English Folk Drama - Background
Background
Folklorists and other writers only started taking a serious interest in mumming plays in the late nineteenth century and they then began systematic collection of material which has continued, on and off, until the present day. Before that time we must rely on local history writers’ books and manuscripts, newspaper reports, and so on, which are few and far between and never give the amount of detail that we would like.
A great deal of data has now been collected and is available to the modern folk play enthusiast or researcher, but it is true to say that no one has yet come up with the definite study or history of the subject.
One of our problems is that although we may have a sighting of a local play in a particular village, we rarely know how long it had been there, or how long it lasted afterwards. We must guard against the assumption that each and every version goes back to the eighteenth century, nor that every village's tradition of mumming was long-lasting.
The first thing to understand is that, in common with most parts of folklore, various theories as to the origin and development of the play have been put forward which are now recognised by experts as completely erroneous ‘invented traditions’ based on wishful thinking rather than historical evidence. Unfortunately, these spurious origin theories have become ‘general knowledge’ and are so widely believed that they are difficult to counter.
The most pervasive of these ideas is that the mumming plays are a remnant of a pre-Christian fertility ritual, or some other religious ceremony designed to bring back the summer after the bleak winter, or are to promote fertility or luck in the community.
