"The Maypole" survives in 16 manuscripts, four of which, including the oldest one, attribute the poem to Dafydd ap Gwilym, and the remainder to Gruffudd ab Adda.
[16] For Rachel Bromwich it was one of only a handful of cywyddau to match the standard of Dafydd ap Gwilym's greatest poems;[17] for W. J. Gruffydd, one of only two.
[note 1][18] Like Iolo Goch's poem "The Ploughman", "The Maypole" rejects urban life in favour of traditional Welsh rural ways, perhaps motivated in part by a dislike of towns for their role in defending the economic interests of English merchants settled in Wales.
[19][20] The poem's presentation of the woodland as an ideal place for assignations with one's lover is a regular trope of medieval literature,[19] but Gruffudd's relationship with Nature as revealed here goes far beyond literary convention.
[24] The poem's imagery is more traditional, one example being the metaphor of hair used for a tree's foliage, which finds parallels not just in Dafydd's work but even as far back as the Classical or Late Antique Pervigilium Veneris.