Welcome to Folk Buzz! Morris News & Lists
News
National & Regional Dance Organisations
Teams in Cumbria
Teams in Lancashire
Appalachian, Clog & Step Dance Teams
Border Morris Teams
Cotswold Morris Teams
Lancashire & Cheshire/Clog/North West Morris Teams
Longsword & Rapper Teams
Mumming and Pace Egging Teams
Morris News Back Issues
Recorded Music
Periodicals
Contact Information for Folk Buzz! Morris News & Lists
Links for Folk Buzz! Morris News & Lists
Message Board
Guestbook
|
Mumming and Pace Egging Teams
This page lists those teams in Cumbria and Lancashire which perform the old ritual dramas known as Mumming or Pace Egg plays. Such dramas tend to be confined to particular seasons, i.e. Pace Egging is performed in the Easter season and Mumming at Christmas. As the performance season is limited, the dramas are often performed by members of teams involved in other activities for the remainder of the year. |
Lancaster Pace Eggers
Lancaster Pace Eggers; Lancaster; Occ.; U; M; c/o John O'Gaunt MM
|
Stone The Crows
Stone The Crows; Leyland; Thu; B,U; X; Brent Platt; 01257 263942
|  |
|
Traditional Drama Research Group
The following site may be of considerable use for anyone intending to perform traditional English folk plays. |  |
|
Morris Ring Mumming Archive
If you want to start your own Mumming or Pace Egging team, the following site may be helpful. |  |
|
Useful Publications ...
The following books may be of help to anyone wanting to know more about the tradition or to set up their own team. |
An Introduction to the English Mummers' Play
 Room, Room, Ladies and Gentlemen: an introduction to the English mummers' play
Eddie Cass & Steve Roud; edited by Malcolm Taylor & Doc Roe (EFDSS with The Folklore Society, £12.95 plus £1.50 p&p)
Mumming is not a pre-Christian fertility rite. Furthermore, we do not know what it is, other than that the earliest recognisable mumming plays date from only the early eighteenth century. That's the bad news over with.
The good news is that mumming is fun to perform and to watch, for children and adults alike. This volume will be of interest to current and future performers of mumming plays and also to those who want to know more about the performances they enjoy watching. It is well illustrated with drawings and photographs of old and contemporary teams of mummers (including pace eggers, jolly boys, tipteerers, soul cakers and plough stots). Main sections cover the history of the English mummers play; the mummers and their performance; a guide to performance; sources of information; and play texts.
The play texts are from Middle Rasen in Lincolnshire; Chiddingfold, Surrey; Coxwold and Sowerby, Yorkshire; Sedgefield, County Durham; Bury, Burscough and Manchester, Lancashire; Tarvin, Cheshire; and Kempsford, Gloucestershire. Sufficient information is given to enable newcomers to commence mumming from scratch, and the publication is especially suitable for use in schools. It is to be hoped that new performers will be encouraged by this book to take up this old English seasonal custom, to ensure its survival as an active tradition for generations to come.
If ordered at the same time, a companion volume, 'The English Mumming Play: an introductory bibliography', can be purchased for £3.50, from: Mail Order, EFDSS, Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regent's Park Road, London, NW1 7AY
Michael L. Jackson
|
The Lancashire Pace-Egg Play
 The Lancashire Pace-Egg Play: A Social History
Eddie Cass (FLS Books, £13.95 + p&p)
Here is a book whose title describes its contents perfectly. “Ritual origins” devotees will be terminally disappointed if they hope for any of the evidence to be persuaded to support their case. For instance, in the first page of the Introduction we find “Begging customs were at one time widespread among adults in the early part of the [20th] century particularly, even more so among children.” By page 2, Eddie Cass admits “I shall want to argue that the pace-egg play is a key feature of an Easter begging custom rather than a subsidiary one, Pettitt’s definition does assist in locating the play in the field of popular culture without ignoring the folklore & traditional elements of the custom.”
Dr. Cass also indicates a healthy scepticism of some of the earlier publications in this area: “most early research work ... was amateur, largely outside of the academic ... world, & based on a theory of cultural evolution.” The thought that a participant in a radio discussion “... could state categorically that the pace-egg play was representative of a genre which was known world-wide & which was one of the oldest rituals we have” is implicitly described as an improvable belief. However, support is given to the suggestion that “... myth/ritualism seems to appeal to something within the human psyche, something which appears to need feeding.”
On page 27 we find that “The earliest known complete manuscript text of an undisputed folk hero-combat play survives from 1780; this is the play from Islip, Oxfordshire.” Another fondly-held belief takes a knock: “Despite the widespread supposition that mumming plays are survivors of rural customs ... the first records of the play in Lancashire come from the urban areas of the county’s cotton towns.” If the play had its beginnings in late mediaeval or even Restoration Britain, it would be hard to understand why “The oldest substantial or complete text of a Lancashire pace-egg play so far traced is one written out in 1842 by Jesse Lee ...”
The custom went into decline possibly from mid 19th Century, & it is suggested that we should look for causes in economic & social changes within the supporting communities. My own choice for a significant influence is discussed on page 38: “The Education Acts of 1870 & 1918 clearly changed society’s perception of the social position of children.”
At the end of a fascinating consideration of “The Rochdale Play”, the provenance of the performance is considered: “A mumming play does not become institutionalised because it is presented by a school or a church, although it might lose the spontaneity which comes from a street performance by untutored children. The play changes in character as a result of the attitude towards mumming held by the person responsible for its presentation. The Priestnall & Mitchell play (a significant printed source; ED) became institutionalised because the compilers of that play thought that the street tradition of Rochdale was corrupt & sought to recreate the play as they thought it should be.”
In “The revival: two case studies”, there is an extended description & analysis of the plays performed in Middleton & Bury, arising out of the folk-song clubs of the mid-Twentieth Century. Middleton is the older, dating from 1967, originally involving Mike Harding. The Bury Pace Eggers have been in existence since 1970: their 1999 poster still peddles the “traditional ritual of pagan origin, in which the death of Winter & the rebirth of Spring ...” line.
Chapbooks are also examined as a possible significant conduit for the plays. Once again, this chapter is evidence of thorough research, this time into the chapbook printers of Lancashire in the 18th & 19th Centuries.
The conclusions include “The rise in popularity of performances of the pace-egg play was closely tied up with the spread of the various chap-book versions which made the text readily available to teams who did not know the words.” (p. 157): pace egging was largely a nineteenth- & early twentieth-century activity & one which was part of an urban working-class culture.” (p.158): “... a national decline in the number of mumming teams after the First World war.” (p.158) & For Lancashire pace eggers of the nineteenth century & up to the period prior to the Second world war, the play was little more than a legitimised wealth transfer transaction, albeit one with a long history & a rich culture.” (p.158)
At £13.95 (postage & packing extra), from FLS Books (The Folklore Society, The Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB) this book should be an essential member of the thinking mummer’s library. I will have no qualms at all about putting it on my shelves, alongside Roy Judge’s works: the same meticulous attention to detail is there, as is the same acknowledgement of the many different ascriptions of origin.
Eddie Dunmore
This review, which has been edited slightly for size, first appeared in ‘The Morris Dancer’, volume 3, number 9, January 2002. It is published annually by the Morris Ring at £2.25 and is available from: Eddie Dunmore, 118 Edgecoombe, South Croydon, Surrey, CR2 8AD
|
|
