The plays are undoubtedly old. References to mummers go back at least to the thirteenth century, but records of what they did, its form and origin are matters for speculation. Though usually regarded as typically English items of folklore, mummers performing similar stories are to be found in Portugal and Thrace. For all their brevity, the plays offer us a number of clues to their origin. The fact that the villain is invariably of Middle Eastern provenance brings to mind the Crusades and this is supported by two other elements. St George of Cappadocia, best known for his slaughter of the lake-dragon had also taken a prominent part in the crusades - it was this that took him Sylene in Libya where the dragon was terrorising the populace, a detail well-known to the audiences of earlier epochs. There is also the miracle-working doctor. One side-effect of the crusades was to bring westerners in contact with Arab medicine, vastly more advanced than their own. Many of the Arab doctors - in practice, often Jews - who chanced to fall into the hands of the Crusaders were taken into the employment of wealthy families. Their skill was in such demand that they were often able to dictate their salaries - hence the fee-bargaining which one finds in the mummer plays. They took with them, for medicinal use, many of the herbs which now grow in our gardens and give flavour to our food. The Middle Eastern overtones would, of course, have found an echo among audiences down the centuries, for even in high Renaissance times the armies of Ottoman Turkey were advancing through Europe, a progress unstemmed until the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.
But other traces in the plays hint at even more archaic origins. St George is primarily the dragon-slayer. The slaughter of a dragon-like monster is a recurrent mythological motif and, like most of such motifs, is a statement encoded but amenable to decipherment once you have the key. Usually the slaughter of a serpent or dragon stands for the supplanting of a feminine by a masculine deity. The most famous case is that of Apollo killing the Python at Delphi and appropriating to himself the sanctuary of the Earth Mother. This substitution invariably diminishes the importance of the female in religious practice, a state of affairs to be seen in most of the major religions. In the light of this it may well be significant that the casts of the mummers players are overwhelmingly male. The hobby horse, which is the hero's steed, recalls those associated with other folk customs such as the Padstow Obby Oss and a hobby horse also features in customs found in some parts of rural Wales. Undoubtedly this derives from our Celtic ancestors who venerated the horse. There are also Celtic overtones in the hero's boasting and throwing out of his challenge, as in the motif of the resuscitation of a dead warrior. Instances are to be found in the Mabinogion story of Branwen.
In any case, stripped to essentials, the theme of all versions is the death and rebirth of a hero. Of all mythological motifs, this - the commemoration of the agricultural cycle - is the most constant and among the most archaic going back thousands of years until its lineaments finally become blurred as time's mists enfold it. Confirmation that this lies behind the mummers play comes from the fact that many plays end with the entire cast doing a springing dance in which they make sunwise circles. In other words the Bodgers, and all other mummers, were not so much performing a play as enacting an ancient ritual. And that such a ritual should continue to be enacted by predominantly rural and agricultural communities, dependent on the earth, should not perhaps entirely surprise us.
