CHAPTER X

THE MUMMERS’ PLAY

[_Bibliographical Note._--The subject is treated by T. F. Ordish, _English Folk-Drama_ in _Folk-Lore_, ii. 326, iv. 162. The Folk-Lore Society has in preparation a volume on Folk-Drama to be edited by Mr. Ordish (_F. L._ xiii. 296). The following is a list of the twenty-nine printed versions upon which the account of the St. George play in the present chapter is based. The Lutterworth play is given in Appendix K.

NORTHUMBERLAND.

1. _Newcastle._ Chap-book--W. Sandys, _Christmastide_, 292, from _Alexander and the King of Egypt. A mock Play, as it is acted by the Mummers every Christmas_. Newcastle, 1788. (Divided into Acts and Scenes.)

CUMBERLAND.

2. _Whitehaven._ Chap-book--Hone, _E. D. B._ ii. 1646. (Practically identical with (1).)

LANCASHIRE.

3. _Manchester._ Chap-book--_The Peace Egg_, published by J. Wrigley, 30, Miller Street, Manchester. (Brit. Mus. 1077, _g_/27 (37): Acts and Scenes: a coloured cut of each character.)

SHROPSHIRE.

4. _Newport._ Oral. Jackson and Burne, 484. (Called the Guisers’ (gheez-u´rz) play.)

STAFFORDSHIRE.

5. _Eccleshall._ Oral. _F. L. J._ iv. 350. (Guisers’ play: practically identical with (4). I have not seen a version from Stone in W. W. Bladen, _Notes on the Folk-lore of North Staffs._: cf. _F. L._ xiii. 107.)

LEICESTERSHIRE.

6. _Lutterworth._ Oral. Kelly, 53; Manly, i. 292; _Leicester F. L._ 130.

WORCESTERSHIRE.

7. _Leigh._ Oral. 2 _N. Q._ xi. 271.

WARWICKSHIRE.

8. _Newbold._ Oral. _F. L._ x. 186 (with variants from a similar Rugby version).

OXFORDSHIRE.

9. _Islip._ Oral. Ditchfield, 316.

10. _Bampton._ Oral. Ditchfield, 320.

11. _Thame._ Oral. 5 _N. Q._ ii. 503; Manly, i. 289.

12. _Uncertain._ Oral. 6 _N. Q._ xii. 489; Ashton, 128.

BERKSHIRE.

13. _Uncertain._ Oral. Ditchfield, 310.

MIDDLESEX.

14. _Chiswick._ Oral. 2 _N. Q._ x. 466.

SUSSEX.

15. _Selmeston._ Oral. Parish, _Dict. of Sussex Dialect_ (2nd ed. 1875), 136.

16. _Hollington._ Oral. 5 _N. Q._ x. 489.

17. _Steyning._ Oral. _F. L. J._ ii. 1. (The ‘Tipteerers’’ play.)

HAMPSHIRE.

18. _St. Mary Bourne._ Oral. Stevens, _Hist. of St. Mary Bourne_, 340.

19. _Uncertain._ Oral. 2 _N. Q._ xii. 492.

DORSETSHIRE.

20. (A) _Uncertain._ Oral. _F. L. R._ iii. 92; Ashton, 129.

21. (B) _Uncertain._ Oral. _F. L. R._ iii. 102.

CORNWALL.

22. _Uncertain._ Oral. Sandys, _Christmastide_, 298. (Slightly different version in Sandys, _Christmas Carols_, 174; Du Méril, _La Com._ 428.)

WALES.

23. _Tenby._ Oral. Chambers, _Book of Days_, ii. 740, from _Tales and Traditions of Tenby_.

IRELAND.

24. _Belfast._ Chap-book. 4 _N. Q._ x. 487. (‘The Christmas Rhymes.’)

25. _Ballybrennan, Wexford._ Oral. Kennedy, _The Banks of the Boro_, 226.

UNCERTAIN LOCALITY.

26. _Sharpe’s London Magazine_, i. 154. Oral.

27. _Archaeologist_, i. 176. Chap-book. H. Sleight, _A Christmas Pageant Play or Mysterie of St. George, Alexander and the King of Egypt_. (Said to be ‘compiled from and collated with several curious ancient black-letter editions.’ I have never seen or heard of a ‘black-letter’ edition, and I take it the improbable title is Mr. Sleight’s own.)

28. Halliwell. Oral. _Popular Rhymes_, 231. (Said to be the best of six versions.)

29. _F. L. J._ iv. 97. (Fragment, from ‘old MS.’)]

The _degollada_ figures of certain sword-dances preserve with some clearness the memory of an actual sacrifice, abolished and replaced by a mere symbolic dumb show. Even in these, and still more in the other dances, the symbolism is very slight. It is completely subordinated to the rhythmic evolutions of a choric figure. There is an advance, however, in the direction of drama, when in the course of the performance some one is represented as actually slain. In a few dances of the type discussed in the last chapter, such a dramatic episode precedes or follows the regular figures. It is recorded in three or four of the German examples[728]. A writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ describes a Yorkshire dance in which ‘the Bessy interferes while they are making a hexagon with their swords, and is killed.’ Amongst the characters of this dance is a Doctor, and although the writer does not say so, it may be inferred that the function of the Doctor is to bring the Bessy to life again[729]. It will be remembered that a precisely similar device is used in the German Shrove Tuesday plays to symbolize the resurrection of the year in spring after its death in winter. The Doctor reappears in one of the Durham dances, and here there is no doubt as to the part he plays. At a certain point the careful formations of the dance degenerate into a fight. The parish clergyman rushes in to separate the combatants. He is accidentally slain. There is general lamentation, but the Doctor comes forward, and revives the victim, and the dance proceeds[730].

It is but a step from such dramatic episodes to the more elaborate performances which remain to be considered in the present chapter, and which are properly to be called plays rather than dances. They belong to a stage in the evolution of drama from dance, in which the dance has been driven into the background and has sometimes disappeared altogether. But they have the same characters, and especially the same grotesques, as the dances, and the general continuity of the two sets of performances cannot be doubted. Moreover, though the plays differ in many respects, they have a common incident, which may reasonably be taken to be the central incident, in the death and revival, generally by a Doctor, of one of the characters. And in virtue of this central incident one is justified in classing them as forms of a folk-drama in which the resurrection of the year is symbolized.

I take first, on account of the large amount of dancing which remains in it, the play acted at the end of the eighteenth century by ‘The Plow Boys or Morris Dancers’ of Revesby in Lincolnshire[731]. There are seven dancers: six men, the Fool and his five sons, Pickle Herring, Blue Breeches, Pepper Breeches, Ginger Breeches, and Mr. Allspice[732]; and one woman, Cicely. The somewhat incoherent incidents are as follows. The Fool acts as presenter and introduces the play. He fights successively a Hobby-horse and a ‘Wild Worm’ or dragon. The dancers ‘lock their swords to make the glass,’ which, after some jesting, is broken up again. The sons determine to kill the Fool. He kneels down and makes his will, with the swords round his neck[733]; is slain and revived by Pickle Herring stamping with his foot. This is repeated with variations. Hitherto, the dancers have ‘footed it’ round the room at intervals. Now follow a series of sword-dances. During and after these the Fool and his sons in turn woo Cicely, the Fool taking the name of ‘Anthony[734],’ Pickle Herring that of ‘the Lord of Pool,’ and Blue Breeches that of ‘the Knight of Lee.’ There is nothing particularly interesting about this part of the play, obviously written to ‘work in’ the woman grotesque. In the course of it a morris-dance is introduced, and a final sword-dance, with an obeisance to the master of the house, winds up the whole.

Secondly, there are the Plough Monday plays of the east Midlands[735]. These appear in Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire. Two printed versions are available. The first comes from Cropwell in Nottinghamshire[736]. The actors are ‘the plough-bullocks.’ The male characters are Tom the Fool, a Recruiting Sergeant, and a Ribboner or Recruit, three farm-servants, Threshing Blade, Hopper Joe[737], and the Ploughman, a Doctor, and Beelzebub[738]. There are two women, a young Lady and old Dame Jane. Tom Fool is presenter. The Ribboner, rejected by the young Lady, enlists as a recruit. The Lady is consoled by Tom Fool. Then enter successively the three farm-servants, each describing his function on the farm. Dame Jane tries to father a child on Tom Fool. Beelzebub knocks her down[739], and kills her. The Doctor comes in, and after some comic business about his travels, his qualifications and his remedies[740], declares Dame Jane to be only in a trance, and raises her up. A country dance and songs follow, and the performance ends with a _quête_. The second version, from Lincolnshire, is very similar[741]. But there are no farm-servants, and instead of Beelzebub is a personage called ‘old Esem Esquesem,’ who carries a broom. It is he, not an old woman, who is killed and brought to life. There are several dancers, besides the performers; and these include ‘Bessy,’ a man dressed as a woman, with a cow’s tail.

The distinction between a popular and a literary or heroic type of personification which was noticeable in the sword-dances persists in the folk-plays founded upon them. Both in the Revesby play and in the Plough Monday plays, the drama is carried on by personages resembling the ‘grotesques’ of the sword-and morris-dances[742]. There are no heroic characters. The death is of the nature of an accident or an execution. On the other hand, in the ‘mummers’ play’ of St. George, the heroes take once more the leading part, and the death, or at least one of the deaths, is caused by a fight amongst them. This play is far more widely spread than its rivals. It is found in all parts of England, in Wales, and in Ireland; in Scotland it occurs also, but here some other hero is generally substituted as protagonist for St. George[743]. The following account is based on the twenty-nine versions, drawn from chap-books or from oral tradition, enumerated in the bibliographical note. The list might, doubtless, be almost indefinitely extended. As will soon be seen, the local variations of the play are numerous. In order to make them intelligible, I have given in full in an appendix a version from Lutterworth in Leicestershire. This is chosen, not as a particularly interesting variant, for that it is not, but on the contrary as being comparatively colourless. It shows very clearly and briefly the normal structure of the play, and may be regarded as the type from which the other versions diverge[744].

The whole performance may be divided, for convenience of analysis, into three parts, the Presentation, the Drama, the _Quête_. In the first somebody speaks a prologue, claiming a welcome from the spectators[745], and then the leading characters are in turn introduced. The second consists of a fight followed by the intervention of a doctor to revive the slain. In the third some supernumerary characters enter, and there is a collection. It is the dramatic nucleus that first requires consideration. The leading fighter is generally St. George, who alone appears in all the versions. Instead of ‘St. George,’ he is sometimes called ‘Sir George,’ and more often ‘Prince George’ or ‘King George,’ modifications which one may reasonably suppose to be no older than the present Hanoverian dynasty. At Whitehaven and at Falkirk he is ‘Prince George of Ville.’ George’s chief opponent is usually one of two personages, who are not absolutely distinct from each other[746]. One is the ‘Turkish Knight,’ of whom a variant appears to be the ‘Prince of Paradine’ (Manchester), or ‘Paradise’ (Newport, Eccleshall), perhaps originally ‘Palestine.’ He is sometimes represented with a blackened face[747]. The other is variously called ‘Slasher,’ ‘Captain Slasher,’ ‘Bold Slasher,’ or, by an obvious corruption, ‘Beau Slasher.’ Rarer names for him are ‘Bold Slaughterer’ (Bampton), ‘Captain Bluster’ (Dorset [A]), and ‘Swiff, Swash, and Swagger’ (Chiswick). His names fairly express his vaunting disposition, which, however, is largely shared by the other characters in the play. In the place of, or as minor fighters by the side of George, the Turkish Knight and Bold Slasher, there appear, in one version or another, a bewildering variety of personages, of whom only a rough classification can be attempted. Some belong to the heroic cycles. Such are ‘Alexander’ (Newcastle, Whitehaven), ‘Hector’ (Manchester), ‘St. Guy’ (Newport), ‘St. Giles’ (Eccleshall)[748], ‘St. Patrick’ (Dorset [A], Wexford), ‘King Alfred’ and ‘King Cole’ (Brill), ‘Giant Blunderbore’ (Brill), ‘Giant Turpin’ (Cornwall). Others again are moderns who have caught the popular imagination: ‘Bold Bonaparte’ (Leigh)[749], and ‘King of Prussia’ (Bampton, Oxford)[750], ‘King William’ (Brill), the ‘Duke of Cumberland’ (Oxford) and the ‘Duke of Northumberland’ (Islip), ‘Lord Nelson’ (Stoke Gabriel, Devon)[751], ‘Wolfe’ and ‘Wellington’ (Cornwall)[752], even the ‘Prince Imperial’ (Wilts)[753], all have been pressed into the service. In some cases characters have lost their personal names, if they ever had any, and figure merely as ‘Knight,’ ‘Soldier,’ ‘Valiant Soldier,’ ‘Noble Captain,’ ‘Bold Prince,’ ‘Gracious King.’ Others bear names which defy explanation, ‘Alonso’ (Chiswick), ‘Hy Gwyer’ (Hollington), ‘Marshalee’ and ‘Cutting Star’ (Dorset [B]). The significance of ‘General Valentine’ and ‘Colonel Spring’ (Dorset [A]) will be considered presently; and ‘Room’ (Dorset [B]), ‘Little Jack,’ the ‘Bride’ and the ‘Fool’ (Brill), and the ‘King of Egypt’ (Newcastle, Whitehaven) have strayed in amongst the fighters from the presenters. The fighting generally takes the form of a duel, or a succession of duels. In the latter case, George may fight all comers, or he may intervene to subdue a previously successful champion. But an important point is that he is not always victorious. On the contrary, the versions in which he slays and those in which he is slain are about equal in number. In two versions (Brill, Steyning) the fighting is not a duel or a series of duels, but a _mêlée_. The Brill play, in particular, is quite unlike the usual type. A prominent part is taken by the Dragon, with whom fight, all at once, St. George and a heterogeneous company made up of King Alfred and his Bride, King Cole, King William, Giant Blunderbore, Little Jack and a morris-dance Fool.

Whatever the nature of the fight, the result is always the same. One or more of the champions falls, and then appears upon the scene a Doctor, who brings the dead to life again. The Doctor is a comic character. He enters, boasting his universal skill, and works his cure by exhibiting a bolus, or by drawing out a tooth with a mighty pair of pliers. At Newbold he is ‘Dr. Brown,’ at Islip ‘Dr. Good’ (also called ‘Jack Spinney’), at Brill ‘Dr. Ball’; in Dorsetshire (A) he is an Irishman, ‘Mr. Martin’ (perhaps originally ‘Martyr’) ‘Dennis.’ More often he is nameless. Frequently the revival scene is duplicated; either the Doctor is called in twice, or one cure is left to him, and another is effected by some other performer, such as St. George (Dorset [B]), ‘Father Christmas’ (Newbold, Steyning), or the Fool (Bampton).

The central action of the play consists, then, in these two episodes of the fight and the resurrection; and the protagonists, so to speak, are the heroes--a ragged troop of heroes, certainly--and the Doctor. But just as in the sword-dances, so in the plays, we find introduced, besides the protagonists, a number of supernumerary figures. The nature of these, and the part they take, must now be considered. Some of them are by this time familiar. They are none other than the grotesques that have haunted this discussion of the village festivals from the very beginning, and that I have attempted to trace to their origin in magical or sacrificial custom. There are the woman, or lad dressed in woman’s clothes, the hobby-horse, the fool, and the black-faced man. The woman and the hobby-horse are unmistakable; the other two are a little more Protean in their modern appearance. The ‘Fool’ is so called only at Manchester and at Brill, where he brings his morris-dance with him. At Lutterworth he is the ‘Clown’; in Cornwall, ‘Old Squire’; at Newbold, ‘Big Head and Little Wits.’ But I think that we may also recognize him in the very commonly occurring figure ‘Beelzebub,’ also known in Cornwall as ‘Hub Bub’ and at Chiswick as ‘Lord Grubb.’ The key to this identification is the fact that in several cases Beelzebub uses the description ‘big head and little wit’ to announce himself on his arrival. Occasionally, however, the personality of the Fool has been duplicated. At Lutterworth Beelzebub and the Clown, at Newbold Beelzebub and Big Head and Little Wits appear in the same play[754]. The black-faced man has in some cases lost his black face, but he keeps it at Bampton, where he is ‘Tom the Tinker,’ at Rugby, where he is ‘Little Johnny Sweep,’ and in a Sussex version, where he is also a sweep[755]. The analogy of the May-day chimney-sweeps is an obvious one. A black face was a feature in the mediaeval representation of devils, and the sweep of some plays is probably in origin identical with the devil, black-faced or not, of others. This is all the more so, as the devil, like the sweep, usually carries a besom[756]. One would expect _his_ name, and not the Fool’s, to be Beelzebub. He is, however, ‘Little Devil Dout’ or ‘Doubt,’ ‘Little Jack Doubt’ or ‘Jack Devil Doubt.’ At Leigh Little Devil Doubt also calls himself ‘Jack,’

‘With my wife and family on my back’;

and perhaps we may therefore trace a further avatar of this same personage in the ‘John’ or ‘Johnny Jack’ who at Salisbury gives a name to the whole performance[757]. He is also ‘Little Jack’ (Brill, St. Mary Bourne), ‘Fat Jack’ (Islip), ‘Happy Jack’ (Berkshire, Hollington), ‘Humpty Jack’ (Newbold). He generally makes the remark about his wife and family. What he does carry upon his back is sometimes a hump, sometimes a number of rag-dolls. I take it that the hump came first, and that the dolls arose out of Jack’s jocular explanation of his own deformity. But why the hump? Was it originally a bag of soot? Or the _saccus_ with which the German _Knechte Ruperte_ wander in the Twelve nights?[758] At Hollington and in a Hampshire version Jack has been somewhat incongruously turned into a press-gang. In this capacity he gets at Hollington the additional name of ‘Tommy Twing-twang.’

Having got these grotesques, traditional accompaniments of the play, to dispose of somehow, what do the playwrights do with them? The simplest and most primitive method is just to bring them in, to show them to the spectators when the fighting is over. Thus Beelzebub, like the Fool at one point in the Revesby play, often comes in with

‘Here come I; ain’t been yit, Big head and little wit.’

‘Ain’t been yit!’ Could a more naïve explanation of the presence of a ‘stock’ character on the stage be imagined? Similarly in Cornwall the woman is worked in by making ‘Sabra,’ a _persona muta_, come forward to join St. George[759]. In the play printed in _Sharpe’s London Magazine_ the ‘Hobby-horse’ is led in. Obviously personages other than the traditional four can be introduced in the same way, at the bidding of the rustic fancy. Thus at Bampton ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘Little John’ briefly appear, in both the Irish plays and at Tenby ‘Oliver Cromwell,’ at Belfast ‘St. Patrick,’ at Steyning the ‘Prince of Peace.’

Secondly, the supernumeraries may be utilized, either as presenters of the main characters or for the purposes of the _quête_ at the end. Thus at Leigh the performance is begun by Little Devil Doubt, who enters with his broom and sweeps a ‘room’ or ‘hall’ for the actors, just as in the sword-dances a preliminary circle is made with a sword upon the ground[760]. In the Midlands this is the task of the woman, called at Islip and in Berkshire ‘Molly,’ and at Bright-Walton ‘Queen Mary[761].’ Elsewhere the business with the broom is omitted; but there is nearly always a short prologue in which an appeal is made to the spectators for ‘room.’ This prologue may be spoken, as at Manchester by the Fool, or as at Lutterworth by one of the fighters. The commonest presenter, however, is a personification of the festal season at which the plays are usually performed, ‘Old Father Christmas.’

‘Here comes I, Father Christmas, welcome or welcome not, I hope Old Father Christmas will never be forgot.’

At St. Mary Bourne Christmas is accompanied by ‘Mince-Pie,’ and in both the Dorset versions, instead of calling for ‘room,’ he introduces ‘Room’ as an actual personage. Similarly, at Newport and Eccleshall, the prologue speaker receives the curious soubriquet of ‘Open-the-Door.’ After the prologue, the fighters are introduced. They stand in a clump outside the circle, and in turns step forward and strut round it[762]. Each is announced, by himself or by his predecessor or by the presenter, with a set of rhymes closely parallel to those used in the sword-dances. With the fighters generally comes the ‘King of Egypt’ (occasionally corrupted into the ‘King of England’), and the description of St. George often contains an allusion to his fight with the dragon and the rescue of Sabra, the King of Egypt’s daughter. In one or two of the northern versions (Newcastle, Whitehaven) the King of Egypt is a fighter; generally he stands by. In one of the Dorset versions (A) he is called ‘Anthony.’ Sabra appears only in Cornwall, and keeps silence. The Dragon fights with St. George in Cornwall, and also, as we have seen, in the curious Brill _mêlée_.

The performance, naturally, ends with a _quête_. This takes various forms. Sometimes the presenter, or the whole body of actors, comes forward, and wishes prosperity to the household. Beelzebub, with his frying-pan or ladle, goes round to gather in the contributions. In the version preserved in _Sharpe’s London Magazine_, this is the function of a special personage, ‘Boxholder.’ In a considerable number of cases, however, the _quête_ is preceded by a singular action on the part of Little Devil Dout. He enters with his broom, and threatens to sweep the whole party out, or ‘into their graves,’ if money is not given. In Shropshire and Staffordshire he sweeps up the hearth, and the custom is probably connected with the superstition that it is unlucky to remove fire or ashes from the house on Christmas Day. ‘Dout’ appears to be a corruption of ‘Do out[763].’

Another way of working in the grotesques and other supernumeraries is to give them minor parts in the drama itself. Father Christmas or the King of Egypt is utilized as a sort of chorus, to cheer on the fighters, lament the vanquished, and summon the Doctor. At Newbold the woman, called ‘Moll Finney,’ plays a similar part, as mother of the Turkish Knight. At Stoke Gabriel, Devon, the woman is the Doctor’s wife[764]. Finally, in three cases, a complete subordinate dramatic episode is introduced for their sake. At Islip, after the main drama is concluded, the presenter Molly suddenly becomes King George’s wife ‘Susannah.’ She falls ill, and the Doctor’s services are requisitioned to cure her. The Doctor rides in, not on a hobby-horse, but on one of the disengaged characters who plays the part of a horse. In Dorsetshire the secondary drama is quite elaborate. In the ‘A’ version ‘Old Bet’ calls herself ‘Dame Dorothy,’ and is the wife of Father Christmas, named, for the nonce, ‘Jan.’ They quarrel about a Jack hare, which he wants fried and she wants roasted. He kills her, and at the happy moment the Doctor is passing by, and brings her to life again. Version ‘B’ is very similar, except that the performance closes by Old Bet bringing in the hobby-horse for Father Christmas to mount.

I do not think that I need further labour the affiliation of the St. George plays to the sword-dances. Placed in a series, as I have placed them in these chapters, the two sets of performances show a sufficiently obvious continuity. They are held together by the use of the swords, by their common grotesques, and by the episode of the Doctor, which connects them also with the German Shrovetide and Whitsun folk-ceremonies. They are properly called folk-drama, because they are derived, with the minimum of literary intervention, from the dramatic tendencies latent in folk-festivals of a very primitive type. They are the outcome of the instinct of play, manipulating for its own purposes the mock sacrifice and other débris of extinct ritual. Their central incident symbolizes the _renouveau_, the annual death of the year or the fertilization spirit and its annual resurrection in spring[765]. To this have become attached some of those heroic _cantilenae_ which, as the early mediaeval chroniclers tell us, existed in the mouths of the _chori iuvenum_ side by side with the _cantilenae_ of the minstrels. The symbolism of the _renouveau_ is preserved unmistakably enough in the episode of the Doctor, but the _cantilenae_ have been to some extent modified by the comparatively late literary element, due perhaps to that universal go-between of literature and the folk, the village school-master. The genuine national heroes, a Stercatherus or a Galgacus, have given way to the ‘worthies’ and the ‘champions of Christendom,’ dear to Holophernes. The literary tradition has also perhaps contributed to the transformation of the _chorus_ or semi-dramatic dance into drama pure and simple. In the St. George plays dancing holds a very subordinate place, far more so than in the ‘Plow-boys’ play of Revesby. Dances and songs are occasionally introduced before the _quête_, but rarely during the main performance. In the eccentric Brill version, however, a complete morris-dance appears. And of course it must be borne in mind that the fighting itself, with its gestures and pacings round the circle and clashing of swords, has much more the effect of a sword-dance than of a regular fight. So far as it is a fight, the question arises whether we ought to see in it, besides the heroic element introduced by the _cantilenae_, any trace of the mimic contest between winter and summer, which is found here and there, alternating with the resurrection drama, as a symbolical representation of the _renouveau_. The fight does not, of course, in itself stand in any need of such an explanation; but it is suggested by a singular passage which in several versions is put in the mouth of one or other of the heroes. St. George, or the Slasher, or the Turkish Knight, is made to boast something as follows:

‘My arms are made of iron, my body’s made of steel, My head is made of beaten brass, no man can make me feel.’

It does not much matter who speaks these words in the versions of Holophernes, but there are those who think that they originally belonged to the representative of winter, and contained an allusion to the hardness of the frost-bound earth[766]. Personally I do not see why they should refer to anything but the armour which a champion might reasonably be supposed to wear.

A curious thing about the St. George play is the width of its range. All the versions, with the possible exception of that found at Brill, seem to be derived from a common type. They are spread over England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and only in the eastern counties do they give way to the partly, though not wholly, independent Plough Monday type. Unfortunately, the degeneracy of the texts is such that any closer investigation into their inter-relations or into the origin and transmission of the archetype would probably be futile. Something, however, must be said as to the prominence, at any rate outside Scotland, of the character of St. George. As far as I can see, the play owes nothing at all to John Kirke’s stage-play of _The Seven Champions of Christendom_, printed in 1638[767]. It is possible, however, that it may be a development of a sword-dance in which, as in the Shetland dance, the ‘seven champions’ had usurped the place of more primitive heroes. If so the six champions, other than St. George, have singularly vanished[768]. In any case, there can have been no ‘seven champions,’ either in sword-dance or mummers’ play, before Richard Johnson brought together the scattered legends of the national heroes in his _History of the Seven Champions_ in 1596[769]. This fact presents no difficulty, for the archetype of our texts need certainly not be earlier than the seventeenth century[770]. By this time the literary dramatic tradition was fully established, even in the provinces, and it may well have occurred to Holophernes to convert the sword-dance into the semblance of a regular play.

On the other hand, the mediaeval period had its dramatic or semi-dramatic performances in which St. George figured, and possibly it is to these, and not to the ‘seven champions,’ that his introduction into the sword-dance is due. These performances generally took the form of a ‘riding’ or procession on St. George’s day, April 23. Such ridings may, of course, have originally, like the Godiva processions or the midsummer shows, have preserved the memory of the pre-Christian perambulations of the fields in spring, but during the period for which records are available they were rather municipal celebrations of a semi-ecclesiastical type. St. George was the patron saint of England, and his day was honoured as one of the greater feasts, notably at court, where the chivalric order of the Garter was under his protection[771]. The conduct of the ridings was generally, from the end of the fourteenth century onwards, in the hands of a guild, founded not as a trade guild, but as a half social, half religious fraternity, for the worship of the saint, and the mutual aid and good fellowship of its members. The fullest accounts preserved are from Norwich where the guild or company of St. George was founded in 1385, received a charter from Henry V in 1416, and by 1451 had obtained a predominant share in the government of the city[772]. The records of this guild throw a good deal of light on the riding. The brethren and ‘sustren’ had a chapel in the choir of the cathedral, and after the Reformation held their feasts in a chapel of the common hall of the city, which had formerly been the church of a Dominican convent. The riding was already established by 1408 when the court of the guild ordered that ‘the George shall go in procession and make a conflict with the Dragon and keep his estate both days.’ The George was a man in ‘coat armour beaten with silver,’ and had his club-bearer, henchmen, minstrels and banners. He was accompanied by the Dragon, the guild-priest, and the court and brethren of the guild in red and white capes and gowns. The procession went to ‘the wood’ outside the city, and here doubtless the conflict with the dragon took place. By 1537 there had been added to the _dramatis personae_ St. Margaret, also called ‘the lady,’ who apparently aided St. George in his enterprise[773]. Strange to say, the guild survived the Reformation. In 1552, the court ordered, ‘there shall be neither George nor Margaret, but for pastime the dragon to come and show himself, as in other years.’ But the feast continued, and in spite of an attempt to get rid of him under the Long Parliament, the Dragon endured until 1732 when the guild was dissolved. Eighteenth-century witnesses describe the procession as it then existed. The Dragon was carried by a man concealed in its body. It was of basket work and painted cloth, and could move or spread its wings, and distend or contract its head. The ranks were kept by ‘whifflers’ who juggled with their swords, and by ‘Dick Fools,’ in motley and decked with cats’ tails and small bells. There is one more point of interest about the Norwich guild. In the fifteenth century it included many persons of distinction in Norfolk. Sir John Fastolf gave it an ‘angell silver and guylt.’ And amongst the members in 1496 was Sir John Paston. I have already quoted the lament in the _Paston Letters_ over William Woode, the keeper, whom the writer ‘kepyd thys iij yer to pleye Seynt Jorge and Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Nottyngham,’ and who at a critical moment went off to Bernysdale and left his master in the lurch[774]. I have also identified his Robin Hood play, and now it becomes apparent where he played ‘Seynt Jorge.’ It is curious how the fragments of the wreckage of time fit into one another. The riding of the George is not peculiar to Norwich. We find it at Leicester[775], at Coventry[776], at Stratford[777], at Chester[778], at York, at Dublin[779]. An elaborate programme for the Dublin procession is preserved. It included an emperor and empress with their train, St. George on horse-back, the dragon led by a line and the king and queen of Dele. But no princess is mentioned. The ‘may’ or maiden figured at York, however, and there was also a St. Christopher. At other places, such as Reading, Aston[780] and Louth[781], an equestrian figure, called a ‘George,’ is known to have stood on a ‘loft’ in the church, and here, too, an annual ‘riding’ may be presumed.

There is no proof that the dramatic element in these ‘ridings’ was anything more than a _mystère mimé_, or pageant in dumb show. On the other hand, there were places where the performance on St. George’s day took the form of a regular miracle-play. The performance described by Collier as taking place before Henry V and the Emperor Sigismund at Windsor in 1416 turns out on examination of Collier’s authority to be really a ‘soteltie,’ a cake or raised pie of elaborate form. But the town of Lydd had its St. George play in 1456, and probably throughout the century; while in 1490 the chaplain of the guild of St. George at New Romney went to see this Lydd play with a view to reproducing it at the sister town. In 1511 again a play of St. George is recorded to have been held at Bassingbourne in Cambridgeshire, not on St. George’s, but on St. Margaret’s day[782].

Obviously the subject-matter of all these pageants and miracles was provided by the familiar ecclesiastical legend of St. George the dragon-slayer, with which was occasionally interwoven the parallel legend of St. Margaret[783]. Similar performances can be traced on the continent. There was one at Mons called _le lumeçon_[784]. Rabelais describes one at Metz, of which, however, the hero was not St. George, but yet another dragon-slayer, St. Clement[785]. There is no need to ascribe to them a folk origin, although the dragon-slaying champion is a common personage in folk-tale[786]. They belong to the cycle of religious drama, which is dealt with in the second volume of this book. And although in Shropshire at least they seem to have been preserved in a village stage-play up to quite a recent date[787], they obviously do not directly survive in the folk-play with which we are concerned. As far as I know, that nowhere takes place on St. George’s day. The Dragon is very rarely a character, and though St. George’s traditional exploit is generally mentioned, it is, as that very mention shows, not the motive of the action. On the other hand the legend, in its mediaeval form, has no room for the episode of the Doctor[788]. At the same time the Dragon does sometimes occur, and the traditional exploit is mentioned, and therefore if any one chooses to say that the fame of St. George in the guild celebrations as well as the fame of the ‘seven champions’ romance determined his choice as the hero of the later sword-dance rhymes, I do not see that there is much to urge against the view[789].

With regard to the main drift of this chapter, the criticism presents itself; if the folk-plays are essentially a celebration of the _renouveau_ of spring, how is it that the performances generally take place in mid-winter at Christmas? The answer is that, as will be shown in the next chapter, none of the Christmas folk-customs are proper to mid-winter. They have been attracted by the ecclesiastical feast from the seasons which in the old European calendar preceded and followed it, from the beginning of winter and the beginning of summer or spring. The folk-play has come with the rest. But the transference has not invariably taken place. The Norfolk versions belong not to Christmas but to Plough Monday, which lies immediately outside the Christmas season proper, and is indeed, though probably dislocated from its primitive date, the earliest of the spring feasts. The St. George play itself is occasionally performed at Easter, and even perhaps on May-day, whilst versions, which in their present form contain clear allusions to Christmas, yet betray another origin by the title which they bear of the ‘Pace-eggers’’ or ‘Pasque-eggers’’ play[790]. Christmas, however, has given to the play the characteristic figure of Old Father Christmas. And the players are known as ‘mummers’ and ‘guisers,’ or, in Cornwall, ‘geese-dancers,’ because their performance was regarded as a variety of the ‘mumming’ or ‘disguising’ which, as we shall see, became a regular name for the Christmas revel or _quête_[791].

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