Note 754 — Chapter X · THE MUMMERS’ PLAY

Beelzebub appears also in the Cropwell Plough Monday play; cf. p. 209. Doubtless he once wore a calf-skin, like other rural ‘Fools,’ but, as far as I know, this feature has dropped out. Sandys, 154, however, quotes ‘Captain Calf-tail’ as the name of the ‘Fool’ in an eighteenth-century Scotch version, and Mr. Gomme (Nature, Dec. 23, 1897), says ‘some of the mummers, or maskers as the name implies, formerly disguised themselves as animals—goats, oxen, deer, foxes and horses being represented at different places where details of the mumming play have been recorded.’ Nowadays, Beelzebub generally carries a club and a ladle or frying-pan, with which he makes the quête. At Newport and Eccleshall he has a bell fastened on his back; at Newbold he has a black face. The ‘Fool’ figured in the Manchester chap-book resembles Punch.