"In eighteenth-century England and Revolutionary France, the masks, indecent parodies, musical cacophonies and outlandish costumes of street festivals often provided a convenient cover for insurrectionary activities. In rural England, the maypole became a political sign as well as a festive one. In France, where the tight-lipped Jacobins denounced popular festivities as barbarous, pigs were dressed as noblemen and monkeys as bishops."