“The world of humankind constitutes a manifold, a totality of interconnected processes, and inquiries that disassemble this totality into bits and then fail to reassemble it falsify reality.” (Wolf 1982)

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Merry England is an imaginary, nostalgic, utopian conception of a pastoral England that was mythologized to exist in pre-industrial English society. The phrase ‘Merry England’ carries with it the idea of a pleasant or delightful country, one that was prosperous and fertile. During the 16th and 17th centuries the phrase became more associated with mirth and festivity (Judge 1991).

This nostalgic notion of a vaguely defined past was a key inspiration for the revival of May Day in Victorian Times. By the mid 1800’s, the past invoked by revivals of maypoles other May Day traditions was too vague to be capable of any precise chronological time period. Merry England is a product of nostalgic sentimentality (Judge 1991).