and Pagan) Custom (G.Christian (1951a)
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Midland Mummers
KEEPING UP A CHRISTMAS (AND A PAGAN) CUSTOM
By GARTH CHRISTIAN
IT happened on Christmas Eve. The front door would
burst open and a gang of boys with blackened faces
appear in the hall. One of them promptly stepped
forward and shouted out the Prologue:
The doors are open and now we're in.
We beg your favour for to win.
For whether we rise or whether we fall,
We'll do our best to please you all.
And if you don't believe the words I say,
Walk in St. George, and clear the way.
Then he stepped back and St. George moved forward
into the limelight:
In comes I, St. George, lately come from town to town.
To show the greatness of my strength.
And show the feat of valour.
So it went on for ten minutes, year after year through
the 1920's and 30's - and no one in this mining village
less than 'ten miles from Derby found anything odd about
it. Indeed, we found the Mummers no stranger than
the carol singers. As a schoolboy in these early 1930's
I regarded mumming as a normal pastime, less exciting
than opening the Christmas stocking, less nerve-racking
than the annual prize-giving, a mere incident in the
normal pattern of village life with its matches on the
steep, uneven cricket ground and its crude singing of
Matins and Evensong each Sunday.
We should have been astonished to be told that this
Mummmers' Play was as old as man himself. We should
have been startled - and probably unconvinced - had
anyone informed us that these encounters between St.
George and his enemies in what is really the old country
game of Single-Stick originally formed part of a pagan
religious ceremony observing the triumph of Light over
Darkness at the turn of the winter solstice.
Yet this is almost certainly the truth. In some areas
the play has been modernised and probably bears little
relation to earlier versions. One group of mummers end
their performance with a dirge for the death of Nelson
and the singing of the National Anthem. The Irish
texts contain an additional character in the person of
Saint Patrick. In the Nottinghamshire coalfields - and
I watched the Mummers at Underwood in each year of
the recent war - Saint George used to wear a heavy
overcoat labelled "Home Guard."
Our Derbyshire boys were a trifle less enterprising.
Though wearing much make-up - particularly charcoal
- they seldom decorated themselves in strange costumes,
unlike the mummers of Jacksdale and other villages just
inside the Nottinghamshire border.
On the whole the play retains its traditional character
wherever it is performed. I have compared the texts -
usually handed on only by word of mouth - as used
within the present century in Sussex, Ulster, Worcester-
shire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. One can only
marvel that the differences are not more marked.
Sometimes, though, variations both in the words and
action occur in the performances in villages of the same
district. Thus the Doctor, in performances I have
watched on the Nottinghamshire side of the Erewash
Valley - the last occasion was 1944 - pours his magical
medicine down the throat of the patient as he recites:
[column break]
I carry a little bottle by my side.
Which is called the Opliss Popliss Drops.
I can cure yer with the stuff in this bottle
If you'll let me pour it down tha' throttle.
In the Derbyshire villages around Ilkeston, on the
other hand, I have always seen the medicine applied to
the head and the heart. Anyway, the response is the
same. The miracle occurs. The resurrection is
repeated. Light triumphs. Darkness retreats before
the growing power of the sun. Those who first acted
this Play many, many centuries ago may have looked
forward with renewed hope to this renewal of Light
which would make food plentiful again about the great
forests of Sherwood and Arden and Andreadsweald and
all the rest.
The modern schoolboy obtains a good deal of fun and
not a little wealth from appearances with the Guisers.
These mining folk of the Midlands are generous. They
are quick to reward their favourite characters. Often
none other than Beelzebub:
Here comes I, Beelzebub,
And over my shoulder I carry my club.
And in my hand a dripping pan.
Don't you think I'm a jolly old man?
And as the play draws to a close, in comes Little Devil
Doubt.
Here comes I, Little Devil Doubt,
If you don't give me money, I'll sweep you all out.
Money I want and money I crave.
If you don't give me money I'll sweep you all to your
grave.
After this warning, it is hardly surprising that the
cash rolls in. Lads of fourteen who formed the Underwood
Mummers in 1944 cleared five pounds.
I must admit that they deserved their good reception.
Indeed, I have seldom failed to see the play acted with
grand energy and not a little skill. Often the boys had
rehearsed entirely on their own, having learned their
parts from "them as did it last year." Sometimes they
surprised the village schoolteachers who had not always
expected such talent. Sometimes they surprised them-
selves. And am sure they must have surprised the
ghosts of their pagan ancestors who acted this same play
long, long ago.
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