Folk Play Links - Folk Plays in Literary Works
Compiled by Chris Little
Folk play performances and their preparations have been incorporated into literary works, either as incidental events (as in Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays), or as part of the plot (as in Yonge's The Christmas Mummers).
Publications listed may be cited as well as full text.
Ainsworth, William Harrison
004 *
Christmas Firesides
[in
Bristol Mercury, No.2280, 28th Dec. 1933 - Subscription required for Gale: 19th Century British Library Newspapers]
010 *
Of All Things
[1921, p.165 - 'A Romance in Encyclopedia Land' - guisards]
011 *
Malpas;
[1822, Vol.I pp.206-207 - like so many morrice-men or paste-eggers - by [Lee Gibbons [pseud]]]
012 *
A Mummer's Play
[by Jo Beverley, in
A Regency Christmas, by Mary Balogh, Jo Beverley & Sandra Heath, Signet, 1995 - Summary of a murder mystery novella where the investigator infiltrates the suspects house with a mummers' play.]
014 *
The Fool
[Book for sale: in
Plays: 3]
018 *
The Smugglers of Penrose
[from his
Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall : Second Series, 1873, p.216]
019 *
The Smugglers of Penrose
[from his
Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall : Second Series, 1873, p.216]
022 *
Christmas Rose
[from
The Collected Poems [? printing], 1909 - "or the way, The Whiteboys 1 is actin' a 2 Christmas day-"]
Chaworth-Musters, Lavinia
026 *
Old English Customs Extant at the Present Time
[by P.H. Ditchfield [Rector of Barkham], 1896, (pp.47-48 - [paraphrasing
Plough Monday, by J.G. Frazer, in
Folk-Lore Journal, Vol.V Pt.2, Apr? 1887, p.161]; at Great Gransden;) 48-49, vii - paraphrasing
A Cavalier Stronghold:, by Mrs Chaworth Musters, 1890]
028 *
Strange Britain
[Photo of Beaconsfield Mummers, about 1950. Beaconsfield text, allegedly composed by G.K. Chesterton]
029 *
The Mummer
[from his
A Miscellany of Men, 19??]
033 *
A Dialogue for National Folk Week
[in
Format, No.3, May. 1967, pp.13-17, cover - [National Folk Week was organised by the English Folk Dance and Song Society]]
038 *
Poems, Chiefly Pastoral
[1766, pp.171-172 - 'A Prologue, For some Country Lads, performing the
Devil of a Wife in the Christmas Holidays' - Subscription required for Gale: Eighteenth Century Collections Online]
042 *
T'Pleeaf-Stots
[citation, in
Transactions of the Yorkshire Dialect Society, Vol.V Pt.XXXVII, p.45]
A successful Victorian children's author, her story The Peace Egg was first published in her mother's Aunt Judy's Magazine. It is centred round the performance of a Christmas play - the title being taken from one of the chapbook texts that were current at the time. Later A Christmas Mumming Play itself was published, a script that she had compiled from five different versions, with a lengthy introduction. The story and the play were published together in later book editions of her works. The script is available in our Scripts.
044 *
Aunt Judy's Correspondence
[by J.H. E., in
Aunt Judy's Christmas Volume, Vol.X No.LXIX, [Mar.] 1872, p.189 - chapbook alluded to is published by J. Johnson, Kirkgate, Leeds - Subscription required for Gale: 19th Century UK Periodicals]
045 *
The Peace Egg
[by J.H. E., in
Aunt Judy's Annual Volume, New Ser. Vol.III [No.3], [Mar.] 1884, pp.155-173 - a christmas mumming play - Subscription required for Gale: 19th Century UK Periodicals]
048 *
The Peace-Egg : A Christmas Tale
[by J.H. Ewing, in
Aunt Judy's Christmas Volume, Vol.X No.LXVIII, [Feb.] 1872, pp.98-117 - Subscription required for Gale: 19th Century UK Periodicals]
Gaskell, Lady Catherine Milnes
058 *
Reuben Remplace
[in
The Olio;, Vol.VII No.XVI, 23rd Apr. 1831, p.243 [sic] - Christmas plays & "Guise Dancing"]
Return of the Native (1878) is probably the most famous example of a folk play being incorporated into an English novel. This appears in Book 2, Chapters 4 to 6, with the main performance taking place in Chapter 5. Hardy subsequently published a separate, somewhat embellished, Dorset text of The Play of St. George (1928).
067 *
Hardy's Mummers
[by Robert Squillace, in
Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol.41 No.2, Sep. 1986, pp.172-189 - Subscription required for JSTOR]
069 *
Jenkyn, Little John, &c
[by John Pickford, in
Notes and Queries, 10th Ser. Vol.V No.115, 10th Mar. 1906, p.195 - citation of
Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy, 1878]
071 *
Plough Monday Mummeries
[by John Pickford, in
Notes and Queries, 9th Ser. Vol.VII No.181, 15th Jun. 1901, p.477 - citation of (
The Book of Days, ed. by R. Chambers, Vol.I, 18??, pp.84-86;)
Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy, 1878]
072 *
Real Conversations
[by William Archer, 1904, pp.34-36 - Transcript of a Feb. 1901 interview covering Mummers]
073 *
Real Conversations
[extract from William Archer, 1904, pp.34-36 - Transcript of a Feb. 1901 interview covering Mummers]
075 *
The Christmas Boys'
[by John Pickford, in
Notes and Queries, 10th Ser. Vol.VII No.161, 26th Jan. 1907, p.75 - citation of
Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy, 1878]
076 *
The Dynasts
[1903, 'Preface' - "¡ taking the shape delivery of speeches, with dreamy conventional gestures, something in the manner traditionally maintained by the old Christmas mummers,"]
082 *
The Mummers
[by John McCullagh, in
Newry Journal, 18th Jun. 2004 - extract from
The Christmas Rhymers, Ballynure, 1941: an old woman remembers]
083 *
The Ashen Faggot
[in
Macmillan's Magazine, Vol.V No.27, Jan. 1862, p.247 - fragment]
Kingston, William Henry Giles
D.H. Lawrence's first published work was a short story - An Enjoyable Christmas: A Prelude - in which the performance of a Christmas Guysers' play and its preparations provide the background for the plot. It was published at his request under the name of his friend Jessie Chambers in the Nottinghamshire Guardian (7th Dec. 1907). Guysers are also mentioned briefly in his novel The Rainbow (1915). Neither story gives much detail about the play itself, although they will have been drawn from the folk plays of his home town Eastwood, and neighbouring villages in Nottinghamshire. See Traditional Drama Forum, No.8, Sep. 2003 for the text of A Prelude and an article on Lawrence's references to Guysers.
095 *
Dun Yer Want Guysers?"
[in
Haggs Farm Preservation Society Newsletter, No.12, Jun. 1993, pp.3-4 - paraphrasing
A Prelude]
096 *
The Rainbow
[ch.5 - "The wake departed, and the guysers came. ¡"; ch.10 - "Gradually there gathered the feeling of expectation. ¡"]
098 *
Small World
[extract, in which the character Miss Maiden describes a mumming play from Rugby, and how it represents the death and rebirth of the life-force.]
Oxenham, Elsie J. [pseud]
Elsie J. Dunkerley wrote a long series of books for girls called 'The Abbey Girls', based on the adventures of pupils at a girls' boarding school. Folk dancing was a recurrent theme in her plots, and Mummers were a peripheral feature of the 11th title - The Abbey Girls Go Back to School [1922] and a central feature of the 39th title - An Abbey Champion (1946).
108 *
Abbey Girls of Australia
[summary of her
The Abbey Girls Go Back to School, [1922] and her
An Abbey Champion, 1946]
110 *
The Mummers
[citation of Val Mackay, in
The Abbey Chronicle, No.9, Sep. 1991, pp.7-9]
111 *
The Mummers
[in
The Graphic, Vol.40 No.1048, 28th Dec. 1889, p.798abc - Subscription required for Gale: 19th Century British Library Newspapers]
114 *
Tales of Northumbria
[1899, p.88 - 'An Ammytoor Detective' - sword-dancers sing about Alexander the Great]
115 *
The Three Brothers
[1909, pp.69-78, ch.VIII & pp.100-112, ch.XI - the vicar revives the mummers at Shaugh Prior - [his Dartmoor novels influenced by Thomas Hardy's Wessex novels]]
Pilling, Ann [n¨¦e Cheetham]
116 *
The Beggar's Curse
[Book for sale: - The novel's plot includes something sinister in the ancient rituals of the village play.]
119 *
A Holiday Fling
[extract from her
Christmas Revels - talking about staging a mummers' play]
Quiller-Couch, Arthur Thomas
121 *
Poems, Ballads, and Bucolics
[1890, pp.129, vi - 'Old Times' - "Plough-Jags" - [his father had been Rector of Halton Holegate, Lincolnshire i.e. "between Horncastle, Louth, and Boston"]]
122 *
Months at the Lakes
[by Rev H.D. Rawnsley [Vicar of Wray], 1906, (p.8 - "pasch eggers" at Grasmere;) 12-17 - paraphrasing
Pace-Eggin' Time, by Miss [Eleanor Foster] Simpson [later his wife], 1906]
124 *
The Mummers' Curse
[extract from 1996 - A murder mystery from the 'Amanda Pepper Mysteries' series, set during the Philadelphia New Year Mummers' parade - Synopsis and Chapter 1]
126 *
Coln Rogers
[Short Christmas story involving a Mummers' play]
128 *
Curiosities, Grotesqueries, Follies & Strange Customs
[Semi-truthful hoax article on English folklore, including a photo of "The ¡®Ganderman¡¯ of Linctus Peverell village in the Cotswolds"(in fact a picture of Heptonstall Pace-Eggers' Tosspot, with intro and song lifted from
Round the Horne by "Rambling Syd Rumpo"), and a so-called Pace-Egging procession Burscough near Ormskirk]
130 *
Marmion; A Tale of Flodden Field [6th edition]
[1810, Vol.II p.137 - 'Introduction to Canto Sixth' - "Who lists may in their mumming see, Traces of ancient mystery; White shirts supplied the masquerade, And smutted cheeks the visors made; But, O! what maskers, richly dight, Can boast of bosoms half so light!"]
Seymour, Mrs William Wood
134 *
Moss
[This part of the novel includes preparations for, and perfrmance of a Derby Tup play at Christmas]
Warner, Susan Bogert & Anna Bartlett Warner
142 *
Parley Magna
[1876, Vol.I p.6 - Christmas-boys or mummers]
A popular Victorian children's author, her story The Christmas Mummers was first published in her Magazine for the Young, Vol.XVI No.5, May 1857, pp.159-168 - Vol.XVII No.3, Mar. 1858, pp.73-84. It has the performance of a Mummers' play as its central theme. The text is available in our Scripts. See Traditional Drama Forum, No.3, Oct. 2001 for an article suggesting a Doctor's name derives from the character in Yonge's novel.
151 *
Soaps Suds Again
[in
Newsletter & Review of the Charlotte M Yonge Fellowship, No.8, Winter 1998/99, p.8 - extract from her
Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Members of the English Church, Ser.3 Vol.VII Pt.XXXVII, Jan. 1884, p 60 - "Boxing Day began damp and weary. Mummers stood outside the gin-shops and crowds round them drinking."]
152 *
The Carbonels
[[], wall-paper "that he used to make caps for the Christmas-boys"]
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Last updated: 18/12/2009