Originally prepared for textual analysis during his PhD research on the 'Origins and Development of English Folk Plays' by Peter Millington (2002).
Original spelling and typography is retained, except that superscripts, long s and ligatured forms are not encoded.
Line identifiers are those used for line types in the Folk Play Scripts Explorer.
"There is an indescribable pleasure in looking back upon many of the scenes, incidents, and recollections of our early days in this pilgrimage of life, some of which are usually of a more or less romantic character. Amongst many of those which pertain unto myself there is one which is redolent of this forthcoming and ever joyous season of Christmas, and which, possibly, has now in the lapse of years dies out, but whereof a recital, as I perfectly well remember it, may prove an item of Noel-tide interest.
In my youthful days - say from about 1845 to 1850 - at East Retford, where I was born, and where I vegetated until 1858, during each season of Yule there was enacted by youthful bands of entertainers a short sketch known as a 'Morris.' The participants therein perambulated from one to another of certain favoured and promising 'pitches,' calculated to provide a small harvest of pence, and in each place enacted a little play. I saw and heard it performed many times during the seasons above-mentioned; and, the same having ever since been vividly retained in my memory, I am enabled to here give the whole of it nearly word for word."