Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/213

Rh continued to be performed rather as a matter of tradition and custom than from any clear consciousness of its purpose, it was on its way to becoming a mere performance and ceasing to be a piece of practical magic or a rite of religious importance. It was becoming a survival, but a survival which had before it the prospect of a renewed lease of life—of life in a different form, in the form of a performance which was to be at first indeed religious, but eventually purely dramatic.

The performance was religious in the sense that it drew its inspiration largely from mythology, from the myths present in the popular consciousness. As a matter of tradition and custom the rite continued to be performed annually, even when the original reason for the performance had been forgotten. The rite was originally performed for the purpose of representing and ensuring the revivification of the character slain. When the purpose of the rite was forgotten, the feature of the performance which specially attracted popular attention and required explanation was the killing. And the killing admitted of an easy explanation: it was the result of a fight, a celebrated fight, that is to say one well-known in the folk-lore, mythical or historical, of the neighbourhood. It was at this point that the ceremony, having lost all significance as a religious rite, definitely became dramatic, and may properly be spoken of as the Mummers' Play. The slayer and the slain were identified with figures of folk-history or folk-lore. The piece was provided with what was unknown to the rite, that is with a "hero" and a "villain" in the dramatic sense of the terms. The hero was a figure drawn from folk-lore—King Alfred, King Cole, Alexander, Hector, St. Guy, St. Giles, St. Patrick, or, most commonly, St. George—or from folk- history—Lord Nelson, Wolfe, or Wellington. The villain, also, was drawn either from folk-lore—Giant Blunderbore, Giant Turpin—or from folk-history—Bonaparte—though the villain of the piece frequently does not attain the same