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.
"The first text was collected [Note 3] on St Kitts, British West Indies from a group of resident Negroes who have been playing what they call 'Mummies' all their lives. It was observed on New Year's Day 1966 being played on the main road on the south side of the island, but performed by a group from Phillips, which is in one of the Northern parishes. The play has been associated with Phillips and its neighbour town, Lodge Village, for as long as Kittitians can remember, and until recently, two troupes played the piece. The cast was;
Fool - William Michum
Father Christmas - Thomas Wilson
St Patrick - Solomon Mills
St George - Edwin Odane
Dragon - Edwin French
Giant - Daniel Phillips
Princess of Shava - Ralph Benjamin (age nine)
It will be noted that this is not the complete cast of characters. Rather, it is the names given by the men for their first role. Each person took at least two roles - for instance, Father Christmas was also the Doctor, St Patrick also played St Andrew, and so on. The reasons given were that not enough players came out that year, but this kind of doubling up had always gone on they maintained.
The text of the play is a composite of how they gave the play that day plus a text written for me by the 'captain' of the group Edwin Odane. This he insisted on giving me because he, and the other veterans of the group, said that they had not given the play 'right' that day (but in the script he omitted much which they had given)."
Abrahams' Footnote:Note 3: "Material presented here was collected while a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, to whom I owe my thanks for the opportunity to study West Indian dramatic traditions."
Peter Millington's Notes:In:
P.Millington (1996) Mrs Ewing and the Textual Origin of the St Kitts Mummies' Play, Folklore, 1996, Vol.107, pp.77-89,
it is shown that the St.Kitts and Nevis Mummies' plays derived their texts from:
J.H.Ewing (1884) A Christmas Mumming Play, Aunt Judy's Magazine [New Series], Jan.1884, Vol.3, pp.155-173 [Full Text].
Plate IV
THE QUEEN OF SHAVA
HERE COMES I, FATHER CHRISTMAS