LOCATIONS
OF all things subject to error, place names fare the worst. There
are variations in spelling, and one county may have more than one
place of the same name, for example there are five Newbiggins in
Northumberland. Possibly more confusing, the same name may
occur in different parts of the country, and distort a pattern of
distribution unless the district is made clear. To attain uniformity
and avoid confusion in this list, we have given places the spelling
shown on the one-inch Ordnance Survey Maps of the country,
and have shown a Full Kilometre Grid Reference. This provides
an easy method of locating any place on the post-war Ordnance
Survey maps of Great Britain. The letters refer to the 100 Km
squares and a key to these is supplied with all one-inch maps. [1] The
figures which refer to sub-divisions of these squares, should be
divided into two pairs: the first pair should be read from west to
east along the bottom or top of the map and the second pair from
south to north up the side of the map. On a quarter-inch map only
the first of each pair of figures is printed along the edge, the other
has to be estimated. Instructions on the use of grid references are
given at the bottom of each Ordnance Survey map, but in the
instructions given on the one-inch maps the estimation of a third
figure in each direction should be ignored for the present purpose.
The four figure references which we use, define the position of each
place to the nearest kilometre. This permanent accurate identification
is essential because a village with a flourishing tradition in the
nineteenth century may disappear in the urbanisation of the
twentieth, and it is important to have these on record.
When a source refers to a parish which has no village of that
name (e.g. Antrobus, Cheshire), we give the Grid Reference of the
parish church or of the parish name on an Ordnance Survey map.
A place is normally listed under the county in which it lies; when
it is in a municipal or county borough, it is shown under the
geographical county to which the borough belongs, even though the
boundary may have enclosed part of a neighbouring county (e.g.
Northenden, formerly in Cheshire, and now part of Manchester,
is included under Lancashire). [2]
A number of references are to plays for which no exact location
is known: it is often the practice for writers, particularly in serial
publications, to refer to, for example, 'A Gloucestershire Play' or
'A Wessex Play'. Others, vaguer still, simply refer to 'A Mumming
Play'. In such instances, where the text is supported by an essay of
interest to the subject as a whole, or where the text itself is unusual,
they have been included either under the relevant county or in the
general Unlocated section of the Table. It has been possible to
identify some unlocated texts by information concerning the
writer's whereabouts at the time of writing. This information has
been discovered in such works of reference as Medical Directories,
Crockford's Clerical Directory, and The Dictionary of National
Biography, and is acknowledged in footnotes to the Table. Errors
are possible, and we welcome other suggestions.
Locations in Ireland are given on the Irish Grid, which is
similar to, though not coincident with, the British one. The Irish
Ordnance Survey maps are our standard for Irish place names, but
those from elsewhere are copied from the source quoted. We have
not mapped the distribution of the Play outside the British Isles,
because the number of locations is small.
DATE EXTANT
This is the last known date of performance. When a writer refers
to a custom still in existence we have given the date of the season
preceding the date of publication (see also INCLUSION, p.15). [3]
TIME OF APPEARANCE
In our MS Index we have recorded the time of appearance as
given in the source, but here we only indicate the season in general
terms, e.g. Christmas, New Year, Plough Monday, Easter, or All
Souls' Tide. When no time of appearance is given in the source,
but the season is mentioned in the text (e.g. 'We wish you a Merry
Christmas'), we have given this. There has been some inevitable
confusion over the time of appearance of the Wooing plays. Many we
know took place on Plough Monday, in others the text refers to
Christmas, and in some instances we know the play was performed
throughout both seasons, so that some inconsistency is unavoidable
with information which is incomplete. In many sources when the
season is not given we could make a reasonable guess, but this we
have not done, preferring to depend exclusively on the statements
in our authorities.
TEXT
Although every effort has been made to obtain texts wherever
possible, we have included places where no text is available,
provided we can be sure there was a play. Although the text is the
safest guide to the basic 'action' on which the classification depends,
it is sometimes possible to establish a type by the background
description even though no dialogue has survived. No classification
has been possible for the two examples known to have been
performed in silence—Bromborough, Cheshire, and Mullion,
Cornwall: it is clear that the mime related to the Play, but it is not
clear from the descriptions to which type. Intermediate examples
are also known. On Holy Island until a few years ago, and possibly
still, children visited houses at Christmas, made a recitation, and
collected money. Their text was very similar to the texts of several
Northumbrian plays (though not quite complete), but with no
acting, no combat, and no taking of parts. This had not changed in
the previous ninety years. Similarly, at Bagworth and Ratby in
Leicestershire, the 'Plough Boys' took parts and recited standard
play fragments (Beelzebub, Doctor, I that's never been before) but
with no acting, and the normal plot entirely lost. A similar
performance is recorded at Great Gransden in Huntingdonshire.
SOURCES [4]
The authors and titles are copied from the title page, or the head
of the article in a periodical. These are followed by publisher, and
place and date of publication. Only relevant page numbers are
listed, though where the whole book is relevant (e.g. Tiddy, 1923), these
are omitted. The columns in newspapers are indicated by consecutive
letters after the page number, as in the Indices for The Times.
Additional information from the same source is given in round
brackets, and from other sources in square brackets. Each reference
is allocated a code for convenience in drawing up the Tables. [5]
A number of people who have passed information to us are not
regular collectors, and have kept no note of their findings so far
as we know. Some of these communications are included under the
symbols Cawte Coll., Helm Coll., and Peacock Coll., which do not exclusively
represent personal collections in the field.
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