which was kept clipped flat like a table, and a set of stairs erected, by means of which the platform could be reached.
On the top a table and chairs were set, and feasting took place. Whether dancing I cannot say, but in all probability in former generations there was dancing there as well as feeding and drinking. These trees where dancing took place are precisely the May-pole in a more primitive form. The May-pole is a makeshift for an actual tree; a pole was brought and set up and adorned with flowers and green boughs, and then danced round. There was in Cornwall, and indeed elsewhere, a grand exodus from the towns and villages to the greenwood on May Day, when the lads and lasses at a very early hour went in quest of May bushes, green boughs and flowers wherewith to decorate the improvised May tree. This was then decorated profusely, and the merry-makers danced about it; ate, drank, and rose up to play, precisely as of old did the Israelites about the Golden Calf in the wilderness of Sinai.
And most assuredly in early times, before Christianity had been established, those dances and revels about a sacred tree, whether naturally grown or whether manufactured as a May-pole, were an act of religious worship addressed to the spirit of vegetation manifesting itself in full vigour in spring.
When S. Boniface strove to bring the Saxons to the knowledge of the truth, he cast down the great oak of Fritzlar which had received divine honours. In this lived the spirit of fertility, and till it fell
