Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/382

326 since. This was the channel by which a large part of English folk-drama kept an independent existence.

Thus it is we must look to municipal and local custom and observance for traditions of dramatic import. We find that at Coventry, one of the chief homes of the miracle-play, on the occasions of royal visits to the city, was exhibited, among other pageants, the pageant of “St. George”, which was secular and legendary in character. The word pageant seems to have undergone a good deal of modification in its application and meaning—from being employed to describe the performance itself, it came to be applied to the movable stage on which miracle-plays were presented, and its use appears to have some connection with the dissociation of the miracle-plays from the churches where they were originally performed. This transition probably did not escape Warton, and he points out that the pageants, which on civil occasions derived great part of their decorations and characters from historical fact, were a nearer approximation to the regular drama than the mysteries. Mysteries and miracle-plays, and pageants consisting of the dramatic presentation of legendary subjects, seem to have alternated as occasion served or suggested. Let us take a particular town—Leicester. Here the religious gilds flourished; miracle-plays were performed, and pageants were presented. In this town one of the religious gilds was dedicated to St. George, the patron saint of England, whose festival is on the 23rd April, and hence at Leicester the popular celebrations in honour of St. George were kept up with remarkable vigour. Now I am not going to identify St. George, or analyse the legend; I am not even at this moment going to inquire whether the Saint has been fastened upon a legend that came here with our Teutonic or Scandinavian fathers. But I find the celebrations in his honour at Leicester to be entirely secular, popular, organised by a gild, and uninfluenced by ecclesiasticism. The same celebrations took place every year at Stratford-on-Avon, and in this