Note 768 — Chapter X · THE MUMMERS’ PLAY

In the Dorset (A) version, the king of Egypt is ‘Anthony’ and the doctor ‘Mr. Martin Dennis.’ Conceivably these are reminiscences of St. Anthony of Padua and St. Denys of France. The Revesby Plough Monday play (cf. p. 208) has also an ‘Anthony.’ The ‘Seven Champions’ do not appear in the English sword-dances described in ch. ix, but the morris-dancers at Edgemond wake used to take that name (Burne-Jackson, 491). Mrs. Nina Sharp writes in F. L. R. iii. 1. 113: ‘I was staying at Minety, near Malmesbury, in Wilts (my cousin is the vicar), when the mummers came round (1876). They went through a dancing fight in two lines opposed to each other—performed by the Seven Champions of Christendom. There was no St. George, and they did not appear to have heard of the Dragon. When I inquired for him, they went through the performance of drawing a tooth—the tooth produced, after great agony, being a horse’s. The mummers then carried into the hall a bush gaily decorated with coloured ribbons.... [They] were all in white smock frocks and masks. At Acomb, near York, I saw very similar mummers a few years ago, but they distinguished St. George, and the Dragon was a prominent person. There was the same tooth-drawing, and I think the Dragon was the patient, and was brought back to life by the operation.’ I wonder whether the ‘Seven Champions’ were named or whether Mrs. Sharp inferred them. Anyhow, there could not have been seven at Minety, without St. George. The ‘bush’ is an interesting feature. According to C. R. Smith, Isle of Wight Words (Eng. Dial. Soc. xxxii. 63) the mummers are known in Kent as the ‘Seven Champions.’