Maypole - where to get one!

Subject: Maypole - where to get one!
From: Hawker
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 07:58 AM

Hi, a friend of mine is interested in Maypole tradiditons and is interested to locate a UK supplier of such things, I know someone here will be able to help me point her in the right direction!
Thanking you in advance......
Lucy

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: AggieD
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 08:05 AM

I very much doubt that you will find a ready made maypole, most people/ communities would make one themselves

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: Mr Happy
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 08:08 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maypole

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: theleveller
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 08:19 AM

First sharpen your axe....

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: Mr Happy
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 08:24 AM

Try a carpet shop.

They often have scrap poles which are used as part of the packaging on new carpets, they're put up the inside of the rolls to stop 'em bending in transit.

Used to all be wooden poles, but some are now plastic or cardboard tubes.

Have a ring around, then make your own

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: fiddler
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 08:38 AM

Hi Lucy,

Last one I cam accross with when we built one for a school in Bracknell!

Cast about and look for parts, we used a kiddies bike stabiliser wheen to built the top of and part of a pals old Finals in Fine art piece of work for the pole.

The gound plate was steel chequer plate with a socket welded on to it and four stout pegs made from reinforcing rods to hold it in place (sandbags when it was used on Hard surfaces).

So...... to all those Glib comments about sharpening your axe, add learn to weld, paint, flower arrange etc......

Great fun though.

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: Greenacres
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 09:39 AM

There are some UK makers/suppliers listed in the back of the book "Dance Around the Maypole" published by EFDSS. If you email [e-mail] they will give you the details. That book also tells you how to make your own.

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: Mitch the Bass
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 09:43 AM

Educational Aids
http://www.edaids.com/
in Wellingborough do Maypoles, braids, books and CDs.

Mitch

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: vectis
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 10:12 AM

Try Mike Ruff on
http://www.mikeruffmusic.net/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=8&id=17&Itemid=36
He does maypoles and will come and organise dances and music round it. He is said to be very good.
See you at Pennymoor?
Mary

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: Harmonium Hero
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 11:47 AM

Of course, the maypoles and maypole dances you see now are of the continental variety. If you wnt to see a real English maypole in action, try and catch up with Abram Morris Dancers in Abram and surrounding districts on the last Saturday in June. See the Abram dance done properly.
John Kelly.

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: Hawker
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 01:46 PM

My family come from Yorkshire and my great great uncle caused a lady to faint once when he shinned up the pole to give it a coat of paint before the May revelries and managed to slip and lose his trousers in the scramble to regain his grip in the pole -they somehow got caught in the crown at the top, where the floral decoration goes.
My friend is going to make one and really is interested in dimensions, height and all those mundane things associated with the ribbons attached to a pole type, and the dilemma of one rotating head or 2 or fixed head etc!
Mitch the bass that was who I was trying to remember! my local school bought one from them about 8 years ago.
Cheers, Lucy

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 04:09 PM

I was going to suggest Mike Ruff, but I see Vectis got there first!

Kitty

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: fiddler
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 04:01 AM

Lucy,

Sara Marshall may have photographs of the one we put together or be able to get sizes for you.

Do you still have her contacts if not PM me and I'll get them for you.

Andy

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 07:50 AM

If anyone had photos of the top to show what fittings are there I would be interested to see them. If a certain house purchase goes through I may be obliged to make one myself.
Is it possible to make a combine maypole and flagpole?
I was thinking of having it mounted on a pivot so that you didn't need to climb it to repaint it!

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: GUEST,Elaine - guest
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 12:33 PM

Is the English Folk song and dance society - Cecil Sharp House, still extant in London? I got a pamphlet from them with maypole dances and illustration of the head. I may be able to send a picture to you if it's not available any more. (This was probably 20 years ago).

I got lucky when I tried this for a Renaissance festival at a college, my landlord was taking down a small black ash tree, fairly straight, so I tied it to the roof of the car, drove 90 miles to Kalamazoo. Used two people as holders, and I think, a bicycle tire for the top. It was maybe 12-14' or so.   

I was going to turn it into baskets but overnight some fledgling woodsman chopped half of it up to burn in a campfire to impress his girlfriend. We were going to use it the next day too, put paid to that.   I was distinctly unhappy. To stabilize it, I had had to hold it to the roof with one hand, all that 150 miles! Ah well, things we do when young and foolish.

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 29 Apr 08 - 08:07 PM

In the early '90s I came across a maypole in a village on the outskirts of Leeds. About sixty feet tall or more, it would have needed a fairly serious crane to lift it into place. I later discovered that these were quite a feature in the locality, engendering fierce local rivalry between villages. So much so, that one village's pole was stolen in the middle of the night. I'm not suggesting that as a solution to your maypole-sourcing problem, but the image of masked midnight maypole-thieves has remained with me (and may now remain with you!)

Apparently, maypole-theft has its own rules in Bavaria: Wikipedia: Maypole Tradition in Bavaria. Perhaps the same applies in Yorkshire?

Ross

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: Anne Lister
Date: 30 Apr 08 - 04:14 PM

As a matter of interest, stealing the maypole was very much part of the tradition in a friend's village (in North Wales). Specifically, the men's job was to create the maypole while the women created the garlands. Then the women would steal the men's pole, with taunts (of course you can imagine what kind of taunts) and the men had to get it back before the dancing could begin.
We did this one May eve a few years back. It was raining steadily and the men hadn't expected us to steal their pole, so it took quite a lot of taunting to get them to follow us into the very wet forest. By the time the pole was re-erected (can't write any of this without the double entendres) there were several mud slicks where we were dancing, and I can only say that some of the dancing was less than graceful as a result. But we laughed. A lot. Trouble was, we couldn't tell when the sun had actually risen because there was so much cloud cover, so we probably danced a lot longer than necessary.

Anne

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: Rasener
Date: 30 Apr 08 - 05:36 PM

Market Rasen has a maypole and will be used on Monday.

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: GUEST, Topsie
Date: 01 May 08 - 08:41 AM

From Walter Thornbury's Old and New London (1878) [www.british-history.ac.uk]. A replica maypole can be seen hanging below an archway near the church.

"Perhaps of all the old churches of London there is scarcely one so interesting as St. Andrew Undershaft, Leadenhall Street, nearly opposite the site of the old East India House, the very name itself suggesting some curious and almost forgotten tradition. Stow is peculiarly interesting about this church, which he says derived its singular name from "a high or long shaft or Maypole higher than the church steeple" (hence under shaft), which used, early in the morning of May Day, the great spring festival of merry England, to be set up and hung with flowers opposite the south door of St. Andrew's.
This ancient Maypole must have been the very centre of those joyous and innocent May Day revelries sung of by Herrick:—
"Come, my Corinna; and comming, marke
How each field turns a street, each street a parke
Made green and trimm'd with trees; see how
Devotion gives each house a bough,
Or branch; each porch, each doore, ere this,
An arke, a tabernacle is,
Made up of white-thorn neatly interwove;
As if here were those cooler shades of love.
Can such delights be in the street
And open fields, and we not see't?
Come, we'll abroad, and let's obey
The proclamation made for May,
And sin no more, as we have done, by staying;
But, my Corinna, come, let's go a Maying."
The venerable St. Andrew's Maypole was never raised after that fatal "Evil May Day," in the reign of Henry VIII., which we have mentioned in our chapter on Cheapside. It remained dry-rotting on its friendly hooks in Shaft Alley till the third year of Edward VI., when the Reforming preachers, growing unusually hot and zealous in the sunshine of royal favour, and, as a natural consequence, considerably intolerant, one Sir Stephen, a curate of the neighbouring St. Katherine's Christ Church, Leadenhall Street, preached against the good old Maypole, and called it an "Idol," advising all men to alter the Popish names of churches and the names of the days of the week, to eat fish any day but Friday and Saturday, and to keep Lent any time but between Shrovetide and Easter. The same eccentric reformer used to preach out of a high elm-tree in his churchyard, and sing high mass in English from a tomb, far from the altar. The sermon denouncing the Maypole was preached at Paul's Cross, when Stow himself was present; and that same afternoon the good old historian says he saw the Shaft Alley people, "after they had dined, to make themselves strong, gathered more help, and with great labour, raising the shaft from the hooks whereon it had rested two-and-thirty years, they sawed it in pieces, every man taking for his share so much as had lain over his door and stall, the length of his house." Thus was the "idol" mangled and burned. Not long after there was a Romish riot in Essex, and the bailiff of Romford was hung just by the well at Aldgate, on the pavement in front of Stow's own house. While on the ladder this poor perplexed bailiff said he did not know why he was to be hung, unless it was for telling Sir Stephen (the enemy of the Maypole) that there was heavy news in the country, and many men were up in Essex. After this man's death Sir Stephen stole out of London, to avoid popular reproach, and was never afterwards heard of by good old Stow. And this is the whole story of St. Andrew's Maypole and the foolish curate of Catherine Cree."

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: GUEST,buspassed
Date: 01 May 08 - 08:50 AM

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: catspaw49
Date: 01 May 08 - 08:57 AM

Viagra?

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: GUEST,bupassed
Date: 01 May 08 - 08:58 AM

Do't you just hate predictive posting!?

Technical Query: If you have a revolving top to the maypole doesn't
                  that negate the clever bit of reversing the steps   
                  to unravel the ribbons?

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: GUEST,Cats
Date: 01 May 08 - 12:45 PM

Hawker, try contacting the maypole club at Lanreath where they still steal the maypole.

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: manitas_at_work
Date: 01 May 08 - 12:50 PM

Re: St Andrew's Undershaft,

Unfortunately, the replica maypole (it was a barber-pole type jobbie) went missing a couple of years ago and the building it was attached to is being pulled down. However, there is a pedestal set on the pavement where it used to stand giving some history of the maypole. This is where the party accompanying the City Jack usually leave a garland each year. I know this as it's only a few yards from where I work.

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 01 May 08 - 01:17 PM

If there's a freely revolving top, all can dance the same direction with no winding of ribbons. In order to wind the ribbons, some (like every other person) dance one direction, the rest the other direction (with dipping and diving to weave the ribbons) and the rotating top is not an issue.

Do a search on YouTube to see it.

~ Becky in Tucson
(who's never actually danced with so fancy a pole)

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: GUEST, Topsie
Date: 06 May 08 - 05:08 AM

Thanks for the update, Manitas.
The replica pole was there last time I looked, but that was several years ago.

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: CupOfTea
Date: 06 May 08 - 07:16 PM

I was enchanted by the cleverness of a new-made maypole I danced around last week, done up for the occasion of a dancer's 50th birthday: she wanted folks to dance the maypole. The birthday girl instigator had used a length of PVC plumbing pipe for the shaft of the pole, all white and gleaming. The base was the pedestal from a pedestal chair that gave a nice sleek and solid footing to it, with a wood plug (@6 inch deep) replacing the seat that had been removed, fit to the inside of the PVC pipe to hold it steady. The topper was a small lampshade, covered in flowers, that fit snugly around pole, with nice thick grossgrain ribbons that I thought must have cost a fair bit, "Oh not so bad" she said, "I got them from a florist supply place." It really was a pretty thing - shame the 'dancing' didn't come up to the same quality.

I'm sure we'd have been the laughing stock of anyone in England, but for a bunch of folks where perhaps 4 of us had even seen a maypole before, we got by. For a midwestern Anglophile who hadn't had a chance to do this in nearly a decade, it was a glorious thing to do on a great spring day, in the sunshine, in a lot redolent of blooming lilacs.

Subject: RE: Maypole - where to get one!
From: GUEST,doc.tom
Date: 07 May 08 - 07:32 PM

Mike Ruff will supply, tyeach and play if you pay him enough! As Mike's site seems a bit dodgy, you can also go through www.tradamis.org