July, 1622- 1625

Research indicates that these MacThoys were a good deal more feral than their ancestors.  To add to the Puritan ire, the MacThoys managed an even better relationship with the Indians and spent their time on beer making and larking about.  Hawthorne's description continues:

In the quietest times, they sang ballads and told tales for the edification of their pious visitors; or perplexed them with juggling tricks; or grinned at them through horse collars; and when sport itself grew wearisome, they made game of their own stupidity and began a yawning match

The MacThoys introduced the Mayday celebrations to the New World.  It being part of their time honored traditions that every Clan gathering have either a wedding or a funeral.  Hawthorne again:

This wedlock was more serious than most affairs of Merry Mount, where jest and delusion, trick and fantasy, kept up a continual carnival.  The Lord and Lady of the May, though their titles must be laid down at sunset, were the same bright eve.  

The Maypole celebration was more than the Plymouth Puritans could stand. In New Canaan, Morton continues the tale:

The setting up of this Maypole was a lamentable spectacle to the precise seperatists : that lived at new Plymouth.  They termed it an Idoll; yea they called it the Calf of Horeb: . . .; threatening to make it a woefull mount and not a merry mount. . . 


Depiction of Maypole in town center.  -- ed.

Miles Standish led the Puritans in an attack on Merry Mount.  They captured Morton and shipped him back to England.  The MacThoys were sorry to see him leave.  Some left the colony but a few stayed on to mind the beer they had made.  The colony continued on for several years when Morton rejoined them again.  It didn't take him long to rile the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The Governor arrested him, chopped down the maypole and burnt Morton's house.  This story is recounted in Hawthorne's The May-pole of Merry Mount.

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Created: May 9, 2001
Last modified: September 12, 2006