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.
Guisering seems to have hung on longest in the colliery villages of Derbyshire, and Mr. James Carrier, of Kirk Hallam, who takes a keen interest in local history, tells me he would like to see it revived. He, too, went out with mummers fifty year ago, and remembers the excitement of getting teh costumers ready.
The making of the props took quite a month before Christmas and was really as much fun as the actual guisering. Mothers and sisters helped to dress the characters in gay apparel made of coloured paper and cardboard. The party of young men made a round of pubs, farms amd big houses and many a time there was over a £1 each to be shared out at the end of an evening which, as Mr. Carrier says, "was a lot of money fifty years ago."
Here is the play he remembers. It is slicke, shorter and more poetic than the others, and includes The Young Turk and the Princess of Paradise among other characters.
Indexer's Notes* "Chorus" in the original source means that the rest of the cast call for the Doctor in unison.