Folk Plays - Winter 2004/2005 - Wolfville Mummers Troupe

Alan Slipp

The Mummers Troupe of Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada, New Year's Eve 2004

Left to right: Dragon (Wendy Elliott), St.George (Jan Buley), the Princess (David Buley), and the Turkish Knight (Steven Slipp)

In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the mummers' tradition is called belsnickling. Belsnickle is the German word for Father Christmas. The practise seems to have skipped a generation here.

Seeing Chris Brookes, late of the Mummer's Troupe from St. John's, Newfoundland, perform several times inspired us nine years ago to revive or launch the tradition in our university town. We enjoyed and learned from Brook's book on the subject.

I'm afraid we disquise our voices when mumming with truly dreadful imitations of Capt. Highliner. Our Turkish Knight has overtones of the Iraq War and our costumes all come from a wonderful institution here that's recycling clothes from the U.S. It's called Frenchies. This was the first year we went out on New Year's Eve. It was truly a blast arriving at parties, doing our play and departing.

The recommended URL for this web page is www.folkplay.info/Gallery/Wolfville2004.htm