The five dancers have black breeches, with red stripes at the sides, white shirts decked with gay ribbons, and hats surmounted with streamers.
The verses given by Sir Cuthbert Sharpe, in the Bishoprick Garland, differ widely from both the old and new style of Durham verses. Probably his may be in use in Newcastle or Sunderland, for two of his characters are a sailor and a skipper.
The dance corresponds most remarkably with the account given by Olaus Magnus of the sword dance of the ancient Goths and Swedes.[1] Some such dance is still kept up in Gothland, with an allusion to the sacrifice to Odin, which formerly accompanied it. One of the company is clad in skin, and holds a wisp of straw in his mouth, cut sharp at the ends, to resemble a swine’s bristles, and thus he personates the hog formerly sacrificed at Yule. Throughout Yorkshire, and formerly, indeed, all England over, the Christmas visitants are mummers disguised in finery of different sorts, with blackened faces or masks, and carrying with them an image of a white horse. This white horse appears at Christmas throughout the North of Germany with the “Hale Christ,” “Knecht Rupert,” or “San Claus,” who brings the good children presents, but punishes the naughty ones.
In the Midland counties, people asking for Christmas-boxes on Christmas Eve drag about with them a horse’s head and skin. I have seen this myself in the Forest of Dean. Mr. Baring Gould writes on the subject: “At Wakefield and Stanby the mummers enter a house, and if it be in a foul state they proceed to sweep the hearth, and clean the kitchen-range, humming all the time ‘mum-m-m.’ At Horbury they do no sweeping now, though I believe in old times they used to practise it. As far as I can judge there is generally one man in sailor’s dress, the rest being women, or rather men in women’s dress, but this is not universal. The Christmas-tup is another amusement. It is distinct from the white horse. I believe that the Christmas mummers represent the yule host, or wild hunt, and that the man of the party
- ↑ Brand’s Pop. Ant. vol. i. p. 612.
