Some of these minor characters are not the least charming. The fair Sabra (who is often a mute) should be the youngest and prettiest little maid that can toddle through her part, and no old family brocade can be too gorgeous for her. The Pretty Page is another part for a "very little one," and his velvets and laces should become him. They contrast delightfully with Dame Dolly and Little Man Jack, and might, if needful, be played by the same performers.
I have cut out everything that could possibly offend, except the line—"Take him and give him to the flies." It betrays an experience of Asiatic battlefields so terribly real, that I was unwilling to abolish this unconscious witness to the influence of Pilgrims and Crusaders on the Peace Egg. It is easily omitted.
I have dismissed the Lord of Flies, Beelzebub, and (with some reluctance) "Little Devil Doubt" and his besom. I had a mind to have retained him as "The Demon of Doubt," for he plays in far higher dramas. His besom also seems to come from the East, where a figure "sweeping everything out" with a broom is the first vision produced in the crystal or liquid in the palm of a medium by the magicians of Egypt.
Those who wish to do so can admit him at the very end, after the sword dance, very black, and with a besom, a money-box, and the following doggrel:
In come I, the Demon of Doubt,
If you don't give me money I'll sweep you all out;
Money I want and money I crave,
Money I want and money I'll have.
He is not a taking character—unless to the antiquary! I have substituted the last line for the less decorous original, "If you don't give me money, I'll sweep you all to the grave."
It is perhaps only the antiquary who will detect the connection between the Milk Pail and the Wassail Cup in the Fool's Song. But it seems at one time to have been made of milk. In a play of the 16th century it is described as—
"Wassayle, wassayle, out of the mylke payle;
Wassayle, wassayle, as white as my nayle,"
and Selden calls it "a slabby stuff," which sounds as if it had got mixed up with frumenty.
Since the above went to press, I have received some extracts from the unwritten version of "Peace Egg" in the West Riding of Yorkshire to which I have alluded. They recall to me that the piece properly opens with a "mumming round," different to the one I have given, that one belonging to the end. The first Mumming Song rehearses each character and his exploits. The hero of the verse which describes him singing (autobiographically!) his own doughty deeds in the third person. Thus St. George begins; I give it in the vernacular.