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This from a FICINO subscriber.... If you have any helpful hints, please post them to the list AND directly to the enquirer (who is not a subscriber to REED-L. =========== In the first canto of Phineas Fletcher's _The Purple Island, or the Isle of Man_ (published 1633) we come upon a very unusual scene of electng two shepherd swains as Maylords. Of course, this happens under the sign of Gemini, and the 'team' is referred to as "two joyn'd in one, or one disjoyn'd in two" but this still does not solve my confusion as to whether Fletcher was referring to actual or remembered ritual practices, or giving reign to poetic imagination. For all I know, the Maylord's was a pretty competitive position--a point with which Fletcher himself seems to concur by the end of the epic, when he has Thirsil crowned as the _single_ "Lord of all the yeare, and their May-sportings." What's the reference to a "double" or "joined" Maylord doing here? Katy Stavreva Department of English University of Iowa e-mail: [log in to unmask]