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n Waits were one tradition that fell away with timenbut the Mummers have remained, although changed, across the years, which is hownit should be. Mumming is a folk tradition and folk traditions need to change ifnthey are not to turn into museum pieces or self-consciously twee nonsense. Thenvillages have changed, the villagers have changed, and if the old ways are tonremain alive, vital and relevant, then the folk traditions need to change too.nThey are not nice wee performances to entertain smart city dwellers with theirnquaint, picturesque, funny country ways; they exist to bring the villagersntogether, to give them a common purpose and a feeling of belonging, to let thenyoung people work with the old people, whereby both can learn to respect thenother and discover their own place in their own community.
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| Mediaeval Mummers |
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nThey are alive, andnthey must grow, develop and change; if they are merely preserved, they willnshrivel and die, as pickled and dry and brittle as a bitter widow, cold andngrudgingly tolerated but ultimately unloved and faintly embarrassing. This isnwhy Shakespeare scares so many people, as the purists seek to preserve hisnworks in vinegar but I have seen, for instance, a performance of Macbeth,nperformed in a broken old barn on a blasted heath in the middle of winter, donenin modern dress and with solid northern accents, and all before an audience ofna few dozen souls, that was more alive, significant and, damn it, morenentertaining than anything that was ever made by a Hollywood committee with anbudget of mega-millions. I’ve heard ‘better’ folk music sung in the back roomnof a village pub by the local postman on his second-hand guitar than I havenwhen I’ve paid half a week’s wages to sit two hundred yards away from somenbloke who considers himself to be considerably cooler if he wears hisnsunglasses indoors.
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| Mediaeval Mummers |
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nAnyway, Mumming. There are some people who say the wordngoes all the way back to the Greeks, from mommo – μομμο – meaningn‘mask’ and there might well be something in this, although it’s more likely that it comes from the old German mummer, meaning ‘a disguised person’ and vermummen meaning ‘to mask one’s face, to wear a disguise’. I’ll tell you aboutnwhat used to happen in the ancient Greek theatre another time, but the Mummersnplays started, well, nobody knows when, because they are a folk tradition andnthings weren’t written down about such things when only the winners botherednabout writing down what they did from one day to the next. Ordinary folk werenfar too busy being oppressed to worry about it. Or at least that’s what somenhistorians would like you to think. Actually, the folk were far too busynenjoying doing their Mumming to bother about it, and what mattered would benremembered because it mattered and what wasn’t important would be forgottennbecause it didn’t matter, because that’s how their minds worked back then, whennthey were alive and living in a tradition.
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| A Victorian Mummer’s Play |
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nMummers were Mumming in the MiddlenAges, performing their plays with their set patterns at Christmastide tonaudiences in village pubs and in village squares, with locals dressing up asnstock characters in prescribed roles, following the patterns of the plays thatnwere as old as the oldest old people remembered, turning them and twisting themnto local themes and local concerns, but all the time holding to the overallnfeel of the Mumming tradition. The Romans dressed up during Saturnalia,ndisguising themselves and getting up to mischief, and this habit continuednafter the Empire fell, with ordinary folk dressing up as legendary characters,nmythological figures and such like and performing for their neighbours, oftennon Christmas Eve but also at other times of the year.
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| A Party of Mummers comes to call |
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nOne strand of thisndeveloped into the mediaeval Mystery plays, which were scenes taken from thenBible and given a folksy English spin, and the other strand became the morensecular Mummer’s plays, which featured such incongruous players as St George,nAchilles, Father Christmas, Judas Iscariot, a Turkish Knight, a Dragon and anpompous, bumbling Doctor. The plays had a common theme, with (usually) FathernChristmas acting as a narrator, two of the ‘heroic’ figures would fight, amidstngreat bluster and mock classicisms, and one would kill the other only to benbrought back to life by the Doctor’s magical physick.
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| A Mummers’ carol |
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nThe actors (exclusivelynmale) dressed up in home-made costumes and disguised themselves by, forninstance, wearing masks or blacking their faces with burnt cork, giving usnanother name for them, ‘Guisers’, and they were also locally called GeesenDancers, Pace Eggers and Hobby Horsers. Quite often, the mummers went fromnhouse to house, performing their dramas in return for food, drink or money, andnwere a welcome Christmas entertainment for the most part, with theirnharum-scarum antics and high cockolorum, although sometimes things turnedndecidedly unpleasant when mummers with a long-held grudge exacted their revengenon an unsuspecting neighbour.
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| Mummers a-calling |
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nIndeed, in 1400 a dozen plotters disguisednthemselves as mummers in a plot to assassinate King Henry IV, only to bendiscovered hours before they could carry out the deed, leading to the customarynhanging, drawing and quartering so beloved by the Lancastrian branch of thenPlantagenets. Ironically, Richard II, who was deposed by cousin Henry, hadnenjoyed a splendid ‘mummerie’ held in his honour at London just beforenCandlemas 1377, amidst great pageantry and jollity. The mummery of the ordinarynpeople was enjoyed by other monarchs but were tidied up and polished to becomenthe Masques of the Tudor and later courts. Henry VIII, when he wasn’t busyndismantling many of the country’s other ancient establishments, tried to bannmummery and guising, with anyone who went about in masks, beards or disguisesnliable to be arrested as a vagabond, thrown into gaol for three months andnfined at the King’s pleasure but this didn’t check the popularity of mummingnand the plays can still be seen, alive and well, in various towns and villagesnat Christmastide across England to this day.
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