A Rich Widow, Now to be Tane Up or Laid Downe
"Solving the Riddle of Thomas Morton's "Rise Oedipeus
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3563877 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Edith Murphy (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1996 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 755 |
| Publication date | 1996-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The William and Mary Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0043-5597 • E-ISSN: 1933-7698 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2947142 |
| OpenAlex | W2315991265 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
O N May I, i627, Thomas Morton and his men erected a Maypole at Mt. Wollaston, formerly Passonagessit, in Massachusetts Bay. The eighty-foot pole, with a pair of buck horns attached near the top, stood on a hill overlooking the ocean in what is now Quincy, Massachusetts, in sight of ships in the bay. In Morton's words, stood as a faire sea marke for directions; how to finde out the way to mine Hoste of Ma-re Mount.1 The pole challenged Plymouth Colony's control of the area by representing the pagan practices of traditional English culture. Governor William Bradford sputtered with disgust: They also set up a maypole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, dancing and frisking together like so many fairies, or furies, rather; and worse practices.2 While the Maypole has come to represent Morton to future generations, it also included a written challenge to his Pilgrim contemporaries, for to it Morton affixed a poem that announced the new name of his settlement: Ma-re Mount.3 The poem Rise Oedipeus, which Morton published in his book New English Canaan, and the May Day celebration are central in his story and to his interpretation of his own and other Englishmen's experience in New England. Morton mocked the Pilgrims for being unable to decipher the
American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Mormonism, Religion, and History
| Citations per year | 0.22 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2023 (7) |
| Highly cited | No |