[752] Sandys, 153.
[753] P. Tennant, Village Notes, 179.
[754] Beelzebub appears also in the Cropwell Plough Monday play; cf. p. 209. Doubtless he once wore a calf-skin, like other rural ‘Fools,’ but, as far as I know, this feature has dropped out. Sandys, 154, however, quotes ‘Captain Calf-tail’ as the name of the ‘Fool’ in an eighteenth-century Scotch version, and Mr. Gomme (Nature, Dec. 23, 1897), says ‘some of the mummers, or maskers as the name implies, formerly disguised themselves as animals—goats, oxen, deer, foxes and horses being represented at different places where details of the mumming play have been recorded.’ Nowadays, Beelzebub generally carries a club and a ladle or frying-pan, with which he makes the quête. At Newport and Eccleshall he has a bell fastened on his back; at Newbold he has a black face. The ‘Fool’ figured in the Manchester chap-book resembles Punch.
[755] See notes to Steyning play in F. L. J. ii. 1.
[756] Mr. Gomme, in Nature for Dec. 23, 1897, finds in this broom ‘the magic weapon of the witch’ discussed by Pearson, ii. 29. Probably, however, it was introduced into the plays for the purposes of the quête; cf. p. 217. It is used also to make a circle for the players, but here it may have merely taken the place of a sword.
[757] Parish, Dict. of Sussex Dialect, 136. The mummers are called ‘John Jacks.’
[758] Cf. p. 268, n. 4.
[759] Sandys, 301.
[760] Cf. Capulet, in Romeo and Juliet, i. 5. 28 ‘A hall, a hall! give room! and foot it, girls’; and Puck who precedes the dance of fairies in Midsummer Night’s Dream, v. 1. 396
‘I am sent with broom before,