From Mummer's Play to Pantomime, via School Nativity

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 12

For an old school friend of mine, it's panto season once again. And yesterday I got to enjoy my daughter's school nativity play.

One of the things you can read about in What is Myrrh Anyway? is how the traditional mummers' plays helped influence the development of the popular pantomime, not to mention the classic school nativity.

The words ‘mummer’ and ‘mumming’ either come from the German mumme, meaning a ‘mask’ or ‘masker’, or the Greek momme, meaning specifically ‘a frightening mask’. To hide their true identities (disguise being an important part of the mummers' ritual performance) many mummers wore masks made to look like different animal heads. One of these was the stag.

Just such a 'classic' Medieval mummer mask appears in an fourteenth century illuminated manuscript in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University. A marginal panel in the lower right corner of the verso of Plate 21 shows a stag masked mummer leading four other dancers (two women and two masked men) to a musical tune provided by a man playing the lute.

The stag mask itself is particularly ancient, dating to the stone age in Europe. A painting on the wall of a cave named Le Trois Freres in France clearly shows a shaman wearing a stag mask and costume. The style of the paintings in the cave place the image at the end of the Ice Age, around 15,000 to 10,000 BC!

Modern Wiccan believers see the stag as representing the powerful male spirit of the animal world, 'the source of masculine energy; he is the raw force, wisdom and law'. Some Medieval writers also identified the stag as a force for good, determined to stamp out evil, as in the natural world the animal will trample any snakes it comes upon.

Boxing Day!

Today is the Feast of Saint Stephen (as in the one sung about in Good King Wenceslas), also known as Wren Day (once upon a time), more commonly known as Boxing Day. But why?

Well, it has nothing to do with putting out the boxes that all the presents came in on Christmas Day. It is instead to do with alms boxes. The day after Christmas, the priest would open the collection boxes that had been left in church over the festive period and then distribute the money to the poor and needy of the parish.

Boxing Day has a whole host of traditions associated with it, everything from horse racing and fox hunting to wren hunting and mummers' plays. As a child I visited the village of Marshfield in Gloucestershire once to watch the famous mummer's play there.

Boxing Day is also when the sales start, of course, although this year they seemed to start some time before Christmas. To find out more about Boxing Day and it's traditions why not turn to the chapter 'Why is 26 December called Boxing Day?' in your copy of What is Myrrh Anyway? or Christmas Miscellany?

26 December is also the first of the Twelve Days of Christmas...

Happy Saint George's Day!

As well as being Shakespeare's birthday (and, we're reliably informed, his death day), it's the day on which all English honour their patron saint George the Dragonslayer - or not. Saint George's Day certainly doesn't get the same level of recognition that, say, Saint Andrew's Day does in Scotland and America, or Saint Patrick's Day does pretty much anywhere. I mean Google has recently created new logos to celebrate the first man in space and Trevithick's steam engine, but what have they got up today?

I can't help thinking that they missed a great opportunity there. The start of the word could have been Saint George on his horse and the end forming the body of the dragon. But then I'm patriotic, a monarchist, and an Englishman through and through. Besides, I love the story of Saint George. I mean, dragons, knights... what's there not to love about the story for a fantasy writer?

And the true story of the man we now know as George the Dragonslayer is, if anything, even more incredible and certainly much more gruesome. For example, did you know that George (who was a native of Libya, not England) was forced to endured various torture sessions, including laceration on a wheel of swords (during which he was resuscitated three times) before finally being executed by decapitation?

But what's all this got to do with a blog about Christmas, I hear you say.

Now I don’t know about you, but for me, the definitive dramatisation of the Robin Hood story is Robin of Sherwood, created by Richard Carpenter in the 1980s. (Hang on in there, all will become clear in a moment.)

In one of the episodes from the second series, entitled Lord of the Trees, Robin and his merry men act out part of a mummer’s play, in order to capture a band of dangerous mercenaries. (They can’t simply kill them because it’s the Time of the Blessing, an annual forest tradition during which no blood can be shed, or the pagan fertility ritual will fail.)

Some years ago now, I wrote a play about the origins of Christmas (funnily enough) for the school I was working in at the time. For one scene I wanted a simple mummers’ play. I returned to Robin of Sherwood for inspiration and have to admit that I used Richard Carpenter’s creation from the Lord of the Trees episode. However, in the TV story, the play isn’t actually completed, so I had to write the end of it in the same style as the rest.

Presented here are my efforts, combined with those of Richard Carpenter, of course. If you’ve thought about putting on your own mummers’ play this year, why not use this one? Just let me know how you get on!

A Mummers’ Play

By Richard Carpenter and Jonathan Green

Cast of Characters

SAINT GEORGE
The SARACEN KNIGHT
Saint George’s MOTHER
A mysterious DOCTOR

Enter the Mummers.

SAINT GEORGE
In comes I, Saint George is my name.
With my great sword, I mean to win this game.
If I could meet the Saracen Knight here,
I’d fight him and bit him, and stick my sword in his ear.

SARACEN KNIGHT

Then in comes I, the Saracen Knight.
I come from the farthest lands to fight.
I’ve come to fight Saint George the Bold,
And if his blood runs hot, I’ll make it cold.

SAINT GEORGE

Battle to battle, to you I call,
To see who on this ground shall fall.

SARACEN KNIGHT

Battle to battle, to thee I pray,
To see who on this ground shall lay.

They fight. Saint George is slain.

MOTHER

O Doctor, Doctor! Where can a doctor be,
To cure my son who lies like a fallen tree?

DOCTOR

In comes I, a doctor good,
And with his hand shall stop the scarlet blood.

MOTHER

How will you cure him? With potions and pills?

DOCTOR

With this bag I can cure all ills –
The itch, stitch, palsy and gout –
Pains within and pains without.

The Doctor shakes his bag over Saint George’s body.

DOCTOR

Rise up!

Saint George gets up.

SAINT GEORGE

Once I was dead and now I am alive!
Blessed be the Doctor, who did me revive!

SARACEN KNIGHT

What’s this? I thought I struck you dead!
I chopped and I lopped, and I hit you on the head.

SAINT GEORGE
Once I was dead but now I’m all right,
And now I’ll slay you, the Saracen Knight!

SARACEN KNIGHT
I have shed your blood before,
And now I’ll have to spill some more.
Battle to battle, to you I call,
To see who on this ground shall fall.

SAINT GEORGE
Battle to battle, to thee I pray,
To see who on this ground shall lay.

They fight again. The Saracen Knight is slain.

SAINT GEORGE
Behold! The Saracen Knight lies dead,
The ground now with his blood turned red.
Remember me, Saint George is my name!
With my great sword, I have won this game.
He will not fight another day.
And so now ends our Mummers’ play.