Mummers

[watervole]

Went to see the Stourvale Mummers at the local pub this afternoon.  Excellent fun.  Just what a mumming play should be:

1.  in a pub

2.  Performed by a group who are enjoying themselves (the Bourne River Morris men in their winter incarnation)

3.  Hammed up for all it's worth

3.  In tatter jackets.  (this is not high art, detailed costumes are OUT)  Blacked up faces score a bonus point.

4. With appropriate boos and cheers from the audience

5.  Brave knights with metal swords fighting inches away from the bar and the audience

6.  Not, one, not two, but three knights!  (two is more common).  We got 'Slasher', a Turkish knight and St George

7.  A quack doctor who can cure the dead knights

8.  An audience who know most of the cast and who are greatly enjoying themselves.

9. Spoken in rhyming couplets.

10.  Just (and only just) enough space to swing a cat as the audience squeeze between the pub furniture and the bar.

Plot?  You want a plot?  This is a mumming play!

Look, the knights fight until one is left alive.  The doctor cures them and Father Christmas declares this to be a good thing and a few seasonal songs are sung.  Everyone applauds.

The mumming play in this form is probably about 250 years old.

http://freespace.virgin.net/peter.millington1/Mystery_History.htm

Comments

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

That sounds very like my father's description of the mummer play he and his cronies used to put on between the wars, except they would go from house to house in the village knocking on doors and when they had a crowd they would perform the play. This village hasn't had pub since Benjamin Hall Married lady Victoria and she put a stop to drinking in 'her' lands. I wish I could have got the cronies together and written it all down but half of them had died by the time I realised what was dying.
The only bit I can remember was a line from Dad's part.

Here come I old Father Christmas , welcome here or welcome not
Hope I do old Father Christmas never will be forgot.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

There was a line very close to that in our play. I remember: "I hope old Father Christmas never will be forgot" (that's what happens when ordinary people write rhyming couplets, verbs cheerfully chucked to the end of the line to make it rhyme and made 'forgot' rather than 'forgotten'. Elegant scansion is not what it's all about!)

[linda-joyce.livejournal.com]

No it certainly wasn't in Dad and cos. cases. It was for fun and the hope of collecting enough halfpennies and Farthings and even the odd penny for a night out in Newport.

[epistrophia.livejournal.com]

I grew up with mummers' plays - literally. My dad was a member of Headington Quarry Morris Men (the ones that Cecil Sharpe used to hang out with). He was the "Turkey Knight" when I was very little, and by the time I was about six was St George.

Boxing Day with the mummers made Christmas for me. I haven't been for about seven years, for various reasons, but I'm going this year and I can't wait!