Thus it is with the lingering Mummers at Christmas in the country.If our more refined revivers of Miracle Plays or Morrice Dances tried to reconstruct the old Mummers'Play of St.George and the Turkish Knight (I do not know why they do not)they would think at once of picturesque and appropriate dresses.St.George's panoply would be pictured from the best books of armour and blazonry:the Turkish Knight's arms and ornaments would be traced from the finest Saracenic arabesques.When my garden door opened on Christmas Eve and St.George of England entered,the appearance of that champion was slightly different.His face was energetically blacked all over with soot,above which he wore an aged and very tall top hat;he wore his shirt outside his coat like a surplice,and he flourished a thick umbrella.Now do not,I beg you,talk about "ignorance";or suppose that the Mummer in question (he is a very pleasant Ratcatcher,with a tenor voice)did this because he knew no better.Try to realise that even a Ratcatcher knows St.George of England was not black,and did not kill the Dragon with an umbrella.The Rat-catcher is not under this delusion;any more than Paul Veronese thought that very good men have luminous rings round their heads;any more than the Pope thinks that Christ washed the feet of the twelve in a Cathedral;any more than the Duke of Norfolk thinks the lions on a tabard are like the lions at the Zoo.These things are denaturalised because they are symbols;because the extraordinary occasion must hide or even disfigure the ordinary people.Black faces were to mediaeval mummeries what carved masks were to Greek plays:it was called being "vizarded."My Rat-catcher is not sufficiently arrogant to suppose for a moment that he looks like St.George.But he is sufficiently humble to be convinced that if he looks as little like himself as he can,he will be on the right road.
This is the soul of Mumming;the ostentatious secrecy of men in disguise.
There are,of course,other mediaeval elements in it which are also difficult to explain to the fastidious mediaevalists of to-day.There is,for instance,a certain output of violence into the void.It can best be defined as a raging thirst to knock men down without the faintest desire to hurt them.All the rhymes with the old ring have the trick of turning on everything in which the rhymsters most sincerely believed,merely for the pleasure of blowing off steam in startling yet careless phrases.When Tennyson says that King Arthur "drew all the petty princedoms under him,"and "made a realm and ruled,"his grave Royalism is quite modern.Many mediaevals,outside the mediaeval republics,believed in monarchy as solemnly as Tennyson.But that older verse-When good King Arthur ruled this land He was a goodly King--He stole three pecks of barley-meal To make a bag-pudding.
is far more Arthurian than anything in The Idylls of the King.There are other elements;especially that sacred thing that can perhaps be called Anachronism.All that to us is Anachronism was to mediaevals merely Eternity.But the main excellence of the Mumming Play lies still,Ithink,in its uproarious secrecy.If we cannot hide our hearts in healthy darkness,at least we can hide our faces in healthy blacking.If you cannot escape like a philosopher into a forest,at least you can carry the forest with you,like a Jack-in-the-Green.It is well to walk under universal ensigns;and there is an old tale of a tyrant to whom a walking forest was the witness of doom.That,indeed,is the very intensity of the notion:a masked man is ominous;but who shall face a mob of masks?
