Revels North Newsletter Archives
Continued from the Revels North December 16, 2009 Newsletter
Gifts Of the Season- written by Sharon Groblicki
Welcome Revelers to another "Gifts of the Season" that tries to help everyone keep reveling all year.Gifts of the Season
Welcome Revelers to another “Gifts of the Season” newsletter that tries to help everyone keep reveling all year.
One of the continuing questions to be addressed in this column is “What makes Revels different from other musical, choral, dance, and/or seasonal celebrations?” One of the answers is that Revels is not just a performance; it is a way of life. One of the resonating themes is the triumph of light over darkness. A secondary heading to “Christmas Revels” is “A Celebration of the Winter Solstice.”
One way to know if it is an important theme in Revels is if it strikes a chord in that place within us that makes a real connection to the universe. When that happens, we know it. So in this column, we are attempting to link the seemingly silly, often ridiculous, seemingly superfluous mummers’ play to the wholeness of humankind during this season.
Why do we include it? Sometimes it’s overtly funny and sometimes we can see that it may have been funny to ancient people, but we surely don’t get it now.
As with other Revels material that is universal, we need to go back to ancient times and find the historical past that is part of our universal subconsciousness.
Mummers plays have been a tradition in Scotland, England, Ireland, and Wales for hundreds of years. As with many of the pagan customs adapted by Christians, it was originally the ritual death of winter and rebirth of spring, but later came to symbolize the death and resurrection of Christ.
Mummers plays probably came out of the tradition of processing from house to house at the time of important Celtic festivals wishing blessings on the house. At the end of these processions, a mimed play was performed that re-enacted the slaying of a heroic figure who was brought back to life either by a fool or by a supernumerary, or magic/sacred figure.
Try to imagine ancient people who felt helpless as the light waned and life died out all around them. The days grew shorter and shorter and the world around them turned cold. The customs of the time suggested that magic could be used to bring back the light. One of the best kinds of magic came from the “fool” of the village. This was a person in every village who was born without what the world would think of as great intelligence. People believed that these special people held special gifts because theirs was not the intelligence of this earth. Theirs must be linked with the universe.
At the time of the solstice, the pagan Romans who ruled the region of Gaul celebrated Saturnalia, their celebration of the solstice by bringing in greens from the forests that bloomed or stayed green in the winter Because the universe was reversing itself with the days growing longer, their revels included traditions of the “world turned upside down”. The slaves traded roles with the masters, the church was ruled by a child, and the fool became the wisest of the wise. The fact that it was very often the fool whose magic brought Saint George back to life. in the mummers’ tradition led Christians to celebrate the custom whereby “a little child shall lead them”.
In the beginning, mummers’ plays were pantomimes that accompanied the processions that went from house to house during the season of Samhain, (later All Saints Day), the winter solstice, (and later, Christmas), and Beltaine, (later Easter) as people went a-souling, wassailing, or pace-egging respectively.
The character of “Room” was, literally, a person who called the assembled group to order and swept back with a broom, the assembled crowd. There the group pantomimed a crude play. Sometimes known as the guisers (because they were in blackface or otherwise disguised), the group was accompanied by crude instruments, sometimes song, and often a morris or sword dance.
The mummers were often not the people one most wanted to accept into their homes, but because mummers brought blessings to the house, people felt obligated to let them in and to feed them and give them celebratory drinks. The pantomimes later evolved into rhymed plays, and in some village men often played the same part for years.
Mummers’ plays came in three categories – the hero/combat play, the recruiting seargent play, and the sword dance play during which the hero is “executed” by a sword dance team and resurrected by a seemingly low or powerless character. This is consistent with the Revels theme of bringing the low up to high and the high down to low. (Interestingly, this is a theme of Greek tragedy whereby the protagonist begins in a high place and ends up in a low place.)
Going back in time and imagining ourselves in a world of darkness, wanting to celebrate the coming of the light, the Celtic people found magic in the “half”. The solstices, which divide the year in half are magic, but more magic still are the equinoxes that divide the solstices into halves. (Even more sacred and magic than that are, obviously, the halves between the quarters, known as the “cross quarter” festivals.)
Some of the characters in the mummers’ plays were magical half characters, often “supernumerary” or magical because of this halfness. The man/woman (Sweet Sis or Old Bet), the man/horse (hobby horse), and the unicorn are some of these. Other supernumerary characters are Beelzebub and Old Devil Doubt or others whose magical powers need to be reckoned with.
As with all things of the time, the sacred and the comical are so mixed as to be one and the same. Later scholars, such as Harvey Cox with his “Feast of Fools” noted the importance of being able to make fun of sacred traditions.
The lines, “In comes I…” that are so associated with mummers plays are lines that bear the tradition of having to get the audience’s attention an introduce the characters. The lines that follow are often familiar and we find them in a variety of mummers’ plays and villages both copied and diversified from each other’s scripts.
Just as the words. “Trick or treat” have become universally used at Halloween, the lines of the mummers’ scripts have become universal to those who bring to life these scripts.
So in the words of the mummers’ play of St. George and the Dragon”
Our play is done, we must be gone,
We stay no longer here.
We wish you all, both great and small
A happy, bright, new year!
Blessings to you all,
Sharon Groblicki