Comments on: Mumming and disguising

By: hopkinshughes

hopkinshughes — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:07:56 +0000

Yes indeed. Such a play might well have been seen by Oxford at Christmas during his childhood in the upper Thames valley, one basis for a later enthusiasm for creating holiday entertainments. The link you provide gives a good breakdown of mumming traditions, though somewhat marred by the constant repetition of “not proven.” What kind of proof is needed to see the obvious connections between these long ongoing traditions, some lasting even to this day in trick-or-treating and carolling? Perhaps the most interesting thing about the mummer’s play is the theme of resurrection, to me clearly an element left over from a Stone Age solstice ritual. What form it took originally we can only guess at. In the mid-16th century, the Reformation having condemned mumming and disguising, Shakespeare arises from its ashes (like the Phoenix) with something else for people to do at Christmas, something in which it is only the professionals who do the mumming and disguising.

By: Yewtree

Yewtree — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:27:52 +0000

The British mumming tradition involves the performance of folk plays.

By: Sally

Sally — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:18:05 +0000

I wonder how exactly this relates to the Philadelphia Mummer tradition…it’s much more Carnival like, with burly men dressed in feathered and sequined costumes, playing “Oh Dem Golden Slippers” on ukeleles while strutting down the street in competing clubs on New Years Day.
Check it out! It’s a bizarre, and due to lack of city support, possibly dying tradition.

By: Old-School Christmas - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

Old-School Christmas - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:52:05 +0000

[...] but I'm happy to see it has established a beachhead in San Francisco too. The broader tradition of mumming that Krampus represents persists in a different form in Philadelphia, where the annual Mummers [...]

By: hopkinshughes

hopkinshughes — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 01:42:45 +0000

Thanks, Lynda. It would be great if we could put a clip of this segment on the blog.

By: Lynda Taylor

Lynda Taylor — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:38:40 +0000

Stephanie – I love this blog. Thank you.
I am reminded of the holiday ‘Pantomime’ that we all looked forward to as children in England and is still a tradition. Aimed at the working class it is entertainment with a morality tale in the form of musical comedy . In it the hero is a woman playing usually playing the part of a prince and the antagonist is an elderly man usually playing the part of a fair maid’s mother. Genders and identities are always up for grabs and part of the fun.
When you mention the preservation of the tradition of mumming by English immigrates to Newfoundland I am also reminded of a section in the series of ‘The Story of English’ .
In it there is a description of people living on the Tangerine islands off the east US coast called Tangerines! Apparently these people left England in the early 1600′s and have lived on the island since, relatively undisturbed. Their accent and language has, as a result of their isolation been preserved as essentially Elizabethan. According to the book when these emigrants left England there were not as many variations in accents then as there are now. Their inflection, phrasing and grammer- a vaguely west country accent is barely understandable as English but quite musical.
There is a Don at Oxford University who has made a study of how Shakespearean English sounded when the plays were written. To hear him recite the opening lines of Henry V is so wonderfully powerful and musical in it’s tone. (You might want to find a copy of # 6 or #7 in the TV series The Story of English’ so you can hear him if you didn’t catch it when it was broadcast on PBS. I think the title of that piece is “A Muse of Fire”.)