|
Isca Morrismen Mummers Tradition
Historical Background
The seasonal round of life in Britain was once marked by a series of ceremonials performed exclusively by men wearing a "disguise", not only to preserve their temporary anonymity, but also to mark them out as beings set apart from their community. As time passed ceremony dwindled until only the appearance at the correct time and the disguise remained to mark the ritual which was difficult to understand in the more sophisticated times of recent history. One of the most persistent of these ceremonials is the Mummers' play which still survives in scattered places across the British Isles and although it is eagerly anticipated by the audiences, it is almost completely misunderstood by performers and witnesses alike. The performances usually occur during the winter months, and especially around Christmas, and widely scattered as these survivals are, they still retain elements common to versions long since extinct and to each other.
The earliest surviving written example of a Mummers' play dates from around 1596. It is accepted by most scholars that the roots of the actions now portrayed in the surviving plays took hold in primitive times and that there is a long gap between then and the first mention in manuscript or print as the plays were handed down in the oral tradition. Indeed in a lot of cases, even until recent times, performers were reluctant to write down their texts from a belief that to do so would break the "luck'" and it was very difficult to explain to them that it was what they did that was important, not what they said.
Over the last three hundred years however, a large amount of information has built up illustrating the rich diversity of the Mummers' play. In all the remaining plays, although the core of the action remains constant, there have been and continue to be, minor changes. Characters appear and disappear. Some, for example Lord Nelson, were introduced as historical figures catching the public fancy; others appeared as characters of local notoriety. Characters have been added or left out at the end of the play according to both local whim and the availabilty of performers on a particular occasion. The changes are relatively unimportant, in most cases illustrating that the performers kept abreast of the times in which they lived. As long as a character died and was restored to life then the ceremony lived on and this basic tenet has resisted all changes, however modern the approach may have become.
In all of these plays there are three possible types of action underlying the basic play - either a wooing ceremony, a sword dance ceremony or a hero-combat ceremony.
- In the East Midland counties of Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland, the ceremony took the very distinctive form of a Wooing Ceremony and the earliest remaining written example is from Bassingham in 1823, now contained in the Hunter Collection in the British Library.
- The most spectacular of all the dramatic actions is the Sword Dance ceremony, also confined to a well defined area, in this case the North Eastern counties of Northumberland, Durham and Yorkshire. Two forms of this ceremony have survived the centuries, the Long Sword dances in Yorkshire and South Durham and the Rapper dance of Durham and Northumberland.
- The most widespread of the ceremonies is the Hero-Combat surviving in Scotland, South Wales, some of the English speaking settlements of Ireland, and in parts of America and Canada.
Detailed examination of the disguise worn by the performers is worth separate consideration, for even in survivals, the sense of ceremonial is best preserved in the time of appearance and the efforts made to prevent recognition. As already indicated, it was a fundamental necessity to preserve anonymity, for to be recognised broke the 'luck'. Even though the disguise may consist of nothing more than a blackened or raddled face, it was sufficient to prevent recognition. Once the action was over the luck-bearers could, for the moment, discard their roles as community medicine men and become their normal selves before passing on to their next calling-place to repeat the magic.
In general, the disguise, though often showing regional variations, consisted chiefly of strips of material fastened over ordinary clothes so that, in the better examples, almost the whole of the body was concealed. The headdress was often tall and again covered with strips of material hanging down over the face, so that anonymity was maintained. It was the most important part of the disguise which was invariably the last to disappear. In Hampshire and Wiltshire, where the costume was best preserved, the strips of paper were often arranged to hang in fringes so that the whole effect appeared 'tiered'. This type could conceivably be the one which suggested dragon scales. The passage of time brought decline in the disguise, particularly in the north of England, where dressing in character became the rule, but even here, knots of ribbon or paper rosettes were often fastened to the costume. Here, too, blackened faces were common, but it cannot be ignored that latterly the performers considered the Turkish Knight's black face as dressing in part.
The anonymity made the performers entirely different beings, remote from their everyday lives. Even in modern survivals there is still an air of ceremony and dispensing magic. It is still considered a breach of etiquette to recognise a real person as a young American Quaker girl found. Her recognition of the mumming character of George Washington as the real life Isaac Simmons was a lapse of manners and considered socially incorrect. Evidence of the steps taken to preserve the costume from damage abounds. At Forkhill, Co. Armagh, the performers took off their disguise after each performance and carried it with them till their next one when they re-disguised themselves, at Marshfield in Wiltshire, the mummers even used a cloth on to which they fell. This kind of evidence underlines the necessity of the disguise, and coupled with its persistence, illustrates its importance.
The flowing strips seem to have been an early feature. The "most gorgeously be-ribboned shirt" at Exeter in 1737 is a familiar part of any description at any date, even if exactly the same phraseology is not used. Inevitably, the passage of time brought sophistication into what must have been originally a crude representation of whatever the performers were trying to represent. The word 'ribbons' is probably a simplification, often used when strips of cloth were meant. In the early accounts it is the strips which were important, not the material of which they were made. The ribbons themselves must have replaced something else used before the narrow fabrics were woven; one can guess that rags or bunches of cloth (fastened in some way to ordinary clothes), were their immediate predecessors.
Expense must be reckoned in assessing the material used. Gradually, accounts slip into descriptions of strips of paper or wallpaper. The Marshfield Paper Boys still use a costume made up of strips of newspaper, but it is doubtful if this sort of disguise could be used generally until the middle of the last century. This was a question of availability and cost; it is certainly doubtful if wallpaper, for example, could be widely used before 1851 when it could he obtained in England for one shilling a roll. Before then it was the prerogative of the wealthy and far beyond the reach of ill-paid traditional performers. Although wallpaper was known in 1509 it was not in general use, one may assume that by 1712 it had become more popular since it was in that year that Queen Anne taxed it at the rate or one penny a square yard, This tax was raised to three halfpence in 1714 and the levy was not repealed till 1836. This must have placed wallpaper beyond the reach of the performers, even though in 1799 there was a French invention for making it in continuous roils. In 1839, Harold Potter of Darwen patented an improved machine, but even so it took a further twelve vears before the price fell considerably. Presumably, if costs had not gone down, dressing in character would have come earlier once the original intention was forgotten by everyone.
The 1823 version from Bassingham shows signs of dressing in character even though ribbons are mentioned:
"Fool drest in cap and trowsers. Lady drest in Womans close. Eldest son drest in ribons. Farming man drest in cloth coat boots spirs. Old dame jain, old fashned bonet and bed gown. Old man drest in old fashned hat and long coat, grey hairs. Saint George drest in ribbons. Doctor drest. black coat and trawsers white hanchief."
The characteristic disguise in the East Midlands persisted until much later in the century, but there were still oddities. At Ashby, circa 1862-1872, one man was blacked and dressed all in yellow with a yellow hat, curved in shape like a horn, with the curved end pointing over one shoulder. Although the character was unnamed, this might have been a representation of Beelzebub who, at Carlton-le-Moorland was described as having a black face and wearing a horned hat and stuffed coat. At South Scarle, Beelzebub wore his working clothes covered by an inverted sack with slits for head and arms pulled over. The sack was stuffed thickly with straw which a string run round the bottom kept in place. These descriptions suggest an attempt to portray a devil and the padding may have been protection when he was struck by anything. This is dressing in character, not a characterisation of a scapegoat as has been popularly suggested.
Disguise of other performers is more interesting and shows two distinct types. An account from an unlocated place in Lincolnshire describes the Fool as 'combining the Wild Man and Jester in one. He wore a conical cap covered with shreds. Other characters were described as being covered with bunches of gaudy coloured ribbons. Presumably, the Fool's conical cap represented his jester half and the shreds the Wild Man side of his character. According to an account from Kirton in Lindsey, the Wild Man feature predominated, for there it was said that he should be dressed in skins or snippets of brightly coloured rags. The description of the Fool at South Kelsey in 1896 is interesting. He wore:
"A Clown's dress; right leg of trousers rings of red, white, blue and black - red at ankle; left leg rings of black, blue, white and red - black at ankle; smock, one sleeve red, one sleeve white; front blue and black; back white, decorated with broad arrow; dunce's cap about 2' 6" tall with rings of red, white, blue and black and a bell at the point; face painted, moustache, long shepherd's crook in his hand and a collecting box. The fool collected the money."
The rest of the performers of this version were dressed in character, but the Fool's costume showed an elaboration formerly common. It was an exaggerated attempt to portray the parti-coloured Fool with one foot in each world.
This particular costume cannot really be said to be typical of the area where the performers relied heavily on ribbons, giving one character at least the name 'Ribboner'. The Branston coats and Messingham smocks were certainly decorated with ribbons. The latter 'smocks' were, in fact, white shirts worn over ordinary clothes, but the smock was the basis of the second type of disguise familiar in the area. To it were often appliquéd the cut out shapes of farm animals and implements; a motif repeated in the Fool's trousers at Branston. The best example of this disguise was at Cropwell, Nottinghamshire, where the smocks were made of unbleached Holland with appliquéd farm animals. Here, the animals were interpreted widely and included not only the higher farm animals but also the farm dog, a mouse and, for some unexplained reason, the farmer's daughter. In its lowest form this type of disguise was an old white shirt with patches sewn on.
Coming back to the overall ceremony, it is not generally appreciated that what is still found in parts of the British Isles has it's conterpart elsewhere, particularly in Europe. The ceremony is so widespread that accidental development can not be ruled out. Its roots must lie in a fundamental belief, long since forgotten, but deep rooted enough to make it persist with a recognisable shape. Sword dances are still found in Europe, some bearing traces of a similar ceremony. A sophisticated version of the East Midlands Hero-Combat is still to be found in the French Western Pyrenees where the Basque people perform a version with a cast of around 60-80 people. Other complete examples of the primitive ceremony existed until recently in the Balkans, including Thrace and Southern Macedonia. For the more diligent scholar there are a couple of useful web links that may be of further interest:
In conclusion, it is reasonably certain that all the ceremonies had the same basic motive which was to propagate fertility, later termed "luck". It is also fairly certain that they have a common link in the long distant past with that other surviving ancient ceremony, the Morris Dance. Several examples still survive in the Hero-Combat plays, for instance in the Thame, Oxfordshire play towards the start we have:
"All dance the Morris. Enter Father Christmas. Performers all dance round him......"
It was quite common for the two distinct ceremonies to have some common performers and other links exist through the Fools. The different types of fooling which distinguishes the dance fool and the mummers fool merely show two different stages of development in the fools long passage from ritual to farce. The whole ceremony involved in both traditions has developed gradually from a primitive basic concept and the intent of the ritual was imitative magic to bring about the desired result. The dramatic revitalisation was an attempt to urge on Nature the need to produce large crops and herds and to ensure the continuity of the tribe itself.
The magic has clearly worked over the years and hopefully will continue for many years to come.
With acknowledgment to a large number of sources for the ideas and extracts; in particular to Dr E Cawte, Dr N Peacock and A Helm for "Ceremonial Dances of Great Britain" and to A Helm for "The English Mummers' Play".
