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The Truro cordwainers' play: a "new" eighteenth-century Christmas play - Research article: focus on traditional drama
Folklore, April, 2003 by Peter Millington
Investigation of parallels with Irish texts reveals the presence of a version that predates the Belfast Christmas Rhyme chapbooks, and from which the chapbook text was imperfectly derived. Further study of the lines in Irish plays that are not in the Christmas Rhyme chapbooks ought to reveal more about this pre-chapbook version. For instance, it is possible there could have been a slightly different Irish chapbook that pre-dates the known Belfast versions, such as, perhaps, the untraced Cork edition mentioned by Thomas Crofton Croker (1826-54, chapter 9:11-2). There is also scope for investigating how texts were transmitted between Ireland and mainland Britain and/or vice versa.
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In comparing the Truro text with other plays, I have suggested that the hitherto catch-all hero-combat play probably contains a number of distinct sub-types, and one such sub-type is typified by the presence of the characters Father Christmas and the Turkish Knight. Examination of common and omitted lines between different versions of the plays that are related to Truro suggest the following ancestral line:
Alexander and the King of Egypt [right arrow] Father Christmas and the Turkish Knight [right arrow] Irish plays
Although the Truro text is the oldest known example of Father Christmas and the Turkish Knight, the inclusion of Irish material makes its position in this pedigree unclear.
Finally, it would be interesting to know how the manuscript came to end up in Mylor. Boase's Collectanea Cornubensia has an entry that states, temptingly: "Rowe, John, member of board of guardians d Mylor from the effects of a fall down stairs 20 Sep 1869 aged 83" (Boase 1890, 844).
This is unlikely to be our John Rowe because he was too young, being born about 1786, and, anyway, John Rowe is a common Cornish name. However, it is possible that a descendant of one of the actors could have moved to live in Mylor, taking the manuscript too.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Enys Estate for their permission to publish quotations from the manuscript. I wish to thank the staff of the Cornwall Record Office for their help in locating the manuscript and background materials, and for mediating on my behalf with the Enys Estate. Additionally, Angela Broome, Librarian of The Courtney Library and Cornish History Archive at the Royal Institution of Cornwall, Truro, was of great assistance in locating and suggesting historical biographical sources for the actors. I also thank the staff of the Cornwall Studies Library, Redruth. Finally, I appreciate the support and suggestions I have received from Eddie Cass.
Notes
[1] The facsimiles of the 1779 and 1780 Revesby manuscripts have been published by Preston et al. (1976), and Preston and Smith (1999). Baskervill (1924) published five early nineteenth-century texts from Lincolnshire, the original manuscripts of which are in the British Library (Peacock 1823--42).
[2] John Davies Gilbert Enys was born in 1837, registered at St Gluvias, Penryn. He emigrated to New Zealand from 1861 where he farmed the Castle Hill Station, Canterbury, becoming a District Councillor and a Justice of the Peace. He returned to the family mansion at Enys, Penryn, in 1891 on the death of his brothers. There he became a County Councillor for the Mylor Division of Cornwall. He died in 1912. His bookplate shows a heraldic emblem of three feathers. [From various sources, including papers in the Enys Memoranda (n.d.).]
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