History
According to the polemic anti-Catholic pamphlet, The Two Babylons, the origin of the maypole dance began in ancient Babylon during sex worship and fertility rites. However, as documented in the book review, "THE TWO BABYLONS: A Case Study in Poor Methodology", by Ralph Woodrow, which appeared in volume 22, number 2 (2000) of the Christian Research Journal (Article DC187), Two Babylons author Alexander Hislop was an exceptionally poor researcher who "picked, chose and mixed" portions of various unrelated myths from many different cultures. For example, he wrote that Nimrod was married to Semiramis although she lived 2,000 years later.
The church of St Andrew Undershaft in the City of London is named after the maypole that was kept under its eaves and set up each spring until 1517 when student riots put an end to the custom. The maypole itself survived until 1547 when a Puritan mob seized and destroyed it as a "pagan idol".
Read more about this topic: Maypole Dance
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“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)