ARCHETYPES AND TRADITION: MASK AND MUMMING

Following up some discussions about performance, ritual and the spaces they create..rough stuff, lots of cutting and pasting, not where I intended to go, but here we are.When looking for meaning or significance in folk and vernacular arts- in all performance maybe- we look for archetypes, the twelve primary types symbolizing basic human motivations. How useful these are might depend on whether we are looking at codified rituals/performances and the themes and characters thereof, or the motivations behind the ritual/performance and its survival.    An understanding might come from a look at the self-assigned social mores of  communities performing Mummers and Pace / Pasche Egg plays,and the structures operating within them, by mapping the archetypes - Jung's  "universal and inherited patterns which, taken together, constitute the structure of the unconscious" - onto social groups. Rather than the plays themselves, the enduring product of the tradition  is the continued will to expression arising from these structures. "The English Mummers as Manifestations of the Social Self" by Christine Herold offers some useful examples and perspectives. During the revival the tropes of Mumming and Pace / Pache Egging were assumed to  refer to pre- Christian rituals of rebirth and sacrifice.The plays  themselves though are comparatively recent; the oldest written script is from the 18th. If there was any single source it may have been an appropriation  by the community of an existing play with that theme, which was further disseminated and gradually coarsened and infused with new elements and characters.
Far from lost in the mists of time then, the roots of the plays are within reach. Collecting money at the end was as much of a motive as anything else, linking them with Plough plays or the hybrid of first footing and extortion that still went on in parts of Chesterfield when I was a kid. Even the term mummer can be traced to a common custom ; the mystery lies in the continuing desire to perform them, and in what assumptions of communal character are being played out and reinforced in doing so.Performance permits a..."cathartic expression of repressed motives." We can see this today in sick humour whether reflexive or provocative, and in the transgressive alt-narratives and  bravado oratory of the Brexit campaign where rituals of debate were employed to sanction the saying of what was portrayed as "unsayable" -although in fact said all too commonly but within closed circles.  In the ritualistic nature of Mumming Roger Faris finds a similar  mechanism; here  the ritual  provides a "disguised gratification" of a repressed "in-group hostility" --a "cathartic expression of repressed motives" in the relatively safe arena of ritual. 

Its ultimate purpose is "the direct gratification of forbidden hostilities . . . and then the subsequent recreation and renewal of the social order."What was missing in the political manifestation of this structure was an understanding of the process of recreation and renewal, of the value of consensus.Herold: "To settlements displaying a "marked lack of social change, . . . the stranger, is unpredictable, unreliable, not to be trusted, deviant, and, . . . potentially dangerous and malevolent."

This category of "potentially dangerous and malevolent" individuals includes women. (Roger T)Faris observes, in a community. the custom represents a traditional community's ritualized expression of its reactions to the Stranger, the Other: "To settlements displaying a "marked lack of social change, . . . the stranger, is unpredictable, unreliable, not to be trusted, deviant, and, . . . potentially dangerous and malevolent....in communities with a "rigidly virilocal marriage and settlement pattern, . . . women are" in fact, "most often the `strangers'."

The custom permits (maybe demands)  acknowledgment and a demonstration of the fear of the stranger or the 'other'. 

 Disguised performers in the role of 'other' take liberties with the communities rules, ragging and roasting each other and their neighbours. Those on the end of such treatment are given the opportunity to shrug this off, and to exercise hospitality to such a degree that they assuage and absorb the sense of threat and dread such characters arouse.

Applause disarms, absorbs and deflects the threat.

The heightened absurdity of the players appearance underlines its artificiality ("We are not really like this") while the antics of the performers have a root in the familiar and unspoken ("Yes we are").

All ends well. The community takes comfort in its own generosity.

"The English Mummers as Manifestations of the Social Self"

Christine Herold, Ödense, 1998

Mumming Script, Chesterfield 1933, EFDSS