Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/126

 1 18 CORNISH FEASTS

From Christmas to Twelftli-tide parties of mummers known as Goose or Geese-dancers paraded the streets in all sorts of disguises, with masks on. They often behaved in such an unruly manner that women and children were afraid to venture out. If the doors of the houses were not locked they would enter uninvited and stay, playing all kinds of antics, until money was given them to go away. *' A well-known character amongst them, about fifty years ago (1862), was the hobby-horse, represented by a man carrying a piece of wood in the form of a horse's head and neck, with some contrivance for opening and shutting the mouth with a loud snapping noise, the performer being so covered with a horsecloth or hide of a horse as to resemble the animal, whose curvetings, biting and other motions he imitated. Some of these ' guise-dancers ' occasionally masked them- selves with the skins of the head of bullocks having the horns on." — {The Land's End District, by R. Edmonds.)

Sometimes they were more ambitious and acted a version of the old play^ " St. George and the Dragon," which differed but little from that current in other counties.

Bottrell, in his Traditions in W, Cornwall (2nd series), gives large

extracts froni another Christmas-play, *' Duffy and the Devil." It

turns upon the legend, common in all countries, of a woman who had

sold herself to a devil, who was to do her knitting or spinning for her.

He was to claim his bargain at the end of three years if she could not

find out his name before the time expired. Of course, she gets it by

stratagem ; her husband,' who knows nothing of the compact, first

meets the devil, whilst out hunting, the day before the time is up, and

makes him half-drunk. An old woman in Duffy's pay (Witch Bet)

completes the work, and in that state the devil sings the following

words, ending with his name, which Bet remembers and tells her

mistress : —

" I've knit and spun for her Three years to the day ; To-morrow she shall ride with me Over land and over sea. Far away ! far away ! For she can never know That my name is * Tarrawav.' "