The Christmas mummers

24 December · Tenby, Pembrokeshire

Still kept

The mummers, called guisers in Scotland, set out on Christmas Eve to visit the chief houses of the parish and act the play of St George. Chambers’s picture of a troupe shows Father Christmas with holly and a wassail bowl, a girl with mistletoe, the Grand Turk, St George, the dragon and a doctor with a box of pills to cure the wounded. At Tenby three mummers went round for three weeks of the season, each playing several parts, and began with Old Father Christmas calling for room to rhyme. Mummers’ plays are still acted at Christmas in many parts of England and Wales.

The institution of the mummers, as already intimated, is one that has considerably declined, but it still flourishes in some of the remoter districts of England.

From Chambers's Book of Days, vol. 2, pp. 739-741. Read the original

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The Christmas mummers

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