"The abuses which are committed in your May-games are infinite. The first whereof is this, that you do use to attyre in woman's apparrell whom you doe most commonly call may-marrions, whereby you infringe that straight commandment given in Deut. xxii. 5, that men must not put on women's apparrell for fear of enormities. Nay, I myself have seene in a May-game a troupe, the greater part whereof hath been men, and yet have they been attyred so like unto women, that their faces being hidde (as they were indeede) a man could not discerne them from women. The second abuse, which of all others is the greatest, is this, that it hath been toulde that your morice dauncers have danced naked in nets: what greater enticement unto naughtiness could have been devised? The third abuse is that you (because you will loose no time) do use commonly to run into woods in the night time, amongst maidens, to fet bowes, in so much as I have hearde of tenne maidens which went to fet May, and nine of them came home with child."[1]
Friar Tuck was Robin Hood's chaplain. The Fool, Tom the Piper, and the dancers were mainly distinguished by their dress. Of the Hobby-horse and the Dragon, Drake speaks as follows: "The
- ↑ Featherstone's Dialogue agaynst light, lewde, and lascivious dancing, 1582. Quoted by Drake, Vol, I., p. 161.
