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"Come hither then, Watkins, and aid me with a torch; give me a cloak, too, and another bonnet, and take away this trumpery," throwing down his coronet of feathers. "I would I could throw off all my follies as easily. English Wat, attend me alone, and the rest of you end your revelry, and doff your mumming habits. The holytide is expended, and the fast has begun."
Seeing Trefusis about to leave, he said in a low voice: "Will you go upstairs?" "Upstairs! Why?" "I I thought you might wish to see " He did not finish the sentence, but Trefusis flinched; the blank had expressed what was meant. "To see something that was Henrietta, and that is a thing we must cast out and hide, with a little superstitious mumming to save appearances. Why did you remind me of it?"
"Oh, stow that!" growled Desmond, who was in little mood for joking. "Voice inclined to be laryngeal," said Crook putting down his hat and bag on a chair, "we shall have to take care of our bronchial tubes! We are not so young as we were!" "You can drop all that mumming, Crook!" snapped Desmond irascibly. "Voice rotten," replied Crook calmly surveying him through his pince-nez.
The enterprising lady followed the mumming company through the gate in the white paling, and stood before the open porch. The house was encrusted with heavy thatchings, which dropped between the upper windows; the front, upon which the moonbeams directly played, had originally been white; but a huge pyracanth now darkened the greater portion.
Men and women, young and old, in gay, fantastic costumes, faces so heavily painted as to have the effect of masks, were running about in groups, sometimes as many as forty or fifty together, dancing and mumming. They addressed us frequently with a phrase, the frequent repetition of which impressed it upon our ears, but, in our ignorance of the language, not upon our understandings.
X., a fully illustrated description of the Mumming Play, as performed at Newbold, a village near Rugby, is given. The Play is always performed at Christmas time, consequently Father Christmas appears as stage-manager, and introduces the characters. The action consists in a general challenge issued by Saint George, and accepted by the Turkish Knight. A combat follows, in which the Turk is slain.
The police and Wentworth were tremendously interested, and I took the opportunity to warn them that this was no piece of silly mumming on my part; but done with a definite intention of erecting a barrier between us and any ab-human thing that the night might show to us.
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.
Of these the Morris Dance stands somewhat apart; of identical origin, it has discarded the dramatic element, and now survives simply as a Dance, whereas the Sword Dance is always dramatic in form, and the Mumming Play, acted by characters appearing also in the Sword Dance, invariably contains a more or less elaborate fight.
"She knows we're mummers," said Robin, "for she helped us. When we were abroad, you know, she used to tell us about the mummers acting at Christmas when she was a little girl. And so we acted to papa and mamma, and so we thought we'd act to the maids, but they were cleaning the passages, and so we thought we'd really go mumming; and we've got several other houses to go to before supper-time.
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