‘Ain’t been yit!’ Could a more naïve explanation of the presence of a ‘stock’ character on the stage be imagined? Similarly in Cornwall the woman is worked in by making ‘Sabra,’ a persona muta, come forward to join St. George[759]. In the play printed in Sharpe’s London Magazine the ‘Hobby-horse’ is led in. Obviously personages other than the traditional four can be introduced in the same way, at the bidding of the rustic fancy. Thus at Bampton ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘Little John’ briefly appear, in both the Irish plays and at Tenby ‘Oliver Cromwell,’ at Belfast ‘St. Patrick,’ at Steyning the ‘Prince of Peace.’
Secondly, the supernumeraries may be utilized, either as presenters of the main characters or for the purposes of the quête at the end. Thus at Leigh the performance is begun by Little Devil Doubt, who enters with his broom and sweeps a ‘room’ or ‘hall’ for the actors, just as in the sword-dances a preliminary circle is made with a sword upon the ground[760]. In the Midlands this is the task of the woman, called at Islip and in Berkshire ‘Molly,’ and at Bright-Walton ‘Queen Mary[761].’ Elsewhere the business with the broom is omitted; but there is nearly always a short prologue in which an appeal is made to the spectators for ‘room.’ This prologue may be spoken, as at Manchester by the Fool, or as at Lutterworth by one of the fighters. The commonest presenter, however, is a personification of the festal season at which the plays are usually performed, ‘Old Father Christmas.’
‘Here comes I, Father Christmas, welcome or welcome not,
I hope Old Father Christmas will never be forgot.’
At St. Mary Bourne Christmas is accompanied by ‘Mince-Pie,’ and in both the Dorset versions, instead of calling for ‘room,’ he introduces ‘Room’ as an actual personage. Similarly, at Newport and Eccleshall, the prologue speaker receives the curious soubriquet of ‘Open-the-Door.’ After the prologue, the fighters are introduced. They stand in a clump outside the circle, and in turns step forward and strut round it[762]. Each is announced, by himself or by his predecessor or by the presenter, with a set of rhymes closely parallel to those used in the sword-dances. With the fighters generally comes the ‘King of Egypt’ (occasionally corrupted into the ‘King of England’), and the description of St. George often contains an allusion to his fight with the dragon and the rescue of Sabra, the King of Egypt’s daughter. In one or two of the northern versions (Newcastle, Whitehaven) the King of Egypt is a fighter; generally he stands by. In one of the Dorset versions (A) he is called ‘Anthony.’ Sabra appears only in Cornwall, and keeps silence. The Dragon fights with St. George in Cornwall, and also, as we have seen, in the curious Brill mêlée.
The performance, naturally, ends with a quête. This takes various forms. Sometimes the presenter, or the whole body of actors, comes forward, and wishes prosperity to the household. Beelzebub, with his frying-pan or ladle, goes round to gather in the contributions. In the version preserved in Sharpe’s London Magazine, this is the function of a special personage, ‘Boxholder.’ In a considerable number of cases, however, the quête is preceded by a singular action on the part of Little Devil Dout. He enters with his broom, and threatens to sweep the whole party out, or ‘into their graves,’ if money is not given. In Shropshire and Staffordshire he sweeps up the hearth, and the custom is probably connected with the superstition that it is unlucky to remove fire or ashes from the house on Christmas Day. ‘Dout’ appears to be a corruption of ‘Do out[763].’
Another way of working in the grotesques and other supernumeraries is to give them minor parts in the drama itself. Father Christmas or the King of Egypt is utilized as a sort of chorus, to cheer on the fighters, lament the vanquished, and summon the Doctor. At Newbold the woman, called ‘Moll Finney,’ plays a similar part, as mother of the Turkish Knight. At Stoke Gabriel, Devon, the woman is the Doctor’s wife[764]. Finally, in three cases, a complete subordinate dramatic episode is introduced for their sake. At Islip, after the main drama is concluded, the presenter Molly suddenly becomes King George’s wife ‘Susannah.’ She falls ill, and the Doctor’s services are requisitioned to cure her. The Doctor rides in, not on a hobby-horse, but on one of the disengaged characters who plays the part of a horse. In Dorsetshire the secondary drama is quite elaborate. In the ‘A’ version ‘Old Bet’ calls herself ‘Dame Dorothy,’ and is the wife of Father Christmas, named, for the nonce, ‘Jan.’ They quarrel about a Jack hare, which he wants fried and she wants roasted. He kills her, and at the happy moment the Doctor is passing by, and brings her to life again. Version ‘B’ is very similar, except that the performance closes by Old Bet bringing in the hobby-horse for Father Christmas to mount.
I do not think that I need further labour the affiliation of the St. George plays to the sword-dances. Placed in a series, as I have placed them in these chapters, the two sets of performances show a sufficiently obvious continuity. They are held together by the use of the swords, by their common grotesques, and by the episode of the Doctor, which connects them also with the German Shrovetide and Whitsun folk-ceremonies. They are properly called folk-drama, because they are derived, with the minimum of literary intervention, from the dramatic tendencies latent in folk-festivals of a very primitive type. They are the outcome of the instinct of play, manipulating for its own purposes the mock sacrifice and other débris of extinct ritual. Their central incident symbolizes the renouveau, the annual death of the year or the fertilization spirit and its annual resurrection in spring[765]. To this have become attached some of those heroic cantilenae which, as the early mediaeval chroniclers tell us, existed in the mouths of the chori iuvenum side by side with the cantilenae of the minstrels. The symbolism of the renouveau is preserved unmistakably enough in the episode of the Doctor, but the cantilenae have been to some extent modified by the comparatively late literary element, due perhaps to that universal go-between of literature and the folk, the village school-master. The genuine national heroes, a Stercatherus or a Galgacus, have given way to the ‘worthies’ and the ‘champions of Christendom,’ dear to Holophernes. The literary tradition has also perhaps contributed to the transformation of the chorus or semi-dramatic dance into drama pure and simple. In the St. George plays dancing holds a very subordinate place, far more so than in the ‘Plow-boys’ play of Revesby. Dances and songs are occasionally introduced before the quête, but rarely during the main performance. In the eccentric Brill version, however, a complete morris-dance appears. And of course it must be borne in mind that the fighting itself, with its gestures and pacings round the circle and clashing of swords, has much more the effect of a sword-dance than of a regular fight. So far as it is a fight, the question arises whether we ought to see in it, besides the heroic element introduced by the cantilenae, any trace of the mimic contest between winter and summer, which is found here and there, alternating with the resurrection drama, as a symbolical representation of the renouveau. The fight does not, of course, in itself stand in any need of such an explanation; but it is suggested by a singular passage which in several versions is put in the mouth of one or other of the heroes. St. George, or the Slasher, or the Turkish Knight, is made to boast something as follows:
‘My arms are made of iron, my body’s made of steel,
My head is made of beaten brass, no man can make me feel.’