Note 765 — Chapter X · THE MUMMERS’ PLAY

I hardly like to trace a reminiscence of the connexion with the renouveau in the ‘General Valentine’ and ‘Colonel Spring’ who fight and are slain in the Dorset (A) version; but there the names are. Mr. Gomme (Nature for Dec. 23, 1897) finds in certain mumming costumes preserved in the Anthropological Museum at Cambridge and made of paper scales, a representation of leaves of trees. Mr. Ordish, I believe, finds in them the scales of the dragon (F. L. iv. 163). Some scepticism may be permitted as to these conjectures. In most places the dress represents little but rustic notions of the ornamental. Cf. Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native, bk. ii. ch. 3: ‘The girls could never be brought to respect tradition in designing and decorating the armour: they insisted on attaching loops and bows of silk and velvet in any situation pleasing to their taste. Gorget, gusset, bassinet, cuirass, gauntlet, sleeve, all alike in the view of these feminine eyes were practicable spaces whereon to sew scraps of fluttering colour.’ The usual costume of the sword-dancers, as we have seen (p. 200), was a clean white smock, and probably that of the mummers is based upon this.