M.W.M. (1926b)
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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They are now bound to die out altogether because as a popular form of amusement they have been superseded, and a sophisticated age is ceasing to have much regard for anything which is merely done "for luck."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. |
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