Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/211

Rh to house, but entered houses when allowed, and so too they did on the Continent, as we may surmise from the fact that Caesarius of Arles ordered the faithful not to allow those who "play the buck" to enter their houses. What sort of performance was gone through, when the players did enter a house, we do not learn from the ecclesiastical prohibitions; but we do know what sort of performance the Mummers' Play is, and therefore are in a position to conjecture what sort of performance was given by the masked players denounced by the Fathers from the second century onwards.

But, when we turn to the recorded versions of the Mummers' Play, we find that the words in use in various parts of England vary so much that they cannot possibly be variants of any one original form of dialogue. And yet the Mummers' Play is throughout the same institution. The words that are spoken are therefore no part of the original institution. This inference is confirmed conclusively by the derivation and meaning of the word "mummer": it is derived from "mum," and means a person who acts in silence. The Mummers' Play was in its original institution a play without words. Eventually, however, a dialogue was added to explain the dumb show. But, by the time the dialogue was added, the original meaning of the dumb show had been forgotten. Hence, in different parts of England different sets of words grew up. In one place alone—Mullion, Cornwall, up to 1890-1—did the mummers continue to be mum and to act in dumb show (Folk-Lore, x., 351).

Elsewhere different forms of words were introduced in different localities to explain the action that hitherto had been performed in silence. In fine, as myths in many cases are obviously attempts to explain something that needed explanation, so the various dialogues found in the Mummers' Play are, I suggest, aetiological and grew up to explain the performance of the ceremony at a