Happy Holidays from the American Folklife Center!
We’ve written many times before about the tradition of mumming here at the Center. You can catch up with this introduction. Or you can read up on all our mummers posts. You can even listen to our new podcast episode about mumming.
In those introductions, we mention the Center’s very first mummers play in 2009. Now, thanks to our carefully preserved text of the play, and a set of photos shot by Guha Shankar at one of our performances, we’ll travel back in time to that first-ever American Folklife Center mummers play.
The American Folklife Center is lucky to have a collection particularly rich in mummers play texts, the James Madison Carpenter Collection. During his fieldwork in Britain in the 1930s, Carpenter collected over five hundred texts of folk plays. He also collected photos of some of the prominent mummers’ groups, and drawings by George Baker, a dry-stone mason who lived near Stow-on-the-Wold in the English Cotswolds, and whose father had acted in the local mummers plays. Jennifer Cutting, the curator of that collection, was very interested in mumming.
The American Folklife Center staff also included other people with a long experience of mumming. There was throughout the 1980s and 1990s a tradition of mummers plays among the faculty and graduate students at the Department of Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2009, when our mumming tradition started, there were four staff members at the American Folklife Center who were alumni of that department and who had acted in their plays: our director Peggy Bulger, our cataloger Maggie Kruesi, our webmaster Stephanie Hall, and our writer-editor Stephen Winick (me). My own first time acting in a mummers play had been in December 1990, and the others had all been in the plays before me.
In 2008, I had a leading singing role in the holiday show presented that year by Washington Revels, featuring music and dance of Québec. In that show, the characters performed a mummers play as a play-within-a-play, and my character had the role of the Doctor. Inspired by seeing that show and its mummers play, in 2009 Jennifer suggested we take advantage of our collections and our experience, and create our own version of the play from the Carpenter materials. She enlisted my aid, and with my help she produced the first script in that year.
The 2009 mummers play is different from our later plays in that there’s minimal adaptation of the play to the modern world or the Library of Congress. It’s also different in that the role of Father Christmas was claimed by Peggy Bulger, who decided to call herself “Mother Christmas” but still perform in a full beard! Since I had just played the Doctor the year before, that became my role. In 2009, we had several performances of the play, and not all cast members could make it to all the performances, so two roles were shared: Bold Slasher was shared by Stephanie Hall and Sharon McKinley, while St. George was shared by Bert Lyons and intern Adam Crandell. Jennifer took her usual role as an accordion-playing elf; the character’s name has changed over the years, but the role is substantially the same now as it was then. Thea Austen and Maggie Kruesi joined as singers.
Looking at the play today, I’m struck by being the last 2009 cast member left at the Library of Congress. Bert and Adam have moved on to other jobs with other fine institutions. Stephanie, Sharon, and of course Peggy (who hired me at AFC in 2005) have all retired. Jennifer and Thea, who have been my closest co-creators of the play for seventeen years, are retiring as I write this; their last physical day at the Library was yesterday.
I hope the mumming tradition at the Library of Congress survives their retirement, and that we will mum for many years to come. The play has brought many people joy for a long time, and it’s a dear tradition that helps temper our work lives with play and creativity. In the words of a play James Madison Carpenter collected in Somersetshire:
There is time for work, and there is a time for play
A time for to be melancholy, and for to be gay
A time for to be thrifty and a time for to be free
But, sure enough, at Christmas tide we all may jovial be
Find the text of the 2009 play below! The photos were taken by Guha Shankar at the Library Services holiday party in the Library’s Madison Building.
AMERICAN FOLKLIFE CENTER 2009 MUMMERS PLAY
Performed by American Folklife Center Staff
Script drawn from multiple plays in the James Madison Carpenter Collection
Compiled by Jennifer Cutting and Stephen Winick
Dramatis Personae
Mother Christmas (Peggy Bulger)
Saint George (Adam Crandell and Bert Lyons)
Bold Slasher (Sharon McKinley and Stephanie Hall)
Doctor (Stephen Winick)
Little Saucy Jack (Jennifer Cutting)
Additional Singers: Maggie Kruesi, Theadocia Austen
ALL SING OUTSIDE THE DOOR:
Wassail, wassail all over the town
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown
Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree
With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee
MOTHER CHRISTMAS:
In comes I, old Mother Christmas
Welcome or welcome not,
I hope old Mother Christmas will never be forgot
Roast beef, plum pudding, and good mince pie
Nobody likes them better than I.
Room, room, pray gallants all,
Pray give us room to rhyme,
We’ve come to show activity
This merry Christmas time
Activity of youth, activity of age
Such activity has never been before upon a stage
If you don’t believe what I do say,
Step in Saint George, and clear the way!
SAINT GEORGE:
In comes I, Saint George,
A man of courage bold
And with me sword and buckler,
I won three crowns of gold.
I fought the fiery Dragon,
I brought him to the slaughter,
And won the beauteous princess fair,
The King of Egypt’s daughter.
I fear no Spanish, French, nor Turk
I know NO man can do me hurt!
So if there’s any man dares bid me stand
I’ll cut him down with my left hand.
I’ll beat him, I’ll hew him as small as flies
And send him to the cookshop to make mince pies
Mince pies hot and mince pies cold
I’ll send him to Satan before he’s three days old.
(Enter Bold Slasher)
SAINT GEORGE: Who be you? What are you come for?
BOLD SLASHER: (speaks like a pirate)
In comes I, the Bold Slasher
I come from the rolling seas to fight
The brave St. George if he is here.
And if his heart don’t quake with fear,
I’ll cut it out with my sharp sword
And EAT IT, that I will, upon my word!
Just let him come, if he’s so bold,
If his blood is hot, I’ll make it cold!
You pantywaist, you English dog
I’ll drink your blood like it were grog!
To battle, to battle, you and I,
To see which on this ground shall lie.
SAINT GEORGE:
You scurvy old salt, don’t talk too hot,
For you don’t know who you have got;
So guard your eye and mind your head,
Or with me sword I’ll strike thee DEAD!
[They fight; Bold Slasher wounds St. George in breast; St. George falls to the ground]
MOTHER CHRISTMAS:
Oh look, oh look what you have done
You’ve killed my one and only son!
Is there a Doctor to be found,
To cure his deep and deadly wound? (to rhyme with “found”)
ALL (including dead St. George, who sits up briefly):
Wound! (pronounced correctly)
DOCTOR:
Here I am, good Doctor Brown,
I heard you calling from the town.
I bring you medicines from Spain
Will make the dead rise up again!
MOTHER CHRISTMAS:
How came you to be a doctor?
DOCTOR (holds up map):
By my travels.
MOTHER CHRISTMAS:
Where have you traveled?
DOCTOR (gestures on map):
Italy, Spittaly, France and Spain,
Over the hills, and back again!
I can cure an old jackdaw with the toothache,
Or an old magpie with a headache!
MOTHER CHRISTMAS:
How should you do that?
DOCTOR:
Lay his body on a stool and cut his head off!
MOTHER CHRISTMAS:
That would kill him, you fool!
DOCTOR:
Well then, I could lay his head on a stool, and cut his body off! (all laugh/groan)
MOTHER CHRISTMAS:
(Sighs and rolls eyes)
What else can you cure?
DOCTOR:
(Throwing candy to audience members on each downbeat)
The itch, the pitch, the palsy and the gout
The pain within, and the pain without.
If he has nineteen devils in his skull,
I can cast twenty of them out!
MOTHER CHRISTMAS:
Yes, but can you cure a man who’s been DEAD for five minutes?
DOCTOR:
If he’s been dead five YEARS I can cure him.
[Produces bottle from doctor’s bag]
I have a bottle I brought from Spain
Called hokum-pokum alicum-pain
(Steps over dead St. George, bends down and gives him a sip)
So, St. George, have a drop of my nip-nap
A dram from my bottle,
To run down thy throttle,
And if’n you are not quite slain
Rise Up, St. George, to fight again!
[St. George springs up, looking surprised,
The mummers start the audience clapping
St. George threatens Bold Slasher with his sword,
Bold Slasher jumps back, and looks frightened.]
MOTHER CHRISTMAS: Walk in, Little Saucy Jack!
LITTLE SAUCY JACK:
In comes I, Little Saucy Jack
With me tiny accordion on me back.
Me head’s so big, and me brain’s so small
I’ll play you a tune to please you all!
Muddy boots and dirty faces
Now all you dancers, take your places!
[Saucy Jack plays intro to “Sellenger’s Round” on the melodeon, while characters put everything down. All dance two figures, then applaud themselves to prompt audience]
MOTHER CHRISTMAS:
We hope you all have been impressed
And think our calling is the best
But now we won’t delay, lest tediousness befall,
We wish you a merry Christmas
And God bless you all!
All Sing: “Gloucestershire Wassail.” (Saucy Jack invites audience to sing along)
Wassail, wassail all over the town
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown
Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree
With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee
And here’s to the bullock and to his right eye
Pray God send our master a good Christmas pie
A good Christmas pie that may we all see
With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee
So here is to the milk cow and to her broad horn
May God send our master a good crop of corn
A good crop of corn that we may all see
With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee
And here’s to the calf and to her left ear
Pray God send our master a happy New Year
A happy New Year as e’er he did see
With the wassailing bowl, we’ll drink to thee
Then here’s to the maid in the lily white smock
Who tripped to the door and slipped back the lock
Who tripped to the door and pulled back the pin
For to let these jolly wassailers in.