Stringband.com presents*.........The Ancient Custom of
Mummery
This article appeared in The
Mummers Magazine in the 1950's
Mummery is as ancient as man's dream of getting
outside of his customary life; it is as old as man's
imagination.
Tracing back through the mazes of history that led to
England and Germany, to ancient France, pagan Rome and
Greece, we find mummery has influenced customs and
perpetuated many interesting traditions. Every notion had
its festivals at one time or another, each marked by
parades and displays of fanciful costumes. The pagan
Saturnalia and carnival, for example an ancient Roman
festival of Saturn, beginning December 17th, was marked
by unrestrained merry-making.
As for back as 400 BC Roman laborers observed that
feast of the Saturnalia in honor of their god, Saturn,
and the reaping of the harvest. They made calls on
friends, they exchanged gifts and it was customary for
some of the gifts to bear greetings for a happy new year.
Slaves sported robes from their masters, and the
patricians, wearing fantastic costumes, roamed the
streets with their slaves. Age and rank were forgotten
for the fiesta and all persons were free for the day.
There was a musical background for the capers of the
multitude with songs and ballads befitting the joyous
occasion.
An early custom was the Florentine Carnival usually
held in the beginning of Lent - a day set aside by the
monks of the Middle Ages for the lords of misrule and the
abbots of unreason.
At this time, England and Germany celebrated their
Christmas Mosque, resulting in riotous indulgence. This
took the form of a dramatic entertainment popular in 16th
and 17th centuries, and followed usually an allegorical
theme which embodied pageantry, music and dancing.
Immigrants and travelers brought these customs,
celebrations and festivities when they came to America.
Continued throughout the centuries of American history,
this traditional gala pageant of Philadelphia symbolizes
the ushering in of the new year.
One of the earliest known accounts of a mummers'
parade was written by Dr. Henry Muhlenberg, who
established the Lutheran Church in America. He wrote in
1839: "Men met on the roads in Tinicum and
Kingsessing, who were disguised as clowns, shouting at
the top of their voices and shooting guns.
When the Swedes came to Tinicum, just outside of
Philadelphia, they brought their custom of visiting
friends on "Second Day Christmas," December 26,
long before William Penn arrived in the good ship
"Welcome".
Gradually they extended the period of their calls to
the New Year, which was welcomed with marked revelry and
joyous noises. Masqueraders paraded the streets of old
Philadelphia and the other sections now a part of the
city.
Many of the revelers were armed, they carried pistols
for protection along with their bells and sundry
noisemakers. And as expected, the pistols and even
muskets were called upon to add their emphatic blasts of
the din of "welcoming in the New Year". Those
who "shot in" the New Year naturally become New
Year's Shooters and thus they established an
identification through the years. The early Swedish
Mummers appointed a leader, or "speech
director", who had a special little dance step and
who recited a rhyme like this:
As we stood the year before;
Give us whiskey, give us gin,
Open the door and let us in.
Even during the Revolutionary period,
New Year's Day continued to be a day of carnival and
friendly calls. General Howe, whose redcoats occupied the
city, staged the "Meschianza" in the Wharton
mansion on New Year's Day, 1778, and the ill-starred
Major Andre described it as a "gay and gorgeous
spectacle".
George Washington, following his inauguration, began
the official custom of New Year's Day calls and continued
it during the seven years he occupied the presidential
mansion in Philadelphia, then the capital. The mummers
continued to celebrate annually in their traditional way.
Reciting doggerel and receiving in return cakes and ale,
groups of five to twenty, their faces blackened, would
march from home to home, shooting and shouting, doing
friendly impersonations of General Washington and
burlesquing the fashionable English mummers' play of St.
George and the Dragon.
A character that always accompanied their
"Washington" was Cooney Cracker, a clown whose
costumes and antics make some historians believe he was
the forerunner of the Uncle Sam of today. This shooter
impersonating Washington had several poems and speeches
to recite, which still survive.
The burlesquing of their fashionable mummers' play and
the increasing number of the black-faced revelers,
offended the "Social Leaders" of the day. It
caused them in 1808 to force through the legislature an
act, declaring that "masquerades, masquerade balls,
and masked processions were public nuisances", and
decreeing that oil persons who allowed masked balls in
their homes, entertained shooters or participated in
these or similar demonstrations, would be subject to a
fine and imprisonment not to exceed three months.
Nevertheless, the farmers, tradesmen, craftsmen,
apprentices, laborers and members of fire-fighting
companies continued to stage clandestine masquerades on
New Year's Eve and New Year's Day and there are no
records of any convictions under this act. They continued
their own ideas of celebrating New Year's and clung to
their rifles and pistols and friendly calls in
"welcoming in the year". Gradually they
acquired the name "shooters' which is still used
today.
With such a rich background it is no wonder that the
traditional Philadelphia Mummers' New Year's Day Pageant
has continued for over a century and becomes more
colorful and spectacular each succeeding year.
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