This chapter, more than the others, has been the victim of ERD's own success. This is because research that ERD inspired and facilitated subsequently revealed flaws in much of the evidence this chapter quotes, and invalidated most of the theories it outlines. Consequently and significantly, these theories are no longer supported by the surviving authors Cawte and Peacock.
This chapter reflects the state of English folklore scholarship in the 1960s, and it is both reasonable and healthy for things to have moved on. It would be churlish to dissect the chapter here, so instead interested readers are invited to follow up the references. The main criticisms are summarised in Millington (1989), and reviewed in more detail in Millington (2002).
The origins of the plays are still uncertain, but the evidence points to them emerging in the early to mid 18th century, or just possibly the late 17th century (Cass & Roud, 2002)
Helm himself revised his conclusions regarding the influence of Richard Johnson and John Kirke's respective works on the Seven Champions of Christendom, no longer regarding them as direct textual sources (Helm, 1980, p.4)
CEREMONIES IN EASTERN EUROPE
THE play of the Roumanian Calusari is preserved on film in the
Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. In this, all the action takes
place within a circle formed by some of the performers holding
between them strips of wood. The men who form this linked circle
maintain throughout the action a jigging movement; the links they
hold are raised or lowered according to the need for doors or
windows as the 'plot' demands: the constant jigging seems to be a
primitive dance, but without the complex evolutions of most
dances recorded recently. The action shows that this linked circle
is a crude representation of the marriage house in which the
life-cycle drama is performed, without the censorship imposed by a
more polite society.
In a part of Thrace which is now in Turkey, Dawkins (1904-1905,
1906) reported an annual ceremony shortly before Lent. The two
principal actors, Kalogheroi, wore animal skins, padded out with
straw, over their heads and shoulders. They were always married
men. Two unmarried men dressed as Brides and another man
dressed as an old woman in rags, and carried a piece of wood
swaddled in rags, to represent a bastard baby. Two or four
'Gypsies', two or three 'Policemen' with whips and swords, and a
bagpiper, completed the team. They collected food or money,
with the owner's consent or without, and the old woman and one
of the Gypsies performed an obscene pantomime in front of some
of the houses. In the afternoon the Gypsies mimed the forging of a
plough share, the baby grew and demanded a wife, and one of the
Kalogheroi married one of the Brides. This Kalogheros was 'killed'
by the other, lamented by his wife, and then he suddenly came to
life again. Next the Brides were yoked to a real plough share, which
they dragged round the village square, while seeds were scattered
behind it, and the actors cried, 'May wheat be ten piastres the
bushel! ... Yea, O God, that poor folk be filled,' and more to the
same effect.
A similar performance was reported by Wace (1909-1910, 1912) in
Thessaly and Southern Macedonia on the eve of Epiphany. Bands
of about twelve provided four actors and two semi-choruses. While
the latter sang, an Arab molested a Bride, and then fought and
killed the Bridegroom. His death was lamented by the Bride and
then he was revived by a comic doctor. The performance ended
with dancing, and once again an obscene pantomime (not described)
by the Bridegroom and Bride. Similar characters, without
play, were reported from Skyros in the Aegean. The resemblance
of these customs to the English Folk Play, especially the Wooing or Bridal plays
from Lincolnshire, which sometimes included a team of men
drawing a plough, is most striking.
The Balkan performers first enacted fertilization in front of the
houses, then they represented death and resurrection. When they
followed this by sowing seed and invoking a bumper harvest, they
were clearly using sympathetic magic. This seems to be very near
the original religious rite. It seems entirely reasonable not only to
regard our British plays as the remnants of a magical fertility
ceremony, but also to think that they once resembled the Balkan
performances even more closely than they do now. For fuller
details see Dawkins (1904-1905), Dawkins (1906), Harrison (1903), Lawson (1899-1900), and Roumanian Calusari (Film), some of which
are discussed in Ridgeway (1910).
THE SWORD DANCE
Ordish, in his two published studies of the Play, makes it clear that
he regarded the sword dance as the basis. It is possible that his lack
of interest in the choreography of the complex dance figures led
him to expect a less highly developed dance form than was found
by Cecil Sharp some twenty years later (see Ordish, 1891 and Ordish, 1893, and his
unpublished papers in Ordish Coll.). The sword dance combines highly
developed dance movement with an involved dramatic action. In
some examples there is a wooing as in the Wooing plays. The dance
follows, and the swords are woven into a star, which is put round
the neck of a supposed victim; the swords are withdrawn, and the
victim falls as if dead. He is later restored to life, usually by a comic
doctor. In some Austrian examples of the sword dance the swords
are locked round the neck of the Fool, who gives an ear-splitting
scream as the swords are raised high in the air, and he appears to be
strangled. (Cawte Coll., Wolfram (1935)). Similarly, at Earsdon, Northumberland,
when the dancers locked their rappers round the Betty's neck, they
called it 'Hanging the Betty'. The significance of the star of swords
to the performers is clear, though this may be a rationalisation.
No satisfactory explanation has as yet been forthcoming for the
lock of 'swords'; as a means of execution it is singularly inept and
clumsy, and only as the climax of a linked dance does it become
effective. In some similar German dances, the lock was used to
hoist aloft either one of the dancers or some local dignitary. If the
idea of the lock as a means of execution is discarded, and it is
viewed as a symbol and means of regenerating life instead of a
means of its termination, then the English version draws nearer
to the Roumanian marriage house, since the linked 'swords' of the
former are probably only a choreographic development of the
latter, grown in importance as understanding dwindled. Many of
the linked dances appear to have lost part, or all, of the dramatic
element, and it seems that recent performers, seeing the ceremonial
only as a means of raising money, were apt to concentrate on the
more attractive feature, the dance, and forget the action which had
become time-wasting and money-losing.
THE BRIDAL PLAY OF THE EAST MIDLANDS
Here the action is nearer to the Balkan examples, though still
garbled. Some texts have all three generations represented -
Dame Jane with her Baby, and the Ploughman who woos the Fair
Lady. Most of the performers were farm-workers (very often
ploughmen), whose income, though not spectacularly high, was
roughly constant, so that the need to raise money was not so
pressing and the text accordingly survived in a more complete
form. Indeed, an individual gang was often raised from the workers
on one farm, and one of the reasons given for the lapse of the
custom in the East Midlands is the break-up of the large estates.
Furthermore, people working close to the land realise more clearly
than most the need for fertility of crops and animals, although it is
not suggested for one moment that towards the close of the
nineteenth century — or even much earlier — the performers seriously
considered or understood the primitive ritual they were continuing.
No description of a linked dance has survived in this area, and
the picture is confused by vague nineteenth-century references to
sword dances, which all could, and probably do, refer to the
sword fight in an Hero-Combat or Wooing/Hero-Combat play with one or two exceptions. The
antiquarian Oliver (e.g. Oliver, 1837) is a particular trouble, for he inserted
much the same passage about a sword dance, Maid Marian, and so
forth, into each book he wrote. At Wainfleet on the Wash, there is a
report of 'an intricate sword dance' as late as 1890, but nothing
more definite than this has survived (Heanley, 1901). The notable example
of an Sword Dance play in Lincolnshire is at Revesby (Morrice Dancers, 1779). The script is
still to be seen in the British Museum, in a neat hand, and in good
condition. It is probably not the work of a performer, who would
be expected to write in a large, clumsy hand, with no punctuation
or indentation: examples of such writing are to be seen in the same
collection, and it does not seem to be a text collected by some
antiquarian gentleman. It starts as follows: 'October ye 20.1779.
the Morrice Dancers (named in Dramatis Personae) acted their
merry dancing &c. at Revesby in the Ribbon dresses &c. and two
men from Kirtley without any particular dresses sung the song of
Landlord and Tenant....' The Dramatis Personae are then listed,
and the text follows. This listing of the performers by name is rare,
the date of performance, October 20th, is unique for a play,
conflicting with the Christmas season mentioned in the text, and
some of the performers did not come from Revesby. October 20th
was the date of the annual fair at Revesby, when Sir Joseph Banks
kept open house (Cameron, 1952), and the performance was probably an
'out of season' one specially arranged for him. The text is a long
one, rather confused, and bears very little resemblance in detail to
other texts we have. There is a wooing, certainly, and a killing (as
in the Sword Dance plays apparently), but no revival in the text, and the
wording is unusual. The standard fragment from Exeter (1738)
and the complete text from Romsey (see p.87), collected only
twenty or thirty years after the Revesby one, are in sharp contrast.
The Romsey one has many of the verbal formulae still in use in
Hampshire in recent years, and would be considered commonplace
by a Hampshire mummer of today. The Revesby text, on the other
hand, seems to be much on its own, and does not even resemble
the texts collected in the same county in the 1820's (Mummer Plays, Co. Lincoln, 1823-1842). The
Revesby MS belonged to Sir Joseph's sister, and was signed by
her, and we think it likely that he had this text compiled for a
special performance, or even that he compiled it himself: the year
1779 was the year of Sir Joseph's marriage (Smith, 1911). The text leaves
little doubt that a linked dance was performed, but we think it poor
evidence that it was indigenous to Lincolnshire.
THE HERO-COMBAT PLAY
The preliminaries in the previous two types suggest that these
ceremonies are the remains of the oldest and most primitive
customs left in this country. The Hero-Combat play, although more widespread,
has been modernised and bowdlerised to a great extent, and
this is no doubt due to the prevalence of chapbooks, and the
acceptance of this type in the Victorian nurseries (e.g. Ewing, n.d.). It is
again suggested that once the original purpose was lost, the prime
motive became financial gain. In England the action was gradually
shortened so that the number of performances (and the money
collected) could be increased, whilst in Ireland, where it is the
custom to perform in an open space, the text has become longer
and longer so that more passers-by can be encouraged to make a
contribution (N.A.Hudleston Coll.).
If our contentions are true, the ceremonials of recent years are
remaining portions of a much longer action, nearest completeness
in the Sword Dance and Wooing areas, and which may have covered most of the
British Isles. Remains of the wooing, in a very literary form, may
be preserved in the extreme west of the country (see p.14). In the
Chiswick, Middlesex, Play, the character Swiff Swash and Swagger
says:
'Once I courted a damsel,
She's often in my mind,
But now, alas! she's proved unkind.'
but does not develop the wooing beyond this. The Bride remains
as the woman who laments the fallen champion, and, in the west
country, the Gipsy and Old Woman may survive in the characters
of Father and Mother Christmas.
ST GEORGE AND THE CHAPBOOK PLAY
The notion that St George and the Dragon are integral characters
of the Play probably springs from the belief that the origin of the
play texts is to be found in Richard Johnson's Famous Historie of
the Seavern Champions of Christendom (Johnson, 1824), first published in
1596 and subsequently added to by others. Parts of this came from
the earlier metrical romance of Sir Bevis of Hampton, in particular
the story of St George and the fair Sabra. Johnson's book was
adapted as a stage play by John Kirke in 1638 (Kirke, 1638). The prose
form proves, on examination, to be an unlikely source, and the stage
version only slightly more likely. In Chapter One of the former,
St George was the son of the Lord High Steward of England, born
by a Caesarian operation with the image of a dragon on his breast,
a blood red cross on his right hand and a gold garter on his left leg.
Just after his birth he was stolen by Kalyb, an enchantress, and
kept by her for fourteen years, at the end of which time he
imprisoned her in a rock and freed six other champions who were
likewise held her prisoners. After a nine months' stay in Coventry,
the champions set out on their individual travels, St George going
to Egypt to kill a dragon. This he did, and won the hand of Sabra,
the King of Egypt's daughter, who was courted by Almidor, Black
Prince of Morocco. The rest of the Historie is concerned with the
adventures of the seven champions against giants, magicians,
dragons, etc., in all of which they were successful, until eventually,
at the end of Book II they died. Book III, added by a different
author, is concerned with the adventures of their sons.
Kirke takes some of this wildly improbable material and turns it
into a five-act play, Act I of which recounts, with minor variations,
St George's early history, and introduces Suckabus, a clown, son of
Calyb and Tarpax, who becomes George's servant. Later, a Chorus
tells in retrospect of George's encounter with the Dragon, and how
he rescued Sabrina, daughter of the King of Morocco. Eventually
George is tricked into fighting the champions, whom he overcomes,
but all ends well with a dance by all the heroes. The basic
theme of both is however, the supremacy of Christianity over
Islam, and not death and resurrection which is the subject with
which we are concerned. Kirke's play was widely performed as a
puppet play in this country (Dean-Smith, 1958, 249), and it seems likely that
this was the primary source of the chapbooks and has some bearing
on the texts, but not on the ceremony.
Many of the texts begin with a boastful résumé by George of his
adventures, which are almost exactly those given at the start of
Johnson and Kirke. Johnson gives them in prose, Kirke in blank
verse, and the Mummers in rhyming couplets. Kirke adds the
combat of the champions and their dance to Johnson. The
characters of the King of Egypt and the Prince of Morocco in the
Play are obviously derived from Johnson but Sabra or Sabrina
never appears in the Mummers' ceremony except by mention only,
usually as the King of Egypt's daughter. There the resemblance
ends, and we suggest that instead of treating these two early
writings as origins of the Mummers' Play, it would be preferable
to regard them as the source of a separate chapbook version made
popular by the puppet play. It seems likely that since then there
has been an exchange of text and characters between the older
ceremonial play and the more recent literary one. In 1756, Bishop
Percy, referring to a ballad entitled 'The Birth of St George', said
that 'the incidents in this ... are chiefly taken from the old
storybook of The Seven Champions of Christendome, which, though
now the play-thing of children, was once in high repute' (Percy, 1938).
This supports our contention that St George's adventures were
circulated in chapbook form after the success of Johnson and
Kirke.
It seems reasonably certain that if these chapbooks are the direct
descendants of the older St George chapbooks, they must have
been adopted by the performers as the older traditional version
was lost. These versions lack spontaneity and life, the lines are dull,
and there is none of the verve which even the most nonsensical
traditional versions have. When people migrate to an industrial
area they tend to leave many of their traditional customs behind
them, and it might therefore be expected that only in industrial
areas would the traditional text be lost and replaced by the
chapbook version. This has in fact happened, because, although
chapbooks were printed in London as well as locally, only in the
industrial north has their use been recorded.
DEATH AND RESURRECTION
This theme is of great antiquity and widespread distribution. It was
told of Dionysos by the Thracians, of Adonis by the Syrians, of
Attis by the Phrygians, of Osiris by the Egyptians and of
Hyppolytus by the Greeks, and the sophisticated performers of the
Thai classical drama still enact the story of Suwannahongs who
was killed, sought by his wife, restored to life, and who reigned in
his wife's kingdom after killing the king, his father-in-law. The
necessity for a physically fit king, and the need to kill him before
he weakens, is still a living belief. The King of the Shilluks, in the
Sudan, must demonstrate his strength by killing three bulls single
handed, and some of his wives must always be pregnant. When it
appears his strength may be waning, he is ceremonially strangled
while sleeping (Hastings, 1963).
Sir Alan Wace noted the resemblance between what he saw in
Greece and the worship of Dionysos (Wace, 1909-1910, Ridgeway, 1910). There are
two reasons for postulating a connection between the latter and the
English Folk Play. Firstly, the play resembles those of the Balkans,
and secondly, the Festival of Dionysos occurred about the same
time as Epiphany when most of the English plays appear. Furthermore,
the sacred marriage was one of the rituals in the annual cycle
of Dionysos, and it appeared also in the annual cycles of the gods of
the early kingdoms of Mesopotamia. Here, the parts were often
played by the king and his daughter, and the ceremony took place
within a fragile 'marriage house' or bower. Thus we can carry
back the themes of our Play to the earliest periods of history and
say that they most probably have their roots in pre-history (Smith, 1958).
The dying god, or king (they can be much the same), renewed
his life for the benefit of the community, but fertility became
merely 'luck', the death became the result of a combat, and the
miraculous revival was rationalised into the attentions of a comic
doctor. The degeneration is less complete in some examples. It is
the primitive dramatic attempt to ensure fertility which the texts
seek to explain, though it is inexplicable in the terms of a more
sophisticated society.
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