Mummers allowed in...

Mummers were welcomed at The Rooms today. This tradition is being revived as the 3rd annual Mummers Festival with a parade around town culminating at The Rooms this afternoon. Since I was working and the crowd was just outside the door of the reference library, I got to enjoy some of the festivities.
(If you are curious about this custom, google Mummering and read the Wikipedia entry.)

The Mummers Song

{Spoken}

"Don't seem like Christmas if the mummers are not here."
Granny would say as she'd knit in her chair,
"Things have gone modern and I suppose that's the cause,
Christmas is not like it was."

{Knock}

"Any mummers allowed in??"

{Sung}

Hark, what's the noise out by the porch door?
"Granny, 'tis mummers, there's twenty or more."
Her old weathered face brightens up with a grin,
"Any mummers, nice mummers 'lowed in?"

"Come in, lovely mummers, don't bother the snow,
We can wipe up the water, sure, after you go,
Sit, if you can, or on some mummer's knee, Let's see if we know who you be."

There's big ones and small ones and tall ones and thin,
Boys dressed as women and girls dressed as men,
Humps on their backs, and mitts on their feet,
"My blessed, we'll die with the heat."

There's only one there that I think that I know,
That tall fellow standing over long side the stove,
He's shaking his fist for to make me not tell,
Must be Willie from out on the hill.

Now, that one's a stranger if there ever was one,
With his underwear stuffed and his trap door undone,
Is he wearing his mother's big forty-two bra?
I knows but I'm not gonna say.

"Don't s'pose you fine mummers would turn down a drop?"
"No!! Homebrew or alky, whatever you've got."
Not the one with his rubber boots on the wrong feet,
He's enough for to do him all week.

"S'pose you can dance." "Yes." They all nod their heads,
They've been tapping their feet ever since they came in,
Now that the drinks have been all passed around,
The mummers are plankin' 'er down.

"Be careful the lamp, and hold on to the stove,
Don't swing Granny hard cause you that she's old,
No need for to care how you buckles the floor,
Cause mummers have danced here before."

"My God, how hot is it, we'd better go,
I 'low we'll all get the devil's own cold,"
"Good night and good Christmas, mummers, me dears,
Please God we will see you next year."
"Good night and good Christmas, mummers, me dears,
Please God we will see you next year."
(* Copyright Bud Davidge, 1982)