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"It fits pretty well," she said, looking down at the white overalls, "except that the tunic, or whatever you call it, is long in the sleeve. The bottom of the overalls I can turn up inside. Now pay attention." Eustacia then proceeded in her delivery, striking the sword against the staff or lance at the minatory phrases, in the orthodox mumming manner, and strutting up and down.
I cannot help, therefore, entreating you to maintain the same high heart, and to accomplish that which you have so worthily begun. Be not deluded by false masks, mumming faces, and borrowed titles, which people assume for their own profit, persuading others that the King's service consists in the destruction of his subjects."
Her father used to read the verses to her to tease her when she was in her teens, and once when she was in her twenties, and Jeanette had the lonely poet out to dinner one Sunday, she sat with him on the sofa in the library, looking at the old scrap-book. Their eyes fell upon the verses about the angels bringing Jeanette, and the girl noticed the old man mumming it over and smiling.
Said the old man: "What thou sawest was not all mumming; it was done according to our customs; and well nigh all of it had been done, even hadst thou not been there. Nay, I will tell thee; at some of our feasts it is not lawful to eat either for the chieftains or the carles, till a champion hath given forth a challenge, and been answered and met, and the battle fought to an end.
A very pitiful thing truly! Give them the money, and let them go a-Maying as well. The same bribe they repeat at Christmas to stay the boys from going round mumming. It is in spring that the folk make most use of herbs, such as herb tea of gorse bloom. One cottage wife exclaimed that she had no patience with women so ignorant they did not know how to use herbs, as wood-sage or wood-betony.
Medieval England was famous for dancing and mumming and minstrelsy; it was Merry England because, however plague and pestilence and famine and the cruelties of man to man might darken life, still it loved these things.
"Do you remember the boy, Gaston Lafitte, whom you fought behind the Luxembourg near twenty years ago?" The face of Boucher suddenly went deathly white, and, for a moment, he trembled. "Who are you, you mumming hunter?" he cried. "I know no Gaston Lafitte." "There you lie, Boucher. You knew him well enough and you can't forget him if you would. Your face has shown it.
As Tony advanced in years and experience this childish mumming lost its magic; but not so the early imaginings it had excited. For the old picture had been but the spring-board of fancy, the first step of a cloud-ladder leading to a land of dreams.
It was just at the end, when they were all marching round and round, holding on by each other's swords "over the shoulder," and singing "A mumming we will go, etc.," that Nicholas suddenly brought the circle to a stand-still by stopping dead short and staring up at the wall before him. "What are you stopping for?" said St. George, turning indignantly round.
"Silence!" cried Robin Lindsay. "Nay, the louder we laugh, the less will any suspect what is forward," said Randal Rutherford. "Norman, will you play this part in the mumming?" I was ashamed to say no, though I liked it not over well, and I nodded with my head. "How maidenly he blushes!" cried one, and there was another clamour, till the walls rang.
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