Mummers' Wooing Plays in England
by Charles Read Baskervill
from Modern Philology,
Vol. 21, No. 3 (Feb., 1924), pp. 225-272
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
[Barely edited, missing end- plays]
Modern Philology
VOLUME XXI February 1924 NUMBER 3
MUMMERS' WOOING PLAYS IN ENGLAND
Though the mummers' play in which was enacted the wooing or marriage surviving from ancient pagan rituals in European folk lore generally was doubtless once a very popular form of folk drama in England, the wooing play is not recognized as a distinct type in the standard discussions of the mummers' plays by Ordish and Chambers[1]. This is not surprising, however, for the species survived at the end of the nineteenth century in only a limited area and in a form so decayed that the wooing was often absent. Indeed, when Chambers wrote in 1903 little material was available. He discussed the only elaborate form which had been printed-the play from Revesby, Lincolnshire, written down in 1779[2]-and two texts with the wooing scenes much decayed, one from Lincolnshire and the other from Cropwell, Nottinghamshire[3]. Four Lincolnshire plays very fragmentary in form, which Chambers did not consider, those from Axholme, Hibaldstow, Kirton-in-Lindsey, and the North Lincolnshire Wolds[4],are chiefly valuable as showing the great variety
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1 See Ordish, "Folk-Drama," Folk-Lore, II, 314-35, and "English Folk-Drama,"
ibid., IV, 149-75; Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, I, chap. x.
2 Printed by Ordish in Folk-Lore Journal, VII, 331-56, and by Manly in Specimens
of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama, I, 296-311.
3 The first is found in a translation into French by Mrs. Murray-Aynsley, Revue des traditions populaires, IV, 609-12. The second is printed in Mrs. Chaworth Musters' Cavalier Stronghold (1890), pp. 387-92.
4 The first was printed by Wood in Lincolnshire Notes and Queries, II, 88-89, and the others by Miss Peacock in Notes and Queries, Ninth Series, VII, 322-24, 363-64; all are reprinted in Gutch and Peacock, County Folk-Lore, Lincolnshire, pp. 176-87. In the same work (pp. 175-76, 220-21) are reprinted descriptions of an Alford play from Lincolnsh. N. and Q., II, 21, and of other Axholme plays from Brogden, Provincial Words Current in Lincolnshire, pp. 151-52, etc.
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to be found even in the plays of the Lincolnshire region. Two versions of a children's game which are apparently mummers' wooing plays in the last stages of decay were naturally not taken into account, though they at least suggest the former currency of the type in other parts of England, since one came from Derbyshire and one from Suffolk[1]. More recently two mummers' plays have been published which indicate that wooing drama of distinct types was once probably widespread in England. Miss Taylor collected in America and printed in the Journal of American Folk-Lore (XXII, 389-94) a play formerly enacted at Broadway, Worcestershire, in which there is a fragmentary wooing scene unlike any previously recorded; and in 1913 Mr. Cecil J. Sharp included in his Sword Dances of Northern England, Part III, a wooing play which he had collected at Ampleforth, Yorkshire, entirely distinct in type and as elaborate as the Revesby play.
I am printing here five plays from the Lincolnshire region and one from Keynsham, Somersetshire, all collected in the early part of the nineteenth century, which give further evidence of the variety and vogue of the Mummers' Wooing Plays in England. They are particularly significant because the wooing scenes are more complete than in any published versions except the Revesby and the Ampleforth plays. On the basis of these and the specimens previously printed it will be possible to draw more definite conclusions than before in regard to the importance of wooing and marriage in the ancient pagan rituals of England. For the plays are almost certainly survivals of pagan rites, forms no doubt of the so-called "sacred marriage[2]." It is impossible, however, to do more here than suggest the significance of the new texts and of the wooing plays as a whole. For a satisfactory study a large body of folk customs surviving in Great Britain and other European countries would have to be considered in connection with the plays.[3]
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1 " Lady on Yonder Hill," Mrs. Gomme, Traditional Games, I, 323-24. In the Derbyshire version, with an opening "Yonder stands a lovely lady," like a line in the Bassingham plays printed below, the rebuffed wooer falls on the ground and is revived by the Good Fairy. In the Suffolk version the Gentleman stabs the Lady and then revives her, calling her out of her trance with lines similar to the corresponding lines in the Bassingham, Cropwell, and Axholme plays.
2 For the sacred marriage see Frazer, Magic Art, II, 120 ff.; Cornford, Origin of Attic Comedy, pp. 18-25, 246; Cumont, Oriental Religions, ed. Showerman, pp. 56-59.
3 I have collected much material and hope in the not distant future to complete a study of the ritual marriage in England
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The constant element in the wooing plays of England is the wooing of the "Lady" by a man who is usually represented as old. In all in which the wooing is more than a slight fragment he is rejected for another suitor, who is usually a young man and the leader of the games, often in the r6le of the "Fool." In a number, an old woman with a child is also rejected. There is little doubt that the rejection and marriage symbolize the virgin union of the representatives of the new season and the displacement[1] of the representatives of the old season. With the wooing a renouveau, or slaying and reviving of one of the chief characters, is often found in a form that seems to be an integral part of the symbolism of the wooing plays. In some of the plays-those from Hibaldstow, Broughton, and Swinderby- there is no renouveau. In several, a form of the St. George play is included, with the usual dialogue and the combat between St. George and one of his conventional opponents. These apparently indicate the union of plays of two types. In several others in which the Fool is the opponent of St. George the combination is more complete. The form peculiar to the wooing plays represents not only the rejection of an old person but the slaying in addition. In the Revesby Play an old man and in the Ampleforth Play a super-numerary is slain by the locking of the swords around his neck in the sword dance. In the Murray-Aynsley version the Old Man, a daemon or devil, is slain in a quarrel or combat. In the Cropwell and Axholme plays the Old Woman, the typical scapegoat of numerous spring customs studied by Frazer[2], is knocked down and slain by Beelzebub with his club[3].
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1 In a mummers' wooing play described by Jackson in his History of the Scottish Stage (1793), pp. 409-11, as seen in his youth "in a remote part of England"--Jackson was born in 1742 and spent his youth in Yorkshire and Westmoreland-- the Fool is slain. In the Askham, Richard and Haxby sword dances, in which wooing scenes may have been lost, the Fool is killed by the sword lock (see Sharp, op. cit., pp. 84, 90). Since both the old man as a leader of the game and the young man who replaces him seem to have been called the "Fool," as in the Revesby Play, there is much confusion in regard to the function of this character. Apparently representatives of both the old and the new seasons were called "Fool" in various plays and at times in the same play.
2 For the slaying of the Old Woman on the Continent see Dying God, pp. 240-49. See pp. 207-11, 227, 233, and Magic Art, II, 90, for other forms of the slaying in continental games.
3 In plays from Dorsetshire that lack wooing scenes (Folk-Lore Record, III, 87-112) "Old Bet" is slain in the same manner by her husband "John," a part played by the leader of the game, "Old Father Christmas."
______________________ 228 CHARLES READ BASKERVILL
There are many continental parallels for the season marriage[1], but folk plays surviving in the Balkans, especially in Thrace[2], give the best evidence of the antiquity of the English plays. In the grouping and relation of the stock characters and in the symbolic rites the plays of the two regions are close akin. In both it is customary for a young couple to mate and for an old and previously mated pair to play some part in connection with this new marriage; for another man, often an old man or daemon, to claim the lady or bride, though in the English plays it is not clear that this is the motive for the slaying, as it is in a number of the Greek; and for an old woman to appear with a bastard child,[3] though she does not lay claim to the bridegroom in the Greek as in the English plays. Moreover, in the plays of each country forms of the renouveau are intimately connected with the marriage, daemonic figures appear in characteristic costumes of rags or animal skins, and circular dances occur. The use of the plow in the Greek plays, which were performed at Epiphany or later in the spring, indicates their connection with the new season of fertility. Similar rites were common in the Plow Monday celebration of England, and while the carrying of the plow is only occasionally recorded in accounts of the English mummers, as in the Murray-Aynsley
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1 See VillemarquC, Barzaz-Breiz (11th ed., Paris, 1913), pp. 430-33, for two couples, one of which replaces the other in a summer or May game in Brittany; for other forms see Frazer, Magic Art, II, 89, 93; Balder the Beautiful, I, 109-10; Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, ed. Liebrecht, pp. 59, 62; Phillpotts, The Elder Edda and Ancient Scandinavian Drama, pp. 118-27; etc.
2 See Dawkins, Journal of Hellenic Studies, XXVI, 191-206; and Wace, Annual of the British School at Athens, XVI, 232-53, and XIX, 248-65. Besides many plays with one bride (or two), a group of men in addition to the bridegroom, the old couple, etc., corresponding to the Lincolnshire plays with the group of rival suitors, one lady, etc., there are Greek plays with a considerable number of pairs of brides and bridegrooms. These are paralleled in a May game from Hitchin, Hertfordshire, in which "mad Moll and her husband" with black faces, and seven or eight couples including a Lord and Lady dance and sing, wooing scenes not being mentioned (Hone, Every Day Book, I (18881, 283-84), and in a Beltane game from Castleboro, Ireland, with ten or twelve couples besides the Fool and his wife (Kennedy, Banks of the Boro, pp. 221 if.), in which a fight of the Fool with one of the spectators for caressing his wife suggests the combat of the Greek plays.
3 This child, represented as growing up in the course of the play, is at times the person slain. Sharp, who points out the resemblance between the Ampleforth and the Greek plays, cites (op. cit., pp. 14-16, 72) the parallel furnished by the Clown's speech about the slain man: "How can he be an old man? A young man like me, his father! I got him this morning before I got my breakfast." Sharp also calls attention to the parallel in the ritual marriages, but in emphasizing the conformity of the Ampleforth Play to Murray's outline (in Miss Harrison's Themis, pp. 341 if.) of the typical " Eniautos" celebration, in which the marriage has no place, he fails to indicate the real importance of the wooing, which is according to my conception the primary element of these plays.
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version, the Cropwell play belongs to Plow Monday and the actors in other plays like those from Broughton, Axholme, and Kirton-in-Lindsey call themselves "plow lads" or "plow boys." This establishes the connection of the plays with the feast of the plow which, celebrated immediately after Twelfth Night, served for the farmers as the conclusion of the Christmas festival and the opening of the plowing season. The performance of the plays in the Christmas season in England and the naming of them "Christmas plays" are consequently perfectly natural. Those who have discussed the Greek plays are no doubt correct in seeing in them survivals of rites of ancient Greek festivals. The probability is that the kindred rites of the English plays go back for their inception to an early period, possibly preceding the advent of Christian missionaries in England, when the religions of the Mediterranean area spread over Europe. Certainly sex rites and contests of characters symbolizing the seasons date from a very early period in English festivals. It is also reasonably certain that the similarity of the season and fertility rites in the English and Greek plays is due not to any influence of a relatively modern period but to the retention of the same pagan symbolism in both, however far the customs may be from their original forms.
The differences in the plays both in details of what seem to be fundamentally the same symbolic rites and in the employment of dialogue in the English plays as against choral song and pantomime in the Greek are the result no doubt of varied modifications and contaminations in the course of the transmission by tradition through long eras. While much that, is ancient is probably retained in the English plays, there is clear evidence of the sophistication at least of the dialogue. Indeed, one of the greatest difficulties in dealing with the ritual elements of the plays lies in the fact that the very features in which these elements are clearest show a strong literary influence exerted at various periods-for the most pervasive motive of all literatures and all periods is the wooing. The earliest probable records of the mummers' plays suggest that one reason for this sophistication is to be found in adaptation for semi-professional performance. The fullest of the plays published here, that from Broughton, may already have undergone such a reworking in 1524 when the sum of
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two shillings-an amount appropriate to a group of mummers-was paid to "the playars of Browton on Nowyer's Ewyn" on their visit to the Willoughbys in Nottinghamshire, probably at Middleton Hall[1]. Almost certainly the performance which Machyn describes for March 17, 1553, in connection with a procession of the sheriff of London and a lord of misrule was an adaptation of a play belonging to the type studied here: "then cam the dullo and a sawden, and then [a priest?] shreyffyng Jake-of-lent on horss-bake, and a do[ctor] ys lezyssyoun, and then Jake-of-lent('s) wyff brow[ght him] ys fessyssyons and bad save ys lyff, and he shuld [give him] a thowsand li. for ys labur[2]." The reference in the Induction of The Taming of the Shrew (i. 93-98) to the playing by Soto (or the Fool) of the part of "a farmer's eldest son" in wooing "the gentlewoman so well" suggests the use or adaptation of a Lincolnshire play for acting by professionals, though Shakespeare may have been describing the plays of the villages like Barton-on-the-Heath and Wilnecote from which the characters of his Induction hail. On this border line between
folk plays and sophisticated plays of strollers, the mummers' wooing plays could easily have been expanded by the inclusion of dialogue songs and of scenes from popular plays and farces. There is considerable evidence to show that such expansions and contaminations took place freely. The interrelations of folk and literary forms offer a problem that is far from simple, however. It is probable that the literary material which has most strongly influenced the folk play was itself to some extent at least taken over from folk pastimes, and was reabsorbed readily because of its appropriateness. Festival customs of the folk affected English drama greatly even after the forces of the Renaissance were tending to divorce it from the merely popular and ephemeral and give it a truly literary character. The renouveau, for example, is reflected in a series of related morality plays-Redford's Wyt and Science, The Marriage of Wit and Science, and The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom-in which Wit is slain by Tediousness and is
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I Hist. MSS Com., Middleton MSS, p. 379. The editor adds the query, "Upper Broughton, Notts. ?"
2 Diary, ed. Nichols, p. 33. Nichols inserts the bracketed parts, explains dullo as "devil." etc
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revived[1]. Features apparently surviving from folk festivals are so numerous in the Fastnachtspiele and in Italian farces that these short dramatic pieces are to be regarded at times as sophisticated games[2]. In turn, elements in the mummers' wooing plays seem to be survivals of medieval dramatic conventions that are in part literary but in larger part probably popular in the final analysis. Wooing scenes in which country characters are presented occur in Italian farce, and the Fastnachtspiele show situations and groups of wooers similar to those of the mummers' plays[3]. The dialogue, evidently a jig, preserved without title in a Dulwich College manuscript (I, 139, fol. 272) to which the name of Marlowe is attached has two country wooers, the Gentleman and the Fool, dancing in contest for the maid Nan. The success of the Fool here as in the mummers' plays seems to belong to folk tradition. The jig in fact bears the marks of a modified folk game. The motive of the "estates" represented in the Lord, Knight, man of poor estate or needy beggar, and money lender who enter first in the wooing scenes of the Revesby Play (11. 221-41), and less clearly in the wooing group of the other Lincolnshire plays, furnishes the most obvious instance of a literary convention. The group and the wooing scenes in the Revesby Play indeed resemble Lyndsay's farce in the Induction to Ane Satyre of the thrie Estaitis, where the Fool wins the wife of an Old Man in contest with a Courtier, a Merchant, and a Clerk. There is a strong probability that the wooing scenes of farce represent adaptations of folk games and themselves in turn influenced the mummers' plays. Particularly I believe that the burlesques of the countryman and his customs in the wooings of early farce point to actual conventions of wooing dialogues in folk pastimes. I have elsewhere assembled some evidence going to show that wooing dialogues as
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I The motive was used also in the lost Play of Plays. See Gosson's account in Playes Confuted in flue Actions (Hazlitt, The English Drama and Stage, p. 202). In The Marriage of Wit and Science Tediousness is described as a giant or fiend like Turpin, one of the combatants in a Cornish St. George play (Rhys, "Everyman" with Other Interludes, pp. 193-95).
2 See Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas, I, 412-15, for the close relation of the Fastnachtspiele to folk games, and II, 173-79, for the popular element in Italian farce.
3 See Creizenach, op. cit., I, 412-24; II, 173-79; Zingerle, Sterzinger Spiele, No. xi; Keller, Fastnachtspiele, Nos. 13, 15, 70, etc.
____________________________232 CHARLES READ BASKERVILL
well as various types of disguising and mumming were current among the medieval folk[1].
Perhaps the best evidence of the interrelation of folk and semi-professional drama in the Middle Ages is furnished by a body of stock passages that are regularly repeated in various combinations in the decadent folk plays. Almost any student of medieval drama feels immediately that many of these are survivals of expressions conventional in the Middle Ages. The following parallel between the Revesby Play and the Enterlude of Youth, a play probably written not later than the opening of the sixteenth century, will bring home the point:
Enterlude of Youth (11. 39-58) REVESBY PLAY (ll. 308-33)
Youth.
A backe felowes and giue me roume
Or I shall make you to auoyde sone
I am goodlye of persone
I am pereles where euer I come Blue Breeches.
My name is youth I tell the I am a youth of jollitree;
I florysh as the vine tre
Where is there one like unto me?
Who may be likened vnto me
My hair is bush'd very thick;
In my youthe and Iolitye
My body is like an hasel stick;
My hearre is royall and bushed thicke
My legs they quaver like an eel;
My body plyaunt as a hasel styck
My arms become my body weel;
Myne armes be bothe fayre and
My fingers they are long and small:
strong Am not I a jolly youth, proper and
My fingers be both faire and longe tall ?
My chest bigge as a tunne
My legges be full lighte for to runne Ginger Breeches.
To hoppe and daunce and make mery
I am a joly young man of flesh,
By the masse I recke not a chery blood and bone;
What so euer I do
What so euer I do
Give eare, my masters all, each one!
I am the heyre of my fathers lande
And it is come into my hande
I care for no more Pepper Breeches.
I am my father's eldest son,
And heir of all his land,
And in a short time, I hope,
It will fall into my hands.
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1. See Mod. Phil., XIV, 237-51, 494-502; Studies in Philology, XVII, 44-45. There are burlesques of folk pastimes, in forms older than the farces, which show the same type of treatment given the burlesque wooing in the farces, as in "The Tale of Colkelbie Sow" (Laing, Early Pop. Poetry of Scot., ed. Hazlitt, L 179 ff.) and "The Turnament of Totenham" (Hazlitt, Early Pop. Poetry of Eng., III, 82 ff.)
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The passage in the Revesby Play would seem to have been taken from the Enterlude of Youth in the same fashion that other passages indicated in the notes below were borrowed. There is much, however, to suggest that both folk play and enterlude either borrowed or adapted one of the conventional descriptions with which characters introduced themselves in the Middle Ages in dances, games, and popular enterludes. Though the whole passage is not inappropriate for Youth, it is more germane to the mummers' plays than to the morality. Youth introduces himself twice, in his description first of his body suited for activity and second of his inheritance-- descriptions associated with different characters in the Revesby Play. The first part of the speech is appropriate for a sword or morris dancer. The demand by an actor for room, emphasis on his activity, as in the Keynsham Play, and references to his "great head and little wit" or his head of iron, body of steel, and legs of crooked (or knuckle) bones are common in mummers' plays, while representatives of youth and age were probably once included as symbols of the seasons. The following conventional opening of mummers' plays, for instance, may be older than the Enterlude of Youth:
Room, room, ye gallyants, room,
And gimme room to rhyme;
I be come to show you my activity
All on this Crismus time.
I've acted youth, I've acted age.[2]
The second part of Youth's speech is common in the Lincolnshire wooing plays and is appropriate for a young leader of the games who succeeds the old leader. In feasts of misrule, morris dances, and folk plays the relation of the two leaders was conventionally represented by that of a father, often a festival lord or king, and his
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1 See Manly, op. cit., I, 295, 305; Chambers, Med. Stage, I, 208, nn. 2 and 3, 210, n. 1; etc.
2 10 N. and Q., VI, 481-82. In this play from the Isle of Wight Father Christmas is called "Wold age" by King George. In a play from Ireland (Folk-Lore, XXVII, 304) the line corresponding to the last quoted above reads, "Active young and active age," and in others (Jour. of Am. Folk-Lore, XXII, 390, for example), "Activity of youth, activity of age." Baker, Glossary of Northamptonshire Words and Phrases, II, 429-32, gives a play in which the conventional combat takes place between "Activity" and "Age." See Chambers, Med. Stage, I, 212-18, for names in the plays including such abstractions as "Room," "Colonel Spring," "Captain Bluster," and "Swiff, Swash, and Swagger.
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son or heir, who corresponds to the Eldest Son of the Lincolnshire plays[1].
The fact that many lines or phrases of a type frequent in the mummers' plays are repeated in the Enterlude of Youth suggests again the use of stock formulas of dialogue. Youth's words "I am the heyre," etc., recur in lines 307-8. The defiance and mockery common to swaggering characters of medieval drama like Herod and to the combatants of folk plays are repeated in several passages of the Enterlude. In lines 82-85 Youth says to Charity:
Hence caytife go thi way
Or with my dagger I shal the slay
Hens knaue out of this place
Or I shal lay the on the face.
Lines of this speech are repeated in Youth's defiance to Humility (159-60) and a second time to Charity (172-73). Another swaggering speech of Youth's (11. 126-31) is repeated in part in lines 595, 609-10, and 630-33. The last passage reads:
therfore crake no longer here
Least thou haue on the eare
And that a good knocke.
That such repetition of stock passages was already a feature of folk plays when the Enterlude of Youth was written is indicated by a series of defiances which the Friar hurls at Robin Hood in "Robin Hood and the Friar" (11. 51-52, 59-60, 69-70), clearly a folk play or based on folk plays:
Go louse the, ragged knave!
If thou make mani wordes, I will give the on the eare.
Avaunt, ye ragged knave,
Or ye shall have on the skynne!
Avaunt, thou ragged knave! this is but a mock;
If thou make mani words, thou shal have a knock.
The taunts and boasts that conventionally preface the combats in the mummers' plays are similar in spirit and at times in phraseology to these passages from the enterlude and the Robin Hood play. An
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1 See Jack Drum's Entertainment, I, i; Burne-Jackson, Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 480;
Wiltshire Arch. Mag., XXXV. 36-55; Revesby and Ampleforth plays.
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example from the wooing plays is found in lines 86-89 of the Bassingham Children's Play. When a kindred situation recurs economy of effort is secured by repeating conventional lines.
The phraseology in the wooing elements of the plays furnishes a similar problem as to relationships, but its conventional aspects seem to belong primarily to the seventeenth century, to have become fixed in the period when the great mass of dialogue ballads of the London stage commonly called jigs were passing into the hands of strollers or groups of folk performers[1]. It is clear from parallels cited below that from the end of the sixteenth century to the opening of the eighteenth the mummers' wooing plays were greatly modified through a strong literary influence. The long passage taken over into one of the plays from Wily Beguiled dates from the sixteenth century or not later than the opening of the seventeenth. The passage from "Diphilo and Granida" comes from a droll published in the second half of the seventeenth century. "Young Roger of the Mill," found in the Swinderby Play, was printed as a slip-ballad and in Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany, 1724-40, but it may have been an old popular song. These are complete units that have been appropriated by the plays, but there are a vast number of parallels scattered through the broadside ballads of the seventeenth century. It is natural that the phraseology connected with the wooing motive should not have become fixed so early as that of the combat motive. So long as the mummers' plays retained any vitality they would be subject to an outside influence from the ever vital theme of the wooing.
Direct sources for passages in the plays printed here, so far as I have discovered them, are cited in the notes. But there is a marked general kinship between the wooing dialogue of the Lincolnshire plays and popular love song as found in the broadside ballads. The kinship may be illustrated best by quoting pertinent extracts from several ballads. Lines or phrases of these ballads are echoed or repeated in one or more of the plays, but the parallels are so scattered that the significance of the extracts given here will be felt only when the plays are read as wholes.
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1 See Dilke, Old English Plays, VI, note on pp. 329-31, for one record. More evidence will be found in my forthcoming book on the Elizabethan jig.
____________________________236 CHARLES READ BASKERVILL
A. PRICE'S "THE MAIDEN'S DELIGHT; OR, A DALNTY NEW DIALOGUE"
Man. I am a Jovial Batchelor, and free from care and strife;
I nothing in the world do want, and yet I want-a wife!
'Tis known to all my neighbours, I am one-and-twenty years old,
And I have store and plenty of white silver and red gold;
I have both goods and cattle, I have both House and Land,
I have my horse, my hawk, my hound, and all things at command.
And now, sweet Betty, I am come a-wooing unto thee;
I prithee tell me out of hand if thou can'st fancy me ?
Maid. Good Sir, I thank you kindly for your proffered courtesy,
But this I tell you plainly here, in truth and verity,
That I shall never love you, whilst I on earth remain,
Therefore forbear, and say no more; spend not your breath in vain.
'Tis not your cunning speeches that shall tempt me unto sin.
Man. Farewell, you scornful Minion! I bid you now adieu;
I never do intend to come again to trouble you.
I'll rest my self contented, until that I can find
A Wife that is more fitting, and agreeable to my mind.[1]
B. "THE BONNY SCOTTISH LAD AND THE YIELDING LASS"
[Lad.] I have house, and I have land;
I have all things at command;
I have a thing that you ne'er see:
bonny Lass, wilt thou mow with me?
[Lass.] For I will never yield to thee,
without you'll promise to marry me.[2]
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1. Rozburghe Ballads, VIII, 94-95. See VII, 162, for a line in "Rocke the Cradle, John"-" I never mean to marry, while I on earth remaine "-which is closer still to lines 76-77 of the "Recruiting Sergeant." With the opening of Price's ballad compare the following lines of the Hibaldstow Play (9 N. and Q., VII, 323):
I am a Foreign traveller,
I have travelled land and sea,
And nothing do I want but a wife
To please me the rest part of my life.
2 Rozb. Ball., III, 475-76. A traditional wooing dialogue often recorded (Burne-Jackson, Shropshire Folk-Lore, pp. 551-52; Broadwood and Maitland, English County Songs, pp. 90-91; Journal of the Folk-Song Society, III, 267-68; IV, 297-300; Newell, Games and Songs of American Children, pp. 55-56, 272; etc.) contains a parallel to this and the preceding ballad while it opens with a passage similar to lines of the wooing
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C. ROBINS' "THE SCORNFUL MAID AND CONSTANT YOUNG-MAN"
[He.] All hail, all hail, thou Lady gay, the glory of the world to me!
In time I hope thou wilt change thy mind, for all thou seem'st
at first unkind:
[She.] Good sir, I pray you answer take, you spend your time in vain on me:
I pray you seek some other Mate, my heart doth scorn thy base degree.
What, do you think I am so blind to have a Clown by birth or kind ?
'Tis not your Gold, good Sir, that shall tempt me to yield unto your will;
That Maid which comes when they do call, will find you have but little skill.
[He.] Here is Gold and Silver, come and see! with all delights to pleasure thee.
Upon her continued refusal he breaks out:
Then fare you well, thou scornful Dame.[1]
D. "THE LOVING LAD AND THE COY LASS"
Man. All haile, thou bright and bonny Lass! my joy and onely sweeting;
For I long time have lov'd thee well, but yet I ne're did show it.
Maid. Think it not strange that I am coy, or that I have deny'd thee:
I never will affect a Boy, whatever betide me.
Man. I prize thee more than gold or pearl, thou art my onely Jewel;
Then prethee do not frown, my Girle, why shouldst thou be so cruel ?
But if thoul't grant me love at last, and yield thy self unto me,
My grief and sorrows which are past no harme at all can do me.
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plays. A Lincolnshire version given in Roxb. Ball., IX, 851-52, with the title "The Handsom' Woman" may be cited in part:
[He.] Yonder stan's a hansum woman, who she is I dunnot knaw,
But I'll go court hur fur hur beauty, whether she answers me aye or no.
Aye or no, etc.
Madam. I've got rings and jewels; Madam, I've got house and land;
Madam, I've got gold and silver; all shall be at your command .
[She.] What care I for rings or jewels ? What care I for your house or lands ?
What care I for your gold and silver? All I want is an 'ansom' man . .
------------------
1 Roxb. Ball., IX, 867-68
________________
After her yielding, he declares:
The sweetest Damosel in the land at last I have obtained.'
E. "A MAD KINDE OF WOOING; OR, A DIALOGUE BETWEEN WILL THE SIMPLE AND NAN THE SUBTILL"
[Will.] If thou love me as I love thee,
My minde shall ne'er remove.
Nan. Dost think my fortunes Ile forsake
To marry with a clowne,
Away, fond foole, away!
A man of wit best doth fit
A mayden for to take
Then be mute-thy foolish suite
Is all but spent in vaine;
'Tis an impossibility
Thou shouldst my love obtaine.
In view of the direct and large literary borrowing in the mummers' plays, as from Wily Beguiled or "Diphilo and Granida," the close relation of the plays to the broadsides suggests that the dialogue reflecting the old ritual motive of the wooing came to be simply made up from dialogue ballads, jigs, and similar sources. The kinship is doubtless due in great part to folk borrowings from sophisticated pieces either to enlarge simple old dialogues or to supply passages forgotten or confused with related material in the ballads. But, as in the case of the mummers' plays and the older farces, the interrelation between the plays and the ballads may be more complicated than appears on the surface. Some of the phrases-like
"Yonder (or There) stands a fair lady "--found in the wooing plays
and in related traditional song recur in children's games but do not
seem to have influenced the broadsides. Moreover, in at least two
instances-" The Handsom' Woman" quoted in part above and "The
Finishing Song" of the Bassingham Men's Play and the Swinderby
Play-traditional versions of the wooing dialogue which I have not
been able to trace in old printed forms show a closer kinship to the
-------
1. Roxb. Ball., VII, 289-91.
2. Ibid., II, 121-26
____________________ MUMMERS' WOOING PLAYS IN ENGLAND 239
spirit and the phraseology of the wooing plays generally than doany of the broadside ballads cited above. There is much evidence to indicate that in the case of the parallels between the ballads and the plays, the passages in question belong, at least in many instances, primarily to the plays. The broadsides published in London were frequently adaptations of popular or traditional ballads and songs or echoed their phraseology. Simple types of wooing dialogues that parallel those of the mummers' plays and the broadsides are often met in the children's games of various European countries, probably surviving from very ancient seasonal games of the folk. The wooer's offer of gifts as an inducement to his lady, for example, which is the
most constant feature of the comic wooings found in both mummers' plays and broadsides, seems to be a typical convention of the games, as in the traditional "Keys of Canterbury." The offer of gold, silver, and pearl in particular is characteristic in the wooing games of children[1]. Early burlesques in which the country clown is represented as listing his rustic possessions and offering them in his wooing-- as in the Fastnachtspiele or ballads like the English "John and Joan" or the Scottish "Wowing of Jok and Jynny[2]"--may be taken, I think, as reflecting an old folk motive. These two ballads seem to have set a fashion for burlesque that was continuous in English balladry to the period in the latter half of the seventeenth century when numerous broadsides were printed similar to those already quoted in part, but much less broad in their burlesque and probably as a consequence--much nearer in spirit and phraseology to the mummers' wooing scenes. In other words, the kinship between the plays and the ballads may to some extent be due to the fact that the ballads as partly adaptations of wooing games or dialogues influenced in turn the games used for semi-dramatic performance. But the problems connected with the development of the texts in the wooing plays are so complicated that it is impossible to judge when the dialogue was formulated, what remains of primitive material, and how much sophistication has occurred in the course of their history. The very earliest formulation of dialogue for the pagan
-----------------
I See Newell. Games and Songs of American Children, pp. 42, 45, 55. The last is a
version of "The Handsom' Woman."
2 See Roxburghe Ballads, III, 590-96, and Laing, Early Popular Poetry of Scotland,
II, 24-27.
____________________240
rituals may of course have been the result of sophistication under literary influences, but at least this occurred so long ago that the oldest parts of the plays may have been traditional for many centuries. It is fairly clear, however, that lines of the plays have been modified in various periods by popular conventions and modes of expression, while distinct units are shown to have been embodied in the texts in relatively modern times.
The texts printed here were written down in the early part of the nineteenth century and are preserved in manuscripts in the British Museum. The Keynsham Play exists in two forms in Hunter's manuscripts entitled " Collectanea Hunteriana. Popular Antiquities, etc." The form written and signed by an actor in the play, James Cantle, with notes in a different hand, presumably that of Hunter, is found in Additional MS 24,546, fols. 46-47. Hunter's arrangement of the text, which is printed below, is in Add. MS 24,542, fols. 25-27. In an introduction he tells briefly of this and of similar plays that he had often witnessed in Yorkshire. The part of his account which bears on the play published here is as follows:
It is usual at Christmas in most parts of England for a number of young
men (about ten) to dress themselves fantastically, putting the shirt on the
outside and decorating themselves with foil especially where that metal is
known with Assidue, and in this disguise to go from house to house offering
to perform a Christmas play, and of course expecting a gratuity. These
people are called in the North by the name of Mummers. I never heard any
other name: but when I met a party of them at Keynsham in Somersetshire,
they called themselves Christmas Boys. They usually carried old swords
which were used in the fight which generally made part of the entertain-
ment ....
I have obtained from a Country youth who was one of the performers a copy of the Dialogue in a play which I witnessed at Keynsham in Somersetshire on the 27 of December 1822. No doubt the Lincoln plays also were written down for some one
interested in collecting. They are all in different hands with corrections or jottings of titles and dates made on the texts by several persons. The manuscripts are now bound together in one small volume in the British Museum as Add. MS 33,418, with the statement that it was "Purchas.d of E Peacock, Esq. 25 Nov. 1888." The only circumstance connected with the history of the manuscripts which I have been able to learn comes from the fact that the address
____________________________________241
to "Sir C. F. Bromhead, Baronet, Thurlby Hall," Lincolnshire, is
found on the back of one sheet of the Bassingham Men's Play-an
indication probably that the copy of this play at least was obtained
at his request and mailed to him. It is obvious not only from the
handwriting but from the spelling and other features of the text that
some of the plays were written down by uncultured actors who per-
formed in them. The texts are here followed literally since they
are clear and are most appropriately garbed in their quaint spelling
and punctuation. I have arranged as verse parts of the plays incor-
rectly written as prose, however, and have added in brackets speakers'
names and stage directions where they have clearly been omitted.
Other details of the manuscripts that seem significant are mentioned
in notes on the texts.
[Bassingham Men's play 1823 Xmas][]
[Enter Fool]
Good Evening Ladys and Gentlemen all
This merry time at Christmas I have made it bold to call
I hope you will not take it ill what I am a going to say
I have some more Boys & Girls drawing on this way
I have some little Boys stands at the Door
In Ribons they are neatly dressed
For to please you all they shall do their best
Step in Merrymen all.
[The players enter and sing together]
Good Master and good Mistress
As you sit by the Fire 10
Remember us poor Ploughlads
That runs through Mud and Mire
The mire it is deep
And we travel far and near
We will thank you for a Christmas Box
And a mug of your strong Beer.
1. The play in a regular but somewhat crude hand was probably written by a performer.
The title including the brackets has been added in another hand. Speakers' names and
stage directions added by me are in brackets, and I have italicized those in the MS. The
play is written as verse with only lines 8, 70, and 76 indented, the writer apparently
treating them as stage directions and indenting them in conformity with his practice.
Spacing. which apparently is intended to indicate new entries primarily and is accompanied
by a straight line across the page, occurs after lines 7, 16, 28, 32, 36, 42, 49, 57, 61, 63,
67, 69, 83, 84, 90, 91, 100, 104, 108, 116, 120, and 124.
_____________________________ 272 CHARLES READ BASKERVILL
Prince.
Thy father and thy mother too
Told me that we should married, married be
And so pull down thy swathful look
And swop' thy love on me.[2]
Shepherdess I will never marry with a cloud[3]
But I will have a handsome young man
To lie in bed with me.
Prince What dost thou talk of now
Am I not handsome enough for thee 90
Pray look another twich4
-----------------
1 C somop.
2 With lines 75-85 compare the following passage of the Broadway, Worcestershire, play (Jour. of Am. Folk-Lore, XXII, 392):
Sweet Moll walks into the room.
St. George Sweet Moll, Sweet Moll, where art thou going,
So early and so soon?
I have something to thee to say,
If yet that thou canst stay.
Sweet Moll What hast thou got to say ?
Pray tell it to me now,
For I am spending all my time
In what I can't tell how.
St. George Sweet Moll, thy parents and mine had well agreed
That married we should be,
So pull down thy lofty looks,
And fix thy love on me.
3 Evidently clown; C too has cloud.
4 Hunter adds: "And here ends this tragi-comic Pastoral, Father Christmas here beginning to sing his Carol--of which two are commonly in use: 'While Shepherds watch their flock by night' and 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing'
CHARLES READ BASKERVILL
UNVERSITY OF CHICAGO
------------------------
[Bassingham Men's play 1823 Xmas][1]
[Enter Fool]
Good Evening Ladys and Gentlemen all
This merry time at Christmas I have made it bold to call
I hope you will not take it ill what I am a going to say
I have some more Boys & Girls drawing on this way
I have some little Boys stands at the Door
In Ribons they are neatly dressed
For to please you all they shall do their best Step in Merrymen all.
[The players enter and sing together]
Good Master and good Mistress As you sit by the Fire 10
Remember us poor Ploughlads That runs through Mud and Mire The mire it is deep
And we travel far and near We will thank you for a Christmas Box And a mug of your strong Beer.
I The play in a regular but somewhat crude hand was probably written by a performer.
The title including the brackets has been added in another hand. Speakers' names and
stage directions added by me are in brackets, and I have italicized those in the MS. The
play is written as verse with only lines 8, 70, and 76 indented, the writer apparently
treating them as stage directions and indenting them in conformity with his practice.
Spacing. which apparently is intended to indicate new entries primarily and is accompanied
by a straight line across the page, occurs after lines 7, 16, 28, 32, 36, 42, 49, 57, 61, 63,
67, 69, 83, 84, 90, 91, 100, 104, 108, 116, 120, and 124.
242 CHARLES READ BASKERVILL
[Eldest Son]
I am me Fathers eldest Son
And Heir of all his land
I hope in a short time
It will all fall in my hand 20
I was brought up in Linsy Coat1
All the Days of my Life
There stands a fair Lady
I wish she was my Wife
With fingers long and rings upon
All made of beaton Gold
Good master and good Mistress
I would have you to behold
[The Husbandman]
Here comes the Farming Man
Upon my principle for to stand 30
In come to woo this Lady fair
To gain her Love his all my care
Enters Lady
To gain my Love it will not do
You speak too Clownish for to woo
Therefore out of my sight be gone
A witty man or EI have none
Enter Launjer
A man for wit I am the best
So Chuse me from amongst the rest
[Lady]
A Lawyer I suppose you be
You plead your Cause so wittely 40
But by and by II tell you plain
You plead a Cause thats all in vain
[Dame Jane]
Here comes old Dame Jane
Comes dableing about the Meadow
Comes Jumping about, to show you such sport
Look about you old Maids and Widows
Long time I have sought you
But now I have found you
Sarrah come take your Bastard.
1 Lindsay Court in some plays.
2 Enter was used for the first appearance of a character whether he came into the
room or stepped out of the circle of players.
MUMMERS' WOOING PLAYS IN ENGLAND 243
[Fool]
Bastard you Jade its none of mine 50
Its not a bit like me
I am a Valient Hero lately Come from Sea
You never see me before, now did you
I slew Ten men with a Seed of Mustard
Ten thousand with an old Crush'd Toad'
What do you think to that Jane
If you don't be of[fJ I serve you the same.
[Old Man]
Here comes the poor old ancient Man
IP speak for myself the best I can
My old grey Hairs they Hang so low 60
IV do the best for myself the best I know.
[To Lady] Me thinks me sees that star shine bright
On you Iv! fix'd my hearts delight
In comes the Lady
Away Away from me be gone
Do you think IA Marry such a Drone
No I1 have one of high degree
And not such an helpless wretch as the
Old Man
Kick me Lady out of the room
IV be hangd over our Kitchen Door
[St. George]
In comes Saint George 70
The Champeon bold
With my blooddy spear
I have won Ten Thousand pounds in Gold
I fought the finest' Dragon
And brought him to a slaughter
And by that means I gaind3
The King of Egypts Daughter
I ash him and smash him as small as Flys
Send him to Jamaica to make Minch pies.
[Fool]
You hash me and smash me as small as flys 80
Send me to Jamaica to make Minch Pies
1 This phrase is used in several plays, but it is no doubt a corruption of custard,
the reading of the Revesby Play, 1. 288.
' In most plays the word is fiery.
3 In the MS I gaind belongs to the next line.
[St. George]
Yes IE hash you and smash you as small as Flys
And send you to Jamaica to make Minch Pies'
[They fight; the Fool falls]
The old Witch1
Five Pounds for a Docter my Husband to cure
The Docter
I the Docter
[The old Witch]
pray what can you cure'
[The Doctor]
I can cure the Itch and the Veneral & the Gout
All akes within and pains without
You may think I am mistain
But I can bring this Man to Life again. 90
The old Witch Says4
where have you learnt your skill Docter
The Docter
I have traveled for it.
The Old Witch says
Where have you traveled.
The Docter says
I have traveled from my Old Grandmothers Fireside, to her Bread &
Cheese Cupboard Door, And there had a many a rare piece of Bread & Cheese,
The old Witch says
try your skill Docter;
The Docter says
I will feel of this Mans Pulse Very bad Very bad indeed take a little
of this Medicine5
This Man his not Dead but in a Trance
Arise my Lad and take a Dance. 100
I The preceding four lines are repeated in the MS with the heading "The old Witch"
and scored through.
2 That is, Dame Jane.
Lines 85 and 86 form one line in the MS.
4 In the IMS Says opens line 91.
In the IMS lines 92-98, including the stage directions, are written as eight lines of
vers
MUMMERS' WOOING PLAYS IN ENGLAND 245
The finishing Song
[Fool]'
Come write me down the power above
That first created A man to Love
I have a Diamond in my eye
Where all my Joy and comfort ly2
I! give you Gold IV give you Pearl
If you can Fancy me my Girl
Rich Costley Robes you shall wear
If you can Fancy me my Dear
[Lady]
Its not your Gold shall me entice
Leave of[f] Virtue to follow your advice 110
I do never intend at all
not to be at any Young Mans calPl
[Fool]
Go you away you Proud and scornful Dame
If you had been true I should of been the same
I make no dought but I can find
As handsome a fair one too my mind
[Lady]
O stay Young Man you seem in haste
Or are you afraid your time should waste
Let reson rule your roving mind
And perhaps in time she'l proof more kind 120
[Fool]
Now all my sorrows is comd and past
Joy and comfort I have found at last
The Girl that use to say me nay
She comforts me both Night & Day.'
1 Presumably the Fool is the speaker since convention demands that the Fool win
the Lady.
2 comfortly in MS.
I Lines 111 and 112 are written as one in the MS.
4 Except for an added narrative stanza just before the last and some variations in
phraseology, a traditional song from Sussex, printed in the Journal of the Folk-Song
Society, I, 22, is identical with "The finishing Song." Much of the song may be very
old. Parallel passages are found in Misogonus, II, iv, 81 ("is she not like a diamant in
thy eye"), and in the ballads cited above. Compare also the line of " The Down-Right
Wooing Of Country William and his pretty Peggy" (Rozb. Ball., VII, 264), "I fancy
thee both day and night." The song practically intact forms one of the sections of the
Swinderby Play and passages are found scattered through the dialogue of the other
plays printed here