12th Night

     As most of you know the "Hat City" Mummer's Play is a blend of old and new. The old story is the battle where Saint George dies and is brought to life again. Marnen and I wrote the original Hat City Mummer's Play over the phone one afternoon many years ago. Most of it is new material—a re-telling of the old story. But we did leave in certain lines which have been recited for centuries. Yes, centuries. There are hundreds of transcripts of plays from different villages, going back to the early 1700s. Certain lines repeat themselves including "In comes I, Old Father Christmas, welcome or welcome not..."

     I always wondered about the "welcome or welcome not" line. I was aware that Christmas was once outlawed, both in Puritan England and in the New England colonies. While they were having a fine old time down in the Virginia colony, it was against the law to celebrate Christmas in any way, shape or form in Boston. So stringent were the prohibitions that in the Boston and Connecticut colonies "mince pie sniffers" were hired by the local authorities to go about the settlement sniffing out anyone who might be making either mince pie or plum pudding! Now there's a municipal job for you. 

     Suddenly the "welcome or welcome not" line made sense. Oliver Cromwell was the driving force behind Christmas being outlawed in England, and laws were passed to this effect in 1645. In Connecticut the laws went in to effect in 1657. So "welcome or welcome not" speech with the listing of "banned" delicacies is clearly a reference to the odious ban on Christmas.

     Another line which comes is repeated in many of the plays is the wound/found line:

     A doctor! A doctor must be found
     To save him from this grievous wound.

     I suppose it's obvious that "found" and "wound" once rhymed, at least in some dialects. Certainly my Scottish grandfather would have said "foond" rather than "fownd".