Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 7.djvu/372

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. vn. MAY n, 1901.

Dr., %

No Dr. under ten.

King. Ten pounds for a Dr.

Dr. In comes I, the Dr.

King. How comes you to be the Dr. ?

Dr. By my travels.

King. Where have you traveled from ?

Dr.

From the fireside to the bedside, and from th bedside to the old corner eubbard, where there ] have had many a nice bit of pork-pie and mince-pie that makes me such a bold fellow as I am.

King. What can you cure?

Dr. Almost anything.

The itch, the pitch, the palsy, gout, Pains within, arid aches without. If this man 'as got 19 diseases within him I will fetch 21 out. Take hold of this bottle while I fee] on this man's pulse.

King. Where do you feel on his pulse ?

Dr. Where it beats the strongest.

This man 's not dead he his only in a trance. Rise up my good man and have a dance.

[The lady and tho 2nd man dances.

Gth Man.

In comes poor old lame jane Leaping over the meadow ; Once I was a blooming girl,

But now I am a down old widow. You see my old hat his boath greacey and fat,

And that you can tell by the shineing ; There his holes in the crown, and holes all round, And not much sieve left in the lineing.

Then all sing. Good master, and good mistress,

As you sit round the fire, Remember us poor plough-boys

That go through mud and mire : The mire is so deep,

And the water runs so clear : We wish you a merry Xmas, And a happy New Year.

When a portion of this play was acted by very young lads a few years ago, "the Doctor," who then found the patient's pulse in his shin, wore a top hat that was much too large. This imposing headgear lent him an appearance which was all that could be desired when it was held up by his ears, but at certain disastrous moments these supports would fail, and sudden eclipse overtake the actor. It must be owned, however, that while wrestling with the difficulties thus caused, and throughout the whole scene, he, like his companions, succeeded in preserving

a funereal gravity of deportment. It was only from the sense of the words uttered, not from intonation or gesture, the spectators could gather that they were witnessing a drama which had been conceived in a certain spirit of levity. Even the allusion to pork- pie failed to evoke a gleam of animation.

The wife of J. H., who supplied this dia- logue, was once much alarmed when she was a girl living as a servant at Walton-le-Dale, near Tattershall, for a man disguised as a sheep (see ' Christmas Tup,' ' N. & Q.,' 9 th S. ii. 511) opened the outer door of the house, in which she happened to be alone. He was one of a set of plough-jags ; but she could not describe his mates and their costumes, for, startled and afraid, she "banged the door to," to keep the gang from entering. Usually "the lady," "lame Jane," who represents a rough old woman with a besom, "the soldier," and "the king" are dressed with some regard to character. The plough-jags with no spoken parts, who used to be the bullocks drawing the plough, or sometimes sword-players, it may be, should, properly speaking, wear very tall beribboned hats, with white shirts over their other clothes. These shirts should also be trimmed with ribbons and other orna- ments; but the garments are seldom seen now perhaps because white linen shirts are at present rarely kept for wearing on high days and holidays by the men themselves, or by the friends from whom they can borrow. The fool should be dressed in skins, or in snippets of brightly coloured rags, and should be armed with a bladder at the end of a whip, or some such weapon.

The "fool-plough," "fond-plough," "stot- plough," or "white-plough" was once well mown in the north of England, where it may probably yet be found. The Gloucestershire nummers still give a representation evidently traceable to the same source as the Lincoln- shire dramas ; and in the Isle of Man, too, the ' White Boys " enact, or not many years ago macted, an allied play during Christmas >veek. A writer in the Queen, 1 January, j ^898, thus describes a scene once familiar in j
 * armhouse kitchens :

" Local etiquette demands that the whole house-' told should witness the performance, and notwith- tanding that the youthful actors are covered with Confusion, their parts are gone through bravely, ^he scene now in my mind suggests a troop of lasked boys all oddly dressed in white, wearing I .igh headdresses, and each one carrying a long word. There was a terrible death scene, in which j he headdress generally falls off the victim's head, j t the same time divulging his identity. This was [ pt to produce great confusion among the actors, I nd voluble titters from the servants. It was [ Iways the same play, which never grew stale, and I