M.W.M. (1926a)
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FOLK DRAMA.
NORTH NOTTINGHAMSHIRE
SURVIVALS.
TWELFTH-TIDE AND PLOUGH
MONDAY CUSTOMS.
An enormous mass of folk-lore discoveries has
accumulated since the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury, when the forerunners of the Romantic
revival persuaded people with pretensions to
scholarship or literary taste that the native arts
of the English people were by no means entirely
low, and unworthy of serious consideration. It
and only lately, however, that the industrious and
scholarly collectors and compilers such as Percy,
Strutt, Brand and Hone have been followed by
students who felt that this vast pile of informa-
tion ought to be revised, classified, and animated
by the spirit of constructive theory.
It is inevitable that these theories should: be
numerous and conflicting, when the root of the
matter is to be found in the earliest stages of
religious observance. I must of necessity there-
fore, prefix this account of Nottinghamshire
survivals with an introduction which cannot be
other than controversial. I have seen placid
scholars overcome with righteous indignation in
discussing that vexed question of Robin Hood -
is he an importation from French Romance
literature, or a development from Woden, or the
Germanic woodspirit Hede, or are his adventures
really based upon those of some English outlaw?
As Nottinghamshire must be full of theorists upon
this particular subject, I am happy to say in all
intellectual honesty, that the problem does not
arise in the present discussion.
ORIGIN OF MUMMERS' PLAYS.
As someone who has given some study to the history
of English drama - particularly that of the
Elizabethan period - I naturally came to be, inter-
ested specially in that side of folk-lore which is
expressed in some kind of dramatic form.
We have all heard of those mummers' plays,
which with certain local variations, have been
collected up and down the country from North-
umberland to Cornwall, but when the collecting
has been done, there arise certain questions which
call for solution. What is the significance of
these now corrupt versions of the folk-play as it
survives today? Can we determine its original
form, and has it any influence upon the great
literary drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries? These questions will lead us far back
to the earliest phases of human development.
Research has shown that drama has slowly
evolved out of religious ceremonial, and the pro-
cess can be seen most clearly in the growth of
the Greek drama from the village processions and
chants centring round the altar of Dionysos, to its
culmination in the great tragedies of Euripides.
But in England the continuity of development
was broken by the imposition of the Christian
religion upon its native cults. Christianity be-
came the recognised state religion, and though it
could not suddenly destroy age-old customs, yet
because the performance of them no longer re-
ceived official recognition, it gradually fell into
the hands of the simpler and obscurer members
of the community, who lacked the ability to
impart to it that genius which alone could save
it from deterioration and corruption. There is also
documentary evidence to show that the mediaeval
Church took definite steps to put an end to all
such observances.
Among the chief antagonists are the two famous
Lincolnshire ecclesiastics, Grosseteste, Bishop of
Lincoln from 1235 to 1253 and Robert Mannying
of Brunne, who died in 1338. Coming down to later
times, we have the spirited antagonism of such
Puritan writers as Fetherston, with his "Dialogue
against Light, Lewde, and Lascivious Dancing"
(1583), and Stubbes, the author of the famous
Anatomie of Abuses. From all these fulmina-
tions we can estimate the respectable antiquity, of
many surviving customs, and fill the gaps where
others have now ceased to be observed.
THE CENTRAL PLOT.
I think we may fairly say that the centre of
all these folk observances is the drama, of which
so many examples still survive. Let us look, then,
at the bald central plot which is common to almost
every play, whatever its minor variations may be.
An important personage has a companion or a
son who comes in and boasts of his superior
prowess, which calls down upon him the wrath
of an antagonist, whom he kills, or by whom he
is killed. Consternation reigns until someone intro-
duces a doctor, who, after pronouncing some
gibberish form of incantation, brings the victim
back to life again, and the play finally comes to
an end with a song or dance.
What does all this mean? There are many ex-
planations, but after careful examination of
evidence it would seem that the plot has its roots
in a primitive belief that, as the winter sun sank
lower and lower in the sky, there was a grave
danger that it might die altogether, and then there
would be no more food or light. Something had
to be done to ensure the sun's renewal of life and
strength.
Now it is a commonplace of magic that by
doing an action yourself, either practically or
symbolically you can induce your god to do the
same thing on a large scale. If, therefore you
enact the death and resurrection of some impor-
tant personage, keeping firmly in your mind all
the time what effect you wish to achieve, it will
really happen. Some priest or medicine-man
knows the necessary incantations, and having
achieved in pantomime the greatest desire of the
tribe, its joy finds in a natural expression in a con-
cluding song or dance.
In view of the extraordinary corruptions which
have inevitably collected round a ritual which
has been so long divorced from recognised reli-
gious thought, it is important that every shred
of evidence should be collected, In the hope of
elucidating points which have become hopelessly
obscure. With this idea, interested people are
busy making collections before it is too late,
choosing districts whose dialects and characters
they understand, so that they can fade unob-
trusively into the fabric of village life. No use-
ful information ever comes to light if the
community regards you as a stranger out to ex-
ploit it. And so I myself set to work in North
Nottinghamshire, hunting primarily for plays.
but anxious for anything which might prove
useful as a pierce in this literary jig-saw puzzle.
PLOUGH MONDAY SURVIVALS.
I started with one piece of useful information,
that Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk
with their distinctive form of "Plough Monday"
play, tend to keep alive the idea, which the rest
of England has forgotten, by doing their plays
for the most part at Christmas, which would
naturally attract such performances to a season
of holiday and festivity when their significance
had been lost, but these three counties sub-
consciously remember that they are celebrating
the turn of the year, when the sun begins to
gain strength. The Plough Monday plays were
usually acted on the first Monday after Epiphany,
when field work was supposed to begin and it
was therefore important to make sure that the
sun really did return in all his strength to
prosper their labours.
I therefore began my operations round about
the season. Talking one day to a farm girl in
Retford Market place, she happened to tell me
that she came from Navenby, in Lincolnshire,
where she could just remember a "funny play"
being done at Christmas - first blood, and some-
one got at it and collected its surviving
remains. Another time while on a long country
walk, I went into the village shop at Mattersey,
and my hopes were raised by the information
that the plays were done about 20 years ago at
Sutton and Lound, but nothing very accurate or
interesting came to light there except the recol-
lection that a horse's head used to be carried in
the play, which suggested our old friend the
hobby horse, who used to figure so prominently
in the May day festivities. But the collector
cannot hope for rapid results.
However, patience was at last rewarded, and
conversation in the blacksmith's shop of Clay-
worth brought forth the voluntary wish for "the
times when there were fine doings on Plough
Monday." Then people started saying odd bits
of a play. It took me nearly a year to gather
together what proved after comparison with my
other fragments to be the "masterpiece" of my
collection. I finally tracked down "The Doctor"
to his cottage, and also discovered there his very
old mother who had helped to make his acting
clothes which included a long coat with the sides
cut away to represent a "swallow-tail," deco-
rated with big bunches of yellow and blue rib-
bons
A NORTH NOTTS. VERSION.
The play shows all the chief features, and a
must always have attached itself to folk-drama
since it ceased to be a conscious ritual observ-
ance. Here we have an "Old Clown" as the
chief spokesman and presenter of the play, his
companion "a Soldier," in some places he
appears as St. George, Robin Hood, or almost
any other popular hero. Presently "the
Soldier" offers to dance but at once the "Old
Clown" says:
If you begin to dance I quickly march away.
A farmer's boy:
Woa, woa, old man, don't go in despair.
Perhaps in a short time a lady will appear.
The old gentleman is but human, so he stays,
and is rewarded by the arrival of "the Lady,"
who introduces herself with what must once have
been a very delightful folk-song:
In comes I, a lady bright and gay,
With fortunes and sweet charms,
All scornfully I've been thrown away
Right out of my true-love's arms.
He swears if I don't wed with him,
As you do understand.
He will list all for a soldier,
And go to some foreign land.
The lady proves fickle, however, and imme-
diately accepts the hand and heart of the "Old
Clown," which results in another song ending:
Whack fal ly laddy O!
Whack fal ly laddy O!
We'll be wed to-morrow.
At this point the antagonist arrives on the
scene, in this case "Old Eszum Squeezum; who
picks a quarrel with "the Soldier," and after a
fight is killed. Then from "tragedy" we turn
abruptly to comedy with the entrance of "the
Doctor," who makes merry, and pronounces that
death is due to the fact that:
"Last night he swallowed Sam Snowden's
wheelbarrow, donkey and cart, and he can't get
shut of the wheel."
At first sight this definitely comic nature of the
Doctor may seem strange, if we are going to
uphold the theory that he is the descendant of a
tribal priest or "medicine-man." But after
all, is there not some inherent human tendency
to cover up our deepest feelings with a cloak of
ribaldry, and also as a real belief in the
"Doctor" gradually waned he would naturally
become the centre of witticisms. Compare the
later mediaeval satires on the decaying system of
chivalry and all its literature.
However, this waggish Doctor brings the victim
back to life, and the play, concludes with a
spirited adaptation of the Wassail-song:
We are not London actors
That act upon the stage,
We are the country plough lads
That ploughs for little wage.
Good master and good mistress
As you sit by the fire,
Just think of us poor plough lads,
That plough through mud and mire.
The mire it is so very deep,
The water runs so clear.
We thank you for a Christmas box
And a pitcher of your best beer.
You see our tale is ended, (exit Old Clown)
You see our fool is gone,
We'll make it in our business
To follow him along.
The performers would then dance to another
house. Other dramatic fragments I discovered to
be practically identical with the Clayworth one
from which I have quoted, but by no means so
complete. The full text, together with other plays,
has been printed in "The Mummers' Play," by
R.J.E. Tiddy - Clarendon Press, l923.
Well, this is very simple stuff, but in spite of
all, it has clung to life for hundreds of years, and
is only now being killed off by the rise of indus-
trialism, and the decline of agriculture, which
was once the chief interest of the whole popula-
tion. - M.W.M.
[Second, and concluding article in Monday's
Guardian.] |
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