StGilesAndMargarets03

 

 
    A WINTER’S PLAY

    And now for something completely different again.  Last year I related a virtual conversation between some eccentric friends of mine, discussing over e-mail what was the opposite of time.  This year I joined up with the same group, to do something real, celebrating a mid-winter event common all over the Southern counties of England until about 100 years ago. Mumming. What’s that? Well, Mumming is disguising yourself, and performing a Mummer’s Play.  At root it’s a death and resurrection thing.  In the South Country it used to be performed at the mid-winter solstice, to celebrate the death of the old year and the birth of a new one. But similar plays are performed in the North-West at Easter, called Pace Egg Plays, because they happen at the same time as Pace-Egging, which means Easter (Pace, like Paques in French) Eggs.  And in the West Midlands at All Souls (November 2nd), it’s called Soul Caking.

    The play is in doggerel verse and has a few standard characters. At its heart there’s King (or Saint) George, Turkish Knight and the Doctor. King/Saint George, or his sidekick, Valiant Soldier, has a fight with Turkish Knight, who is killed.  A Doctor is called for, who revives him. The play ends with a dance or a song.  The play I took part in was “collected” from an old man in Wheatley near Oxford, round about 1950.  Members of the University Morris Men have performed it in and around Oxford ever since.  I first saw it done in 1966 late one night in a pub on the Hampshire Downs, to round off a convivial summer evening, but normally the chaps do it at the proper time, at Christmas.  I asked an old great aunt of mine if she’d ever seen Mumming: she lived in Hampshire. Yes she had, and remembered a few of the traditional lines from the play.  (She also used to do a dance with a broomstick.  She must have been pretty agile: I saw young girls doing the same thing in North West Ireland this summer, and it requires a lot of skill!).

    So we arrived at a pub in Jericho, on the north side of the City Centre (the area figures in an old Inspector Morse episode), to meet up, see if we remembered our lines, and get changed.  We had to be disguised: old Mummers’ costumes were smocks covered with lots of ribbons, and something over the head to make you unrecognisable.  Our costumes were a bit more representational.  Father Christmas was just that; King George and Slasher (the Valiant Soldier) had the look of Crusaders. Turkish Knight had an oriental dressing gown and a fur hat from the
    Soviet Army (goodness knows how that came about!). The Doctor had a top hat and bow tie. The other three bit part characters are Beelzebub, also looking oriental, and carrying the collecting tin; the Parson’s Nose (that’s me); and Ain’t Bin ‘It, the Fool, who plays a tune to amuse you all at the end.

    We performed the play six times, the first being a warm up, and the pub where we started had a second chance to see it, once we’d got thoroughly into the swing, at the end of the evening. Poor old Turkish Knight got slaughtered each time, and the chap playing the Doctor had a great time reviving him, with a ping-pong ball as a pill (which the Knight puffed out of his mouth, proving he wasn’t quite dead after all), and various bogus syringes and a funnel to pour the medicine (beer) into his mouth as he lay on the floor.  Each year Turkish Knight and the Doctor exchange parts, so that they can get their own back!  There was a lot of ad-libbing, as the old words faded from memory at the crucial moment. The fights would probably worry a Health and Safety official, but then those humourless people don’t go into pubs, or have much fun.  And as for killing a Muslim, well…  It was the closed season for Political Correctness.
     

    Strangely on the last Saturday before Christmas some of the pubs were pretty quiet, but we got a rousing reception at over half of them.  To end the play the Doctor says he’s performed a miracle, which you can see with your very own eyes, and if you can’t believe your eyes, it’s a very bad thing. Which is Beelzebub’s cue to come in and threaten the audience with his club unless they cough up and contribute to our charity (a local hospice). Saying “and what comes next, the Parson knows” he introduces a pointless character (me) who comes in, says “In comes I the Parson’s Nose, In I comes and out I goes”. The chap I first saw play this role in 1966 is now a Nobel Laureate: I’m not sure which was his finer achievement!

    And finally Ain’t Bin ‘It, with his big head and little wit, comes in to play a tune –
    O Little Town of Bethlehem, as it happened, which makes a very good Morris Dance tune, so the cast formed into a set and did a short dance. And because he comes from Sussex, he played the Sussex Carol to help us on our way between pubs.  As I said at the start, something completely different. But very seasonal.

    William Marsterson.  January 2008