Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/387

Rh Perhaps it was from this custom of acting several pageants, or plays, on the same occasion that they lost individuality at a later date. Another cause of confusion never to be lost sight of, was the break of continuity under the Puritan domination. The various traditional plays which, roughly speaking, have been recorded during the past 150 years are certainly mixed in character. These are almost always associated with Christmas. I will not now enter upon a detailed analysis of these plays, generally known as Mummers’ Plays, some of which have been printed in the Record and Journal of the Folk-lore Society. In the Cornish version we have St. George and the Dragon and the King of Egypt’s Daughter; in all of them we have St. George, in most of them the Dragon figures. We may safely conclude that the body of these traditional plays is derived from the pageant of “St. George and the Dragon”; and the Turkish Knight, who invariably figures in the plays and fights with St. George, may have been introduced after the Crusades, as is generally supposed. The Doctor, who heals the combatants when they are supposed to be slain in the fights that always take place, was no doubt originally a magician, and the long staff which he usually carries supports that conclusion. For a long time I could not see the application of the rhyme in Scott’s Marmion—

But a version printed by Halliwell in The Archœologist, which I have now made acquaintance with, contains the character of Judas, no doubt taken from the mysteries. He enters saying:

There is a reference, at the beginning of this play, to this Feast of Fools. In many versions, St. George became Prince George, or King George, in compliment to our