in an art museum can't be replicated today.
• Why there's nothing vanilla about vanilla.
• An early 19thc church in Manhattan's Henry Street still retains its slave galleries.
• Painstaking portraits of 19thc dermatology patients.
• Image: Central dome of the 1889 Paris World's Fair Gallery of Machines - the world's largest interior space at the time.
• Could the Broadway smash Hamilton keep a woman's face off the $10 bill?
• The secret history of the Civil War photo at the center of the black confederate myth.
• Egyptian blue, the oldest known artificial pigment.
• Only a year after the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, Mrs. Irwin wears an "earthquake costume" to a party.
• A tale of two 18thc patriots from Salem, MA.
• For an editor in 1800, the best way to document a brutal local murder was to publish an epic poem about the crime.
• Image: Good luck using this 19thc tax calculator.
• Long (but interesting!) read: conversations and chimney-pieces: the role of the hearth in 18thc British portraiture.
• Watch 65 of Charlie Chaplin's films free online.
• Presidential inaugurations: national unity and partisan poking.
• Is Longfellow's famous poem about Paul Revere's ride really a call to 19thc abolitionists?
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.

2NHG Signing Books in Burlington, MA

Loretta & Isabella report:

There we were, at last year's book signing.

We'll be there again.

Loretta & Isabella
aka Two Nerdy History Girls
will, once again, be signing their books
in Burlington MA.
Open to the public.

Details below—with thanks to Penny Watson of NEC/RWA for posting a lovely image for me to steal.

Hope to see you there!

What's Old is New: Double Rings

Isabella reporting,

Among the hottest trends in jewelry right now are double rings - rings whose designs span two fingers. It's considered a look that's new, hot, fresh, and very 2016.

So even though I know that there's nothing new under the sun, I was surprised when I saw this ring, upper left, last week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The shadow reveals the two rings beneath the three stones, and the black-and-white photo, right, from the museum's web site shows the joined rings more clearly.

Featuring an emerald flanked by two rose-cut diamonds set in gold, the double ring was made in New York in 1895 by the well-regarded jewelry firm of Marcus & Company. The company's founder, Herman Marcus (1828-1899), was known for taking inspiration from the past for his designs, and this ring is in the Renaissance revival style popular at the time. So very 1895, by way of the 16th century.

But it turns out that the design is even older than that. A little more investigation, and I learned that the double ring design dates back at least to the 1st century BC, when the ring, lower right, was made in Hellenistic Greece. With an amethyst flanked by two garnets set in twisted bezels, this gold ring would be right in style today. Proving that, once again, what's old (even very old!) is new again.

Above: Double ring, Marcus and Company, 1895, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Top left photography ©2016 Susan Holloway Scott.
Below: Hellenistic Greek gold double ring, 2nd-1st century. Private collection; image via TimeLine Auctions.

Shakespeare's Buildings, Lost, Found, Recreated

William Shakespeare-Chandos Portrait

Loretta reports:

Shakespeare’s birthday is 26 April, but since this is my day to post, we celebrate a day early.

I hastily put down a date, which turned out to be wrong, so let's just celebrate Shakespeare's being born in April around this time, we think.

I had a chance to experience a Shakespeare play in something close to what it might have been like when he was alive. A few years ago, we were in England, and had, for once, made reservations sufficiently far in advance to see one of the Bard’s works at the recreated Globe Theatre.

Though it represents an educated guess at what the original Globe was like, it seemed an authentic enough experience to me. At one point in the performance of Much Ado About Nothing, it started raining. Those standing under the open roof pulled up their rain hoods or umbrellas or simply got rained on.

It was an altogether different experience from watching a performance in a closed theater, or even at an outdoor theater. For one thing, the playhouse is small, and the audience is practically mingling with the players. All in all, it was a fabulous experience, and I hope to return next year.

The Globe

That was one reason I became so intrigued when an email message invited me to look at this beautiful series of Shakespeare-related photographs—including some fine shots of the recreated Globe Theatre—and I learned about the discovery, by members of the Museum of London Archaeology,  of the Curtain Theatre, where it’s believed some of Shakespeare’s plays made their debuts.

The Curtain is going to be a centerpiece, interestingly enough, of a luxury development. You can find out more here and here.

There’s more about the Curtain Theatre at the MOLA site, and you can learn more about MOLA on their blog.

Images: Shakespeare, Chandos portrait, National Portrait Gallery via Wikipedia.
The Globe Theatre courtesy Shakespeare's Buildings

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.