There's a Bavarian tradition behind this maypole and it goes a little something like this... Each village has one of these maypole looking things with flags on it. And at the top is a ring. The pole should be guarded by someone who lives in the village in order to prevent people from neighboring villages from climbing it and stealing the ring. If the ring is captured by another village then legend says people of the village that the ring belongs to have to buy the whole village (that stole it) a beer. If I tried I could have written that more clearly but I think you get the gist of it!