MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY OF NEWFOUNDL AND DEPAR TMENT OF fOLKLORE 2/6d The journal of The Survey of Language and Folklore The University of Sheffield Departments of ~~i~~S~u~~~~~~~~es & The Language Centre I • EDITORIAL During the past two yea rs there has been an enthusiastic revival of interest in Folklore throughout the British Isles. This has shown itself, for example. in the many recent books on various aspects of Folklore which have been published in England. The more important of these include: I. and P. Opie, Children's Games in Street and Playground, Oxford University Press, 1969; A. L. Lloyd, Folksongs in England, Panther, 1969; R. M. Dorson, The British Folklorists, Routledge, 1968, and Peasant Customs and Savage Myths, Routledge, 1969; A. Helm, The Chapbook Mummers' Plays, Guizer Press. 1969, and the English edition of Christmas Mumming in Newfoundland, edited by H. Halpert and G. M. Story. Oxford University Press, 1969. in addition to the 'Dalesman' series of paperbacks, the 'Discovering' pocket books and numerous other publications. The Anglo-American Folklore Conference organised by the Folklore Society at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire from 9th to 12th September 1969 provided a welcome opportunity for leading folklorists from both sides of the Atlantic to meet and exchange views. Delegates discussed a wide range of topics, including potential fields of research and new developments in British and American folklore; belief and custom; folk narrative; folksong; bibliography; ethnic influences on Anglo-American Folklore, in addition to many other matters of mutual interest. The Folklore surveys at the universities of Leeds and Sheffield have continued to expand their activi· ties, thus complementing the valuable work of older-established collections in various regional centres. Some headway has also been made in the re-establishment of Folklore as an academic subject. In univer· sities, this reappraisal of the role which the folklorist plays in the comprehensive description of a culture is bound up with the new sense of relevance with which more recen t approaches to the subject have been particularly concerned. This wind of change may be somewhat disconcerting in that it involves a movement away from a purely historical or a literary ori entation, important though these are when seen in their proper perspective. On the other hand it promotes an essential reappraisal of aims and methods through which any academic discipline must pass if it is to compete, or indeed survive, in an age of scientific awareness and technological progress. THE DRAMATIC ACTION IN THE VICINITY OF SHEFFIELD The distribution of the Mummers' Play in Great Britain shows that there is a principal area which roughly corresponds with the distribution of the Anglo-Saxon three·field system, an area where there was resistance to enclosures of the common land because of the conservatism of its people. A distribution map also shows blank areas, some of which can be explained more easily than others. The Highlands of Wales and Scotland for example, have nothing to offer for the Play, presumably because there were insufficient people to maintain the ceremony. East Anglia on the other hand, probably shows nothing because of rural depopulation at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This was occasioned by the extreme poverty of the farm workers, many of whom either existed in conditions of hopeless squalor or were moved, as a Government policy, to the industrial north·west to work in the factories there. The highlands of the Peak District are also blank, though not entirely so. Where there were large settlements, e.g. Buxton, Castleton, Winster, etc., ceremony of some kind seems to have been maintained. The generally blank area of these highlands separates the dramatic ceremonies of Cheshire from those of the Southern West Riding with Sheffield as their immediate centre. To the north of this area the ceremonies cluster again in south Lancashire, and to the south the principal dense distribution of Staffordshire completes the circle. The dramatic ceremonies north, west and east, have one common factor: for the most part they are based on the chapbook versions which were popular in the industrial areas, and which jobbing printers seem to have found sufficiently worthwhile to continue printing. It is the purpose here to examine the dramatic ceremonies immediately around Sheffield. The earliest mention of mummers in Sheffield occurs in the Hunter MSS, 1822,1 where the performers, described as being fantastically dressed and nine or ten in number, included St. George, the King of Egypt, the King of Egypt's son, an apothecary, Slasher and a Fool. There were several combats in all of which St. George was the victor. This must have antedated a printed version published by Pearce and Son, Gibralter Street, Sheffield,2 since the firm was only in existence between 1837 and 1845. Although very unusual, the Pearce version could have been based on that quoted by Hunter, since the basic action appears to be the same - George kills Slasher, the Prince of Paradise and Hector, the doctor cures the first but not the last two, and also the versions have the characters of the King of Egypt and the Fool in common. The King of Egypt laments the death of the Prince of Paradise and describes him as 'his son and only heir', which may account for a character being described as the 'King of Egypt's son' in the Hunter fragment. On to this basic action, however, Pearce overlaid very literary additions. The whale was preceded by a Prologue spoken by the Fool and ended with two soliloquies by two of the performers. None of these has 1. S. J. Hunter: Popular Traditions, Proverbs, Forms of Expression, Words and other Antiquities of the Common People, ~ MS) , 1822, 8M Add 24542, f.13R, f.25R . 2. Xerox copy in Sheffield City Museum. any counterpart in any other dramatic action anywhere. They are obviously inserted on the grounds that the mummers ' action was a poor relation of the legitimate stage and include such lines as: ..... Even Kings would be Sans Culottes if I turned traitor, and would not make them breeches;.. ' which are obviously far removed from the simpler, topsy-turvy humour of the traditional texts. The version ends with 'A New Song' sung by the mummers. I t has ten verses of four lines each which roughly summarise the action and this song may be Pearce's contribution to the ceremony for it is only found in the Sheffield neighbourhood and exists in ceremonies which have no obvious connection with Pearce's text. Although this literary version is known to have been actually performed in 1840, it was largely superseded by another chapbook version, Walker's The Peace Egg, published in Otley circa 1840. This particular publication seems to have enjoyed great popularity, not only in the West Riding, but also in Derbyshire, South Lancashire and Cheshire. I t is also the version from which many Staffordshire texts derive, though to date, no record of its sale has been found in the county. Even this version, according to Addy,3 had the final song added at the end in the Sheffield area, but only of four verses, and it is certainly not included in Walker's text, Cox says he bought copies of the Peace Egg in Sheffield market place in 1869 and 18784 and it was certainly on sale elsewhere until 1914, though there is no evidence of any performance of a dramatic action in Sheffield after 1888. I t would be about this time that Mrs. Ewing took the local Pace Egg text from her vi llage, Ecclesfield, and incorporated it into her book, The Peace Egg and a Christmas Mumming Play, published, somewhat curiously in view of the ceremony's primitive origins, by the S.P.C.K. Her version was considered appropriate for performance in the Victorian nursery, and was made respectable by the removal of coarse lines and by collation with other versions, Worse still, a local inhabitant of Ecclesfield, judging that Mrs. Ewing's version must be the best, had copies of it printed and circulated amongst the children who were still performing in the village. It was thought that this killed the local tradition,5 but recently, the enquiries of Paul Smith in Ecclesfield have produced an oddity. This is an amalgam of an Old Tup ceremony and the dramatic action. The Tup was killed by the Butcher in the normal way and then cured by a doctor who had the customary lines. Also in this combined version were Devil Doubt, 8eelzebub and Fool, each with lines that have come straight from the Play. I t is a possibility - nothing more - that when the performers of the Play found that their version was not considered 'correct', they joined forces with the Old Tup performers and combined their texts. It has certainly no counterpart elsewhere either as an Old Tup Play or a Mummers' Play . Other places in the vicinity of Sheffield where the dramatic action was known were Anston, Kimberworth, Mexborough, Swinton, Thorpe Salvin and Whiston. Of these, a text is only preserved from Whiston, and again it is clearly that of Walker's Peace Egg. I t occurs in a fictional work, Sarre/sykes by Harold Armitage and relates to the period circa 1883. The novel is set in and around Whiston and informants from the village confirmed the location to Dr. Peacock in 1963. Details are few from the other places mentioned. The Kimberworth information refers to circa 1820 and speaks of mummers who wore very fine ribbons, hats covered with bows and streamers and who fought with wooden swords. Addy says that the Sheffield performers were dressed in all sorts of bright colours and ribbons, but these are the only costume details given.