Chapbooks and Traditional Drama Part II: Christmas Rhyme Books

Folklore, Oct, 2001 by Eddie Cass

Chapbooks and Traditional Drama Part II: Christmas Rhyme Books. By Georgina Boyes, Michael J. Preston and Paul Smith. Sheffield: National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield, 1999. pbk. iv 46 pp. Illus. 6.00 [pounds sterling]. ISSN 1466-7347

The majority of scholars presently working in the field of traditional drama no longer believe in a ritual origin for the mumming play; but whilst synchronic studies of the play are now considered to be of prime importance, the early history of traditional drama in the eighteenth century remains fascinating. We do not yet fully understand how the mumming play arose in practice and how it spread so rapidly across a large swathe of Great Britain in such a limited period of time. Clearly, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, chapbooks had some part to play in this spread, especially in the north of England, but that role is far from clear. From where did chapbook printers get their texts? Did they originate them or did they copy them? If the latter, were they copied from oral sources or other written sources? Were the texts contained in the chapbooks intended to be read or to be acted? What was the precise nature of the interaction between these chapbooks and the mumming play in performance? There is undoubtedly contemporary evidence in both books and newspapers that for whatever use the printers produced these texts, they were from time to time used as the basis of performances. These, and a myriad other questions, are at the heart of a research programme which was initiated in the early 1970s.

In 1976, the publication by the History of the Book Trade in the North group of An Interim Checklist of Chapbooks Containing Traditional Play Texts, by M. J. Preston, M. G. Smith and P. S. Smith, launched what seemed at the time to be a publishing venture of singular significance. It was the beginning of an attempt to identify every surviving example of a chapbook containing a traditional drama text (what has hitherto usually been known as a mumming play). But the project was larger than merely one of description; the intention was to relate these chapbooks into family groups and to provide a lineage for each chapbook within the group. The intention behind the project was the provision of answers to some of the questions asked above. The first such group to be described was dealt with in Chapbooks and Traditional Drama Part I: Alexander and the King of Egypt Chapbooks, published by the Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield in 1977. One can only regret the exigencies of careers, which has meant that we have had to wait nearly a quarter of a century for a further instalment of this important programme.

Part II: Christmas Rhyme Books deals with the group of play texts published in Ulster. Less than twenty of these chapbooks, in some eight distinct printings, are known to have survived. The main text of the book attempts to date the various editions of the rhyme books and puts forward a suggested "schematic relationship" between the various editions. This "schema" hypothesises the necessary existence at some time of two so far unknown editions of the text, editions which may yet be located. In an appendix, each of the known Christmas rhyme books is described and its location given. A second appendix sets out the texts first published in such books as Tiddy's The Mummers' Play and also reproduces the format of two complete Christmas rhyme books. The facsimile reprints in the appendix will be of considerable assistance to readers unfamiliar with the format and content of Christmas rhyme books. For other readers, however, the provision of a printing history for the chapbooks in the Introduction will be the more important part of the publication.

Whilst this book is a stand-alone title in that it deals with a discrete set of texts, it must also be seen as part of a much larger whole. Once the series of publications first projected in the 1970s is complete, we may be better placed to understand the role of chapbooks in the spread of the folk play, something which may shed light on the still puzzling aspects of the early history of folk drama. The book is an invaluable addition to the library of anyone interested in the history of traditional drama, but it will also prove of value to the growing number of scholars working in the field of provincial printing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In 1979, Paul Smith was researching an article commissioned to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of a performance of a play which was thought to have taken place on 20 October 1779 at Revesby Abbey. During that research, Smith located a hitherto unknown text of this play held at the Lincolnshire Archives. It is a facsimile of this text, together with a typed transcript, which constitutes the core of "A petygree of the Plouboys or modes dancers songs." At this point, it is worth noting the strides in technology which have significantly improved low-cost copying techniques since the British Museum manuscript was reproduced in facsimile by the same publishers. This book far outstrips in quality of print Morrice Dancers at Revesby, which was published in 1976. The addition of a typed transcript provides a further improvement.