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Homage to Morton of Merrymount

To you I pay this homage and devotion:
Thomas Morton, Host of Merrymount—
You, whose learnèd writing put in motion
The court suit that brought Plymouth to account.

Yes, Plymouth Bay—that gaggle of fanatics
Singing hymns with nasal intonation—
Those prim, precisian whiners and schismatics
Self-exiled to a dismal congregation.

The “godly” was the name they chose to use,
Those wheezing bags of piety and preaching,
With rigid plainness upright in their pews,
Cropped hair, Geneva bands, and moral screeching

Against infractions of God’s Holy Rule;
Against tobacco, dancing, festive bowers;
Against plum pudding, mummery, and Yule;
Against beribboned Maypoles bright with flowers.

Merrymount was rich, Plymouth a failure—
But more than that provoked the Pilgrims’ frown:
Laughter, dancing, tipsy Bacchanalia
With cute Algonquin maidens, svelte and brown,

But most of all that Maypole, with its trimming,
Around which gamboled men and native girls.
The Calvinistic heart filled up, a-brimming
With all the envious rage of doltish churls.

John Endicott led Massachusetts Bay—
A pompous, prating, Gospel-quoting clod
Whose mission was to squelch all carefree play
And cast in stocks the reprobates of God.

He saw the Mount as one demonic revel
Where sinners followed impulse, and unbidden
Would work the scarlet whimsies of the Devil
And not the labors of the scripture-ridden.

At last he could not bear your breezy frolic
And summoned a militia armed with pike
And matchlock, to disperse the happy rollick
Of Maypole-twining dancers. Set to strike,

They marched uphill to Merrymount, a herd
Led by the killcow you called “Captain Shrimp”—
We know him as the tongue-tied little turd
Miles Standish, with his scowl and soldier’s limp.

To spare all bloodshed, you made no resistance;
The godly folk soon had you seized and bound.
Sweet Merrymount they scorched to non-existence;
Miles Standish hacked your Maypole to the ground.

Once back in London you took up your pen
To tell the truth about the Lord’s Elect:
You showed New England was a stinking fen
That someone ought to drain and disinfect.

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Notes

Thomas Morton of Merrymount (1576-1647) was the classically educated leader (or “Host”) of a small colony of Anglican Englishmen in Massachusetts. They were not connected with the Calvinistic Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Company. The freedom and cheerfulness of his little society at Merrymount (today Quincy, Massachusetts) enraged the strict Puritans at Plymouth Bay, who illegally sent a military force under Miles Standish to attack and destroy it. Morton returned to England, where he wrote New England Canaan (1637), a devastating indictment of the Puritan mentality. He was also instrumental in getting the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company revoked in 1635.

Plymouth Bay: the area in Massachusetts where the Pilgrims settled.

Bacchanalia: the Latin term for wild sexual celebrations in honor of Bacchus (Dionysus). They included singing, dancing, drinking, and indiscriminate intercourse.

Algonquin: the Massachusetts tribes in the Plymouth Bay environs were of Algonquin stock.

John Endicott: (1600-1665) governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was a fanatical Puritan of violent temperament.

Miles Standish: (1584-1657) a professional soldier hired by the Pilgrims as an administrative aide and military advisor to their colony. He is the subject of Longfellow’s poem “The Courtship of Miles Standish.”

Captain Shrimp: the derogatory nickname of Miles Standish, thought up by Thomas Morton of Merrymount. Standish was of short physical stature.

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Joseph S. Salemi has published five books of poetry, and his poems, translations and scholarly articles have appeared in over one hundred publications world-wide.  He is the editor of the literary magazine TRINACRIA and writes for Expansive Poetry On-line. He teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University and in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College.


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23 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    Your intrinsic detail with great meter and rhyme, make this a work with which to be reckoned and to be recognized as one of your superb classical poems capturing an historic tableau. I needed a couple of the notes (Thomas Morton and Captain Shrimp) to further understand the characters.

    Reply
  2. Margaret Coats

    Glad you remembered the opposition to plum pudding! And the reason for round mince pies today is because, back in Merrie Olde Englande, the celebratory dessert was baked in rectangular shape as a manger bed for Baby Jesus, wherein an image might be placed. Too much for Puritans! In stanza 8, I appreciate the contrast you make (temporarily from the perspective of the prating Endicott) between the devil and the scripture-ridden who seem to self-identify as God.

    I wonder if you adopt some of Morton’s own style in “New English Canaan” (please correct the title in your citation). I haven’t read it, though I know it was a compendium of satire and general information. 1637 is an ominous publication date, as the English civil wars were yet to come, with the puritanical (and even iconoclastic) side powerful for a while.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, Margaret. Yes, the correct title of Morton’s book is “New English Canaan.” That was my typo. It’s a huge text, packed with commentary, argument, naturalist observations of the plants, animals, and topography of New England, descriptions of Indian culture and habits, and even some poetry! And it shows that Morton was totally entranced and delighted by the new world.

      If you mean the style of this poem, I probably kept (unconsciously) to a “period” style of Elizabethan-Jacobean polemical literature. That was the subject of my dissertation, so for years I was immersed in that kind of stuff.

      I don’t think I make a contrast between the devil and the scripture-ridden. The devil can quote scripture, so I don’t see much difference between Puritan Bible-thumpers and the Arch-fiend. They’re both up to no good.

      Reply
  3. Warren Bonham

    Very well researched, reasoned and written! It’s amazing how superficially this is taught in schools. Thanks for completing my education

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      To LTC Peterson and Warren Bonham — thank you both for your kind words. There are so many small historical incidents that cry out for poetic treatment, and the story of Merrymount is one of them. If Thomas Morton is mentioned at all these days by establishment historians, he is dismissed or denigrated as a troublemaker and villain. Even as late as the 1920s, Stephen Vincent Benet depicted him as a damned soul from Hell in his story “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” In fact Morton should be celebrated as an icon of American freedom.

      Reply
  4. Cynthia Erlandson

    As The Preacher says, there is a time to laugh, and there is a time to dance, along with a time to be somber; and we are to eat our bread with joy, and drink our wine with a merry heart. The “dismal congregation” of Puritans you describe here must not have read that part of Scripture. I didn’t recall the facts about Miles Standish or Thomas Morton, so I’m glad to have read this well-told story.

    Reply
  5. Joseph S. Salemi

    Cynthia, an astute writer once said that Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, at some time, might be happy

    Reply
  6. James Sale

    More wonderful writing – love its acerbity! Sadly, ‘puritanism’ is a yeast the Devil loves, especially as it mimics holiness; alack-a-day, the UK is about to be overwhelmed by its new rising in our Labour/socialist government. Starmer, the new Malvolio. Let’s keeps satire rolling. Thanks.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      James, thanks for your appreciative comments, and accept my condolences for the fact that our English friends are now compelled to live under a Labourite-Liberal socialist yoke.

      Starmer’s party has now had the cheek to send a hundred stupid busybodies from the U.K. to our country, to interfere in our upcoming election. Quite frankly, this will backfire badly, since in many Americans there is a dormant strain of anti-British resentment, going all the way back to the Revolution and the War of 1812. Anyone ringing our doorbell and asking us in a plummy-posh accent to vote for Harris is going to get punched out.

      Reply
  7. Brian A. Yapko

    This poem, Joe, is well-nigh perfect in both form and substance. This is a bit of history which I did not know but, given my knowledge of Cromwell and the banishing of joy in England after Charles I was beheaded, your story about puritanical events on this side of the Atlantic does not surprise me. The specifics relate to early New England and explain to some degree the sources of its smug impulses to compel the attitudes and behavior of others. As Americans we tend to idealize and romanticize the Pilgrims and Puritans – especially as we approach Thanksgiving and contemplate the concept of religious freedom. But what we see from the Puritans is that they wanted the religious freedom to compel people what to believe and how to act. The first Thanksgiving, sure. But these are also the people who promoted the Salem Witch Trials in the not-too-distant 1690s.

    You do not blare your observations from the pulpit like Cotton Mather but neither are you neutral. We know well what your speaker thinks of the “godly” people of Massachusetts Bay and the “turd” Miles Standish. But nonetheless, you allow the reader to reach his own conclusions about how jealousy and intolerance can masquerade as religious piety. Doing truly rotten things and hiding it behind the cover of “noble purpose” is an ancient story.

    What we have here with Merrymount is a portrait of bullying behavior by the arrogant who believe they have ideas so great that they must be compelled into law everywhere they can get away with it. The modern behavior of leftists who have created their own intolerant religion of “social justice” is a clear corollary as a “mostly peaceful” party of “love and tolerance’ but who consistently preach hatred of America, of white men, of Christians, of Jews, of traditional genders, of the unborn, of the Constitution, of the Supreme Court. And your poem reminds us that those who hate are determined to make sure no one else can enjoy life.

    As much as modern leftists hate being confronted with facts, I’m sure the Puritans must have hated the idea that Jesus turned water into wine in celebration of a wedding. But such bullying, intolerant people find ways to cherry-pick evidence and observation to fit into their twisted vision. Rarely do they recognize the extent to which they themselves are the jerks.

    Your poem, Joe, holds a mirror up to modern society as well as the past. You have offered important insight by doing so.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Brian, thank you for this very perceptive and detailed comment. You have gone to the heart of what my poem is about. Indeed, the Puritans had no concept of “religious freedom” or “liberty of conscience” or even different styles of worship within the Anglican Church. Their rage against candles and surplices and stained glass was just as ferocious as their hatred of bishops.

      As for Jesus, He did indeed turn water to wine at Cana — something that our fundamentalist prohibitionists did gymnastic leaps of pseudo-argument to get around. He also forgave the woman taken in adultery, paid scant attention to ritual dietary regulations, and spoke sarcastically about those who made a public show of their religiosity. I can’t see how the Puritans read their Bible without noticing all this.

      Everything in Puritanism is rooted in anger, resentment, dislike of dissent, and a terrifying fear of not being one of the “Elect.” And their descendants are active today, in the new fields of left-liberal ideology. This explains the lockstep thinking, the fear of saying the wrong thing, and the alacrity with which left-liberals pounce upon heterodox opinions.

      Reply
  8. Adam Sedia

    One of poetry’s most wonderful functions is to tell stories that would otherwise be lost or forgotten, and you’ve done that here. You also restate an important counter-narrative to the hagiography of the early Puritans whose descendants wrote the narrative of our colonial founding. Personally, I agree that Puritanism is one of the worst of this country’s innate vices and continues to be a scourge on public policy, with wokeness as only the most recent manifestation of its self-righteousness. H.L. Mencken wrote a wonderful essay on Puritanism in America that still sounds fresh today.

    But back to your poem. It tells an engaging narrative that brings the events to life. The language in places is archaic (using “bowers” as an end-rhyme and “a-brimming”), but it seems appropriate in a historical narrative like this. And in classic Salemian fashion we see “turd” appear as an end-rhyme.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Adam, your reading of the poem is exactly what I intended. Puritanism is alive and well in the United States, as Mencken saw very early in his career, and as Camille Paglia recognized in the 1980s and 90s. But today it is secularized, and goes by the name of “progressivism” or “left-liberalism.”

      What happened, I believe, was this: Harvard was our first college, and it (and all of the schools around it) furnished a great many of the ministers, teachers, scholars, lawyers, and intelligentsia for our young country. Those persons were formed in the Puritan hothouse of New England, and have had a disproportionate influence on American thinking.

      Reply
  9. C.B. Anderson

    After this scathing critique, I almost feel sorry for the poor unwitting moralists.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thanks, Kip — however, I can’t feel sorry for tedious, moralizing twerps like John Rawls and Richard Rorty. They were plagues on our society.

      Reply
  10. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Joe, what a perfect way to relay a piece of history that (for me) brings to mind the legions of self-righteous, sour-faced, fun-sucking justice warriors who have labelled laughter a sin in this age of the perpetually offended. I love it!

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Susan, many thanks — your words “sour-faced, fun-sucking social justice warriors” are right on target. Some schools now have speech codes that prohibit “offensive laughter.” The mentality of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards is alive and well in left-liberalism.

      Reply
  11. Paul A. Freeman

    An interesting poem that shows two sides of colonisation. The strict moralistic puritans who would like nothing more than to convert the ‘natives’, giving them the Bible while taking their land and making them a subservient class, and the morally-challenged adventurer, availing himself of indigenous women, primarily through introducing them to distilled alcohol (aboriginal populations would have consumed beers made from a local millet variety).

    The film ‘The Revenant’, about early incursions into native American lands has a rather depressing scene at a fort where fur-trappers (no pun intended) are carousing.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Oh please, Paul — another virtue-signalling anti-Western lecture on colonialism?

      Your post is precisely the kind of moralistic, censorious Puritanism that my poem satirizes. Back then it was religious; today it is woke and secular.

      Reply
  12. Frank Rable

    Mister Joseph.
    I address you with all admiration. Master of history AND poetic expression. And you show there is nothing new really. Different outfits for each generation or century, but underneath the proclamations, the new or recycled belief systems, or the demand for unity in core beliefs…. There is still the cave man who realizes that he likes your cave, your women(sorry ladies, it’s a cave man), your spear better than his own. And he knows how to get what you have. Once you speak his language, use his interpretations and priorities, you have become his thrall. And then, your own uniqueness is gone.
    So history is a warning. And what better method to tell his story than poetry.

    Reply
  13. Joseph S. Salemi

    Thank you, Mr. Rable. Yes, I assume some sexual envy motivated the Puritan rage against Merrymount. After all, those svelte brown Algonquin maidens dancing half naked must have stirred male hormones in Plymouth, especially if one was fed up with four-hour sermons.

    Reply
  14. Yael

    Thank you for another fascinating historical account in perfectly rhymed delivery and classical fashion, I love it! I had never heard of this particular historical incident, even though I’m aware of the Puritanical Plymouth colony, which is a widely disseminated part of American history. My life has been enriched by your poetry once again, and I learned a new thing today.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, Yael. The collapse of pedagogy in the K-12 sequence means that a great deal of common knowledge about American history has been lost. Morton of Merrymount was bound to slip between the cracks. I’m glad to have introduced you to his story.

      Reply

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