M.W.M. (1926b)


Main Variant

Transcription

FOLK DRAMA. - II.

MORE OLD NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
SURVIVALS.

THEORIES OF REMOTE PAGAN
ORIGIN.

Personally, I do not believe that these plays
have survived by reason of any coherent idea that
their performance has a deep significance. You
may do all this from a vague idea that "it brings
luck," but the leaven of fun must also have done
a great deal to preserve them before the age of
wireless, village dances, and motor bus trips to the
nearest town.

They are now bound to die out altogether
because as a popular form of amusement they
have been superseded, and a sophisticated age is
ceasing to have much regard for anything which
is merely done "for luck." There is only a
chance of preserving those more highly developed
dances which have gradually shed their plays, and
are kept alive for those spectacular qualities which
demand skill and a healthy agility for their per-
formance. The Morris jig and the Sword dances
are obviously among these.

Yet in spite of all this present simplicity, is it
not possible that this jumble of grave and gay,
the Clown, the dances and the snatches of songs
may have influenced the form taken by English
drama when in the period of its highest achieve-
ment it refused to be coerced by scholars into
classical or foreign models? - Popular taste as we
see it in the folk-plays, had already imposed itself
upon the ecclesiastical rigidity of the miracle and
morality plays, insisting upon the interpolation of
humorous incidents, comic devils, and the "boast-
ing Antagonist" who masqueraded as Herod
"raging around the pageant." A very interesting,
examination of Shakespeare's debt to the folk-
drama will be found in Miss Janet Spens'
"Shakespeare and Tradition" - Oxford, Black-
well, 1916.

It was natural that many other odds and ends
of related information came to light during the
hunt for plays. One old farm labourer of ninety
completed my impressions of these performances
by describing the Plough Monday of his youth,
which Was Spent in some village not far from
Clayworth - I have unfortunately forgotten
exactly which, though I rather think was Mat-
tersey. As it was hopeless to attempt the re-writing
of dialect, I will give the nearest possible version
of his very charming description:

  Aboot twenty o't big lads hitched 'emselves
  on to t'ploo, it were all decked out wi' rib-
  bons, and we pulled it roond t' village and
  got what money we could; but them as
  wouldn't give us owt, we plooed up his gar-
  den or bit o' land, and made a reg'lar mess
  on't! Then one o' them that carried t' bag -
  same as you puts the corn in when you sows -
  he put t' money in theer, and then we all
  went to t' public hoose. And t' man who'd
  last got married in t' parish used to drive t'
  ploo.

It was from this same old man that I heard
a very pleasant legend of the origin of the Haxey
Hood game.

THE HAXEY HOOD GAME.

This unique Lincolnshire Plough Monday cus-
tom has attracted much attention and conjecture,
and as this does not come strictly within my
boundaries. I will only give this delightfully told
Nottinghamshire version, which is an interesting
example of that large class of "explanation
stories" which are made when the real signifi-
cance has been hopelessly lost.

"And do you know what's the reason of the
Hood Throwing?" (I, of course, shook my head
and advanced no theories.) "Well, you see, a
very long time back, when t' ladies used to wear
hoods, there were a great lady walking over t'
common at Haxey - weer they does the Hood
Throwing nowadays - and at that time there were
a school theer for all the parishes round. And as
she were walking, t'wind blew her hood away,
and all t' lads came out o't' school and tried to
catch it, and so some o'them catched it at last,
and gave it back to her. And she were that
pleased, she left all that land t' village, and what
money it brought in was to be given to making
hoods every year, and giving money to them as
managed to get 'em. For as you know, all t'
lads out' o' t' villages round, tries to get the Hood
to their own parish, which is like as all t' little
uns tried to' catch that theer lady's hood a long
tine back - so they still keeps it on in memory,
like, of the lady who lost her hood."

(More learned theories may be found in E.K.
Chambers' "Mediaeval Stage," and in Miss B.
Phillpots' "Elder Edda" where the theory is illus-
trated by my account of the game as I saw it
played in 1915).

This same informative old gentleman in whose
kitchen I spent so many peaceful winter hours
talking and drinking "Granny's" desperately
strong tea, also sung me another "Wassail
Song," and referred me to his younger brother
(aged 80). "Who was a great man to dance - you
should 'a seen him do them 'stunnin' pair o'
legs!" (This "young one" actually performed
on an occasion of great expansion induced by
beer - the patient researcher, indeed, has his re-
wards!)

HOCK-TIDE HILARITY.

I also learned from an old woman, who had
been a "victim" in her youth, that traces of
the Spring "Hock-tide" ceremonies had attached
themselves to the Nottinghamshire Plough Monday
performances. She told me how the players used
always to break into the houses and march the
girls off by force, "partly to make an audience
and partly for a bit of fun, like," was her
explanation.

This was once a well-known custom, which no
doubt because of its attendant riotousness, was
more actively repressed all over the country than
other more "inoffensive" ceremonies. There are
however, plenty of mediaeval records to show
how vigorously these Hock-tide customs flourished
in an age when our manners were less highly
developed. On one day the men of the village
seized any women they found walking abroad,
bound them, and dragged them off to some spot,
and then extracted a forfeit for release. The
next day the women retaliated.

Local "explanation stories" led Strutt and the
earlier antiquarians to give the Custom an
historical origin - the commemoration of the
struggle between Saxon and Dance - but nowadays
we are inclined to go further back, and to see
in it yet another manifestation of the desire to
lay hands upon some suitable victims, which
is the central idea of so many folk festivals.

Nottinghamshire also provided an 'example of
that very curious custom of dancing in the skins
or heads of animals. I was told that "a long
while back the lads of South Wheatley used to
go all round the neighbourhood dancing in cow-
hides, horns and all - scaring folks to death by
peeping through the windows at night."

An early record of such masquerading can be
seen in the illuminated Bodleian M.S. dated 1343,
while the most highly developed survival is the
Abotts Bromley Horn Dance, in which six per-
formers dance with huge antlers fixed upon their
heads. Their companions, a hobby horse, fool,
lady and archer, suggest that they were once an
integral part of a normal type of folk drama
which has now disappeared from the performance,
as it has in the case of most sword dances. The
folk-play fool usually has a cow's tail or some
bit of skin attached to his person - and his more
sophisticated counterpart, the pantomime clown,
is often equipped with a bladder.

Again, we must seek our explanation in a dim
past, when religious ideas were dramatised or
performed in pantomime. The gods of primitive
man evolved from personifications of forces
which he either feared or felt to be good and
desirable. Certain animals seemed to possess
these forces or qualities pre-eminently, and thus
they naturally became identified with a god pos-
sessed of the same qualities. The great physical
power and beauty of an ox, as well as the
strengthening properties of his flesh as food,
marked him out an animal whose qualities
were highly desirable. By eating his flesh in a
sacrificial meal, or by performing a sacred dance
enveloped in his skin, you could in some mysteri-
ous way, absorb into yourself all this power and
beauty - in fact, become one with the god
himself.

This ceremonial would readily amalgamate with
the, death and resurrection play, for while the
reviving sun renews the earth's strength and fer-
tility, so at the same time mankind must also
renew its own personal strength and fertility.

CHAP-BOOKS AND BROADSHEETS

This, I think, completes my list of discoveries
which have a direct bearing upon drama. Many
explorations proved to be wild goose chases
through very muddy fields, or, at best only
yielded nebulous hints which are not at this stage
of any general interest. I can only just mention
now those delightful but less serious hunts after
chap-books and broadsheets which produced
matter of significance, varying from "The His-
tory of Fanny Thoughtless" to "Robin Hood
Garlands" - which reminds me that I once seized
a little collection of broadsheet ballads from a
farmhouse vase; they were about to be used
as "spills."

Then, of course, there are the old parish ac-
count books, which often disclose old customs
and ought to be examined more thoroughly. I
have this note for instance:-

  1684. For mowing, leading, and strawing of
  church with hay at Midsummer ... 10d.

These bare remains of another observance of
an old agriculture religion are recorded in "The
Towne Book of Claworth . . . Beginning In
the year of our Lorde 1674." The custom was
apparently discontinued after 1705. This in-
teresting book is now in the possession of Col.
R. C. Otter, of Royston Manor, who was kind
enough to lend it to me. I cannot refrain from
quoting one quite irrelevant entry:

  1709, To George Pearson for whipping £ s. d.
  of dogs ...................... 00 01 0

Then there is the pleasing suggestion of romance
in the story that a fierce creature who once in-
habited a cave in a hillside, and gave its name
to the hamlet of Drakeholes - (dragon-holes). I
will say at once that I am not prepared to stand
up to any philologist of opposing theories!

NOTHING ABOUT ROBIN HOOD.

It may seem strange that I have made only
passing references to Robin Hood, Nottingham-
shire's own particular hero, but I did not myself
find the least scrap of oral tradition about him.
This is not so strange when we realise that
although he makes a very occasional appearance
in surviving Mummers' plays, it is hardly as any-
thing more distinctive than one of the antagonists
in the combat and death, just as we find "The
Turkey Champion," "Saint (or King) George,"
"Captain Slasher" or "Lord Nelson" appearing
in the same capacity. Perhaps he has no real
business there at all?

But whatever were the stages by which Robin
came to be identified with folk drama - an inter-
esting point - mediaeval or Tudor records leave no
doubt whatever that he had a long and brilliant
life in popular plays and pageants, which makes
his disappearance all the more disappointing,
especially to Nottinghamshire people who will
join in complaining with the unsatisfied man in
Antony Munday's play of "Robert, Earl of Hunt-
ingdon" (1598) because he says.:

  Methinks I see no jests of Robin Hood.