Since my post yesterday, in which I wrote about the curious British folk custom of “Wassail”, I have had the opportunity to dig about a little, and have discovered more about it.
Incidentally, I was wrong, it seems, in suggesting in that post that written records of the custom go back into the Middle Ages It can indeed be assumed to be very ancient, but actual documentary references to it are rather more recent. Even so, wassailing does appear to be of great antiquity, and for that reason more mysterious.
One thing that surprised me was the dispersion across the country of practices that are related to it, all of which would appear to have some kind of family resemblance despite their diversity of detail. The most common figure in the mummers’ plays, of “Saint George” (or simply, The Knight), even appears as King George in some places. One video I turned up on Youtube portrayed him with evident characteristics of King George VI, identified by his stammering speech.* Father Christmas also crops up on several occasions as one of the characters, as does Robin Hood. The Maid, it seems, customarily is played by a man or boy, reminiscent of the much more well-known British pantomime tradition. I suppose this should not be surprising in the case of a troupe of performers who wandered the countryside from pub to pub.
I gather that the appropriate time of the year for mumming and wassailing also differs. The event I attended took place at the traditional start of the agricultural year–“Plough Sunday”–although quite a few of the other cases I have turned up obviously take place at or near Christmas. The former timing strikes me as probably closer to some original model, as all versions suggest the idea of death and resurrection, that could refer to the “dead time” of agriculture in the winter and the prospect of new growth.
I was intrigued also by contemporary gestures to make the custom more inclusive, by giving a place to local bands playing music by ethic immigrants. One party of wassailers in St.-Leonards-on-Sea also appeared to have borrowed the idea of a pair of gigantic puppets in the form of stags. These reminded me very much of puppets I saw once in Barcelona.
All this I find very interesting from an anthropological point of view. “Custom”, as we know, is rarely a completely rigid system of practices, but changes, diversifies and grows. In this way “traditional” African masks, for example, came to incorporate images of European traders and administrators. (There is a famous Indian automaton depicting a topee-clad European being savaged by a tiger.) Culture and custom are always open-ended and constantly creative.
Although I have been writing about this experience, and accounting for it at the level ideas, one of the strongest impressions I have retained has been visual. My response will not be anything like complete until I have drawn something.
*There are several items on Youtube depicting wassailing and mummers’ plays.