[787] Cf. ch. xxiv, as to these plays.
[788] I ought perhaps to say that in one of the Coptic versions of the legend St. George is periodically slain and brought back to life by a miracle during the space of seven years. But I do not think that this episode occurs in any of the European versions of the legend.
[789] ‘Sant George and the dragon’ are introduced into a London May-game in 1559 (ch. viii).
[790] See the Manchester Peace Egg chap-book. At Manchester, Langdale, and, I believe, Coniston, the play is performed at Easter: cf. Halliwell, Popular Rhymes, 231. The Steyning play is believed to have been given at May-day as well as Christmas. Of course, so far as this goes, the transference might have been from Christmas, not to Christmas, but the German analogies point the other way. The Cheshire performance on All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2), mentioned by Child, v. 291, is, so far as I know, exceptional.
[791] Cf. ch. xvii: In the Isle of Wight the performers are called the ‘Christmas Boys’ (C. R. Smith, Isle of Wight Words, in E. D. S. xxxii. 63). The terms ‘Seven Champions’ (Kent) and ‘John Jacks’ (Salisbury) have already been explained. The Steyning ‘Tipteers’ or ‘Tipteerers’ may be named from the ‘tips’ collected in the quête. The ‘Guisers’ of Staffordshire become on the Shropshire border ‘Morris-dancers,’ ‘Murry-dancers,’ or ‘Merry-dancers’—a further proof of the essential identity of the morris-or sword-dance with the play.
[792] Tille, Y. and C. 78, 107; Rhys, C. H. 519; cf. ch. v.
[793] Tille, Y. and C. 18; D. W. 6. Bede, D. T. R. 15, gives Blot-monath as the Anglo-Saxon name for November, and explains it as ‘mensis immolationum, quia in ea pecora quae occisuri erant, Diis suis voverent.’
[794] Burton, 15, notes a tradition at Disley, in Cheshire, that the local wake was formerly held after the first fall of snow.
[795] Tille, Y. and C. 18.
[796] Mogk, iii. 391; Tille, Y. and C. 24, find the winter feast in the festival of Tanfana which the Marsi were celebrating when Germanicus attacked them in A. D. 14 (Tacitus, Ann. i. 51). Winter, though imminent, had not yet actually set in, but this might be the case in any year after the festival had come to be determined by a fixed calendar.