 patient
As Job himself (at times)---Directed thus, by Fate
To comfort Woman, so unfortunate.
I do profess, by Love’s own beauteous Mother,
That here’s a wise fool’s choice---for her, none other;
Though Scilla still is sick, because no sign
Till this our Revels heals her race and mine.
Asklepios, healer, come! We know right well
All our work’s lost, if we should hear her knell---
The great Earth Mother’s call, none ever withstand!
And yet, that same Love points this land,
With Proclamation, friends! The first of May
Shall here at Merrymount be holy day.
Listen below to “The Song” to music by Mark Waterhouse and Jack Dempsey
Drink and be merry, merry, merry boys,
Let all your delights be in Hymen’s joys:
Yo! to Hymen, now the day is come:
About the merry Maypole take a room...
Make green garlands, bring bottles out
And fill sweet Nectar freely about:
Uncover your head, and fear no harm,
For here’s good liquor to keep it warm.
So drink and be merry, merry, merry boys...
Nectar is a thing assigned
By the Deity's own mind
To cure the heart oppressed with grief
And of good liquors is the chief.
So drink and be merry, merry, merry boys...
Give to the melancholy man
A cup or two of it now and then:
This physic will soon revive his blood
And make him be of a merrier mood.
To drink and be merry, merry, merry boys...
Give to the Nymph that’s free from scorn
Nor Irish [cloth] nor Scotch o’er-worn:
Lasses in beaver coats, come away,
Ye shall be welcome to us night and day.
To drink and be merry, merry, merry boys...
A year after May Day (June 1628), Myles Standish or “Captain Shrimp” sprung his second ambush at Weymouth. But Morton, a guest there, slipped laughing out of Standish’s grasp (and slammed the door behind). He was probably still laughing to think of Plimothers complaining to their nemesis King James’ officials. So he had answered their “friendly warnings”: “The King is dead, and his displeasure with him.” Morton was right on legal and real-world grounds. He had to be forced out.
Plimoth commenced the Keystone Cops period of Thomas Morton’s life. They left him to die on a naked rock on the ocean called The Isles of Shoals off New Hampshire, and he was back “not so much as rebuked” (Bradford) by Fall 1629. But change had already come. John Endecott, with advance-men of the Massachusetts Bay Company, had chopped down the Maypole at Merrymount, demanding “better walking.” Plimoth sent a boat to Maine and arrested one Edward Ashley, another “notorious irregular trader” whose beaver-trade paid Bristol, not Plimothers’ debts.
Listen below to Canaan’s Book III, Ch. 21, on Morton’s 1629 resistance to John Endecott of Salem’s plan --- that all trade and living be “according to the Word of God.”
Tiny clues suggest that Morton shared out his mock-epic “Bacchanall Triumph” at this time, on his voyage through The Underworld at Plimoth. That winter 1629, as Merrymount kept Christmas, Endecott’s ice-caked boat arrived from Salem. “Captain Littleworth” had traded away their corn for a boon of beaver. His men took all they could of Merrymount’s supplies. After all, Morton was not of The Congregation.
Morton, a few original fellows, lone planters and/or Massachusett friends, watched from the hills in June 1630 as the Arbella and other ships arrived at future Boston (the original “Boston Neck” with its marshes and hills above). Aboard were their governor John Winthrop, a future poet in young Anne Bradstreet, and about 700 Puritan families with a charter acquired from King Charles I. Winthrop’s “Reasons” (Papers 2: 141) had already decided that Native Americans could have no rights in land because, supposedly, they did nothing to “improve” it --- for Winthrop, nothing to increase its profits by development according to the ways of people with cattle.
A mile from plenitude at Merrymount, sickness and hunger afflicted Boston through Autumn. More planters than Morton told of these new Puritans’ refusals of help, advice, fresh water and game from outsiders not acceptable under their ideas of religion. One planter recorded another as saying they h