The Truro cordwainers' play: a "new" eighteenth-century Christmas play - Research article: focus on traditional drama

Peter Millington

Abstract

The Christmas play hitherto attributed to Mylor is here re-ascribed to Truro in the late 1780s, using biographical information concerning the actors and physical characteristics of the manuscript. It becomes the oldest Saint George play to feature Father Christmas and the Turkish Knight, and has textual parallels with Irish folk plays.

Introduction

The subject of this paper is a manuscript folk play text that has hitherto been ascribed to Mylor, Cornwall (SW8235). A transcription was first published by Thurstan Peter (1916) who stated that it was "used" by performers in the latter half of the nineteenth century. However, the more I looked at the text, and compared it with early manuscripts from Lincolnshire [1], the more I felt that the "Mylor" text must have been written down earlier, in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. My reasons for thinking this were initially nebulous, based on a combination of spelling practices and the inclusion of large passages of literary text.

Helpfully, the script gives the names of the actors who performed the play. In theory, therefore, it should be possible to tell from biographical information in official records when and where these people lived, and thereby determine a likely performance date. In the course of pursuing this line of research, the original manuscript was also located, which meant that the nature of the paper and handwriting could also be taken into account.

Previous Studies

The "Mylor" play is a long text of forty-one speeches, written semi-literately with dialect spellings. In essence, it is a standard Hero/Combat play, with Saint George and the Turkish Knight, although it is padded out with various large additions, two of which are from known literary and ballad sources. The script names five actors and, as the play has fifteen characters, they obviously doubled-up parts. In fact, the distribution was remarkably equal, with each actor playing exactly three different characters--even the actor with only ten lines in total.

The text is well known to traditional drama research, having appeared in print three times. The manuscript was first published by Thurstan Peter as a literal transcript in Notes and Queries in 1916. Regarding its provenance, he states:

   I have in my note-book ... a curious and interesting copy made by me
   from a MS. used by some Cornish performers in the latter half of the
   last century. The players of this Cornish version--which I
   subjoin--went from house to house and performed in the open,
   borrowing a mat "for the Turkish Knight to die on" if the ground
   were damp.

   The libretto is from a MS. in the possession of John D. Enys (1905),
   who got it from Mylor. The original is written by a very illiterate
   man; but I have followed it closely for fear of wrong conjecture.
   For the same reason I have kept the lines of the original (Peter
   1916, 330; original emphasis).

The Royal Institution of Cornwall now holds the relevant notebook. Peter's transcript appears in his Notebook no. 2 (Peter 1905), but the only accompanying notes comprise the second paragraph quoted.

It is from Peter's statements that the place and date of performance have been taken. However, Peter also referred to the play in his earlier book The Old Cornish Drama (Peter 1906). He highlighted the mixed historical subject matter of the play--mentioning "the incident of Henry V and the tennis balls" and the seizure of Quebec--and quoted one short passage. He gave the anecdote about borrowing mats, as follows:

   "A friend tells me that he well recollects as a child that the
   performers borrowed mats on which to die!" (Peter 1906, 47).

It seems likely that the friend was J. D. Enys, and therefore that this anecdote came from his personal memories of the 1840s or 1850s at Enys, Penryn (SW7936), which is adjacent to Mylor [2].

Also in 1906, the text was the subject of a query from "Ygrec" in Notes and Queries (Ygrec 1906). This item does not add anything to the provenance of the script. Rather, it requests the identity of a quoted extract, which we now know to be the ballad King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France (c. 1730). The real identity of "Ygrec" was presumably Thurstan Peter.

Peter's notebook contains two loose items (one letter and one postcard) from R. J. E. Tiddy of Trinity College, Oxford. It would appear that Peter had lent him his notebook. In his letter dated 26 April 1914, Tiddy comments:

   I will copy it as soon as I can and return the book to you. Mylor is
   a few miles from St Just where my father's family comes from so I am
   particularly pleased to have this play ... (Peter 1905, loose letter
   dated 26 April 1914)

On 2 May 1914, Tiddy sent Peter the postcard:

   I return your Notebook with very many thanks. The Mylor play is
   quite the most interesting I have come across, and I wish I had time
   to set to work on it at once. I am extremely glad that you copied it
   literatim.

   I have no doubt that you can decipher it a good deal better than I
   could, but in the long vacation I shall attempt to "restore" the
   text and will, if I may, send my attempt to you for comment, though
   I do not of course wish to trespass on your time. I expect you have
   already recognised the Ballad fragment in it, but in case you have
   not identified it, it is in Child's English and Scottish Popular
   Ballads (Nutt 1906) no. 164 "King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France."
   I must try collecting in Cornwall and if I do get enough
   specifically Cornish material I will remember your kind suggestion
   about the Royal Institution. Yours very truly R. J. E. Tiddy.
   (Peter 1905, loose postcard dated 2 May 1914)

Unfortunately, we do not have Peter's side of the correspondence. Presumably his letters may have been in Tiddy's papers, but their whereabouts cannot be traced. It is unlikely that Tiddy did "restore" the text before going to war in 1915 because, when the play was subsequently republished in his posthumous book The Mummers' Play, it retained its original orthography (Tiddy 1923, 68 and 148-56). Tiddy's book gave the location of the play merely as "Cornwall." On the other hand, he gave several substantial footnotes regarding internal historical evidence, and literary parallels to some passages of the text. In summary, these are:

* The inclusion of Addison's Rosamond, An Opera (Act I scene i) as soliloquies following the cure (Addison 1707).

* The dramatisation of much of the ballad King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France (c. 1730) in the latter half of the play.

* "bing bing"--referring to Admiral Byng, who was tried by court-martial and shot on the 14 March 1757 for failing to relieve Minorca--speech no. 28.

* "vornal bould"--referring to Edward Vernon, who captured Portobello on the 20 November 1739--speech no. 29.

E. K. Chambers published the text for the third time as "The Mylor Play" in his book The English Folk-Play (Chambers 1933, 71-82). He did little to analyse the play, other than to repeat the internal evidence and literary parallels footnoted by Tiddy. He did, however, remark that the cure had been "much dislocated," and that the description of Vernon's exploits had been mixed up with the capture of Quebec by General Wolfe in 1759.

A letter in the Carpenter Collection from E. H. Enys, dated 11 February 1935, indicates that he and James Madison Carpenter tried and failed to find the "Mylor MSS" when the Harvard scholar visited the Enys mansion during a collecting trip to Cornwall. However, although the letter tells Carpenter that Enys later found the manuscript after this visit, there is nothing in the Carpenter Collection to show that Carpenter subsequently followed it up. As far as I am aware, the text has not been the focus of any other academic attention since Carpenter.

The Manuscript

Enquiries at the Cornwall Record Office revealed that the manuscript is in their safekeeping. It is inserted loosely in an album entitled the Enys Memoranda (n.d.), which is a miscellany of charters, letters and other documents relating to the Enys family and the Enys mansion (SW7936) from the time of Queen Elizabeth I onwards. The manuscript is not dated, but its Cornwall Record Office catalogue entry reads: "f.22. Text of a Christmas mummers' play with the names of the persons taking the various parts. (1) n.d. eighteenth-century."

Their attribution of the manuscript to the eighteenth-century date was apparently based on the physical appearance of the manuscript. There is nothing explicit in the manuscript, nor elsewhere in the Enys Memoranda (n.d.), to confirm the date of the play. Similarly, there is nothing at all to confirm that the play was performed in Mylor or Enys, or indeed anywhere else specific. J. D. Enys was a noted bibliophile, and acquired much material, including manuscripts, from house clearance auctions, and that may be where he obtained this manuscript (Cornwall Record Office, personal communication).

An examination of the original manuscript reveals the following. It is written on four sheets of hand-made Pott-sized paper (15 inches x 12.5 inches), which were folded in half for writing [3]. The paper has a circular Britannia watermark [4]. Such watermarks are common in papers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and they often have a countermark giving the manufacturer's name and/or date. In this case there is no clear indication of the manufacturer or date, except perhaps the presence of the letter "H" within the watermark frame. If this is the initial of the manufacturer's name, it may represent J. Holyoak, who was active in the period 1780-1800 (Churchill 1935), but this requires confirmation by a paper historian.

The handwriting is in a generally well-formed sloping hand, starting large at the beginning of the manuscript, but becoming more compact towards the end. The smudgy appearance of the manuscript seems to be the result of wear and tear. However, there are several handwriting errors, most of which appear as more specific smudges where there have been attempts at erasure by wiping or washing off the ink (rather than simple crossing out). Capitalisation is often omitted or used erratically, except for names. This is particularly noticeable with the word "I," which nearly half the time is not capitalised, although for some reason it tends to be consistently capitalised or not capitalised on any given page. Punctuation is totally absent except for initials in actors' names and a couple of rare apostrophes. The lines are laid out as prose, although there are a few attempts at verse format on the early pages, and sentences run on without a break. The text is, however, broken up by speech designations. Spelling is often non-standard and reflective of dialect pronunciation in an unaffected fashion. There can therefore be no doubt that the scribe was a dialect speaker.

The style of handwriting has many similarities with that of the 1780 Revesby manuscript (Preston et al. 1976). There are loops on the ascenders and descenders, except for lower case "t" letters and some "d" letters, which are straight. Also, the ascenders on most lower case "d" letters curve backwards with a prominent hook, similar to the "d" letters in the Revesby manuscript. The long "s" is used in double "s" ligatures, but nowhere else. This is essentially limited to the speech designations for "Henry Crossman," as the only other occurrence of "ss" is in the word "bless" within the text itself.

The manuscript reveals that it was prepared by someone who was used to writing. It may be unfair to describe the writer as illiterate, although the non-standard spelling of even common words does suggest a limited education. Having said that, the lack of capitalisation and punctuation is not unusual in an eighteenth-century manuscript (Preston and Smith 1999, v), and spelling practices were more flexible. The use of the long "s" was also common in the eighteenth century, falling from use in the early nineteenth century.

Speech designations are given as the actors' names on separate lines, with a generous indent. A speech number, given in words, accompanies the first four designations. Thereafter, speech numbers are appended as figures using a sequence that runs throughout the whole script. At least some of the figures appear to have been added later. This is indicated by their alignment, and by the fact that the numbers are missing from page four, without a break in the sequence between pages three and five. This suggests that two pages were turned over by mistake during the numbering process. There is a gap for speech number eighteen between pages five and six. This clarifies a speech on page two that appears on its own in the lower half of the side. Its speech number has been corrected, and is difficult to discern. Thurstan Peter thought it was twelve or thirteen, but on closer inspection it is clearly the missing speech number eighteen.

The layout of the speeches on the folded sheets is complicated. The first sheet is written on one side only, with the first speeches down the left-hand half of the sheet. These continue onto the top of the right-hand half, with the inserted speech number eighteen lower down. A small square of paper has been snipped out of the bottom right hand corner of this sheet, of a size that might have been used for writing a receipt or note. However, if so, this seems strange, because one complete half of the last sheet is unused, and that would have made a better target for spare paper.

Taking the folded second sheet, the first side has speeches but its verso is blank. However, both sides of the remaining half are written on. On the folded third sheet, there are speeches written on the first and third sides only, their versos being blank. The fourth sheet has writing in the left-hand half of one side only. Given this complicated layout, it is fortunate that the speeches are numbered. Indeed, it may have been the reason why the speeches were numbered in the first place, although the fact that speech numbers were omitted from one page still leaves some scope for error, made worse by the sheets being loose.

Thurstan Peter's Transcript

Thurstan Peter's transcript appears to be reasonably accurate as regards spelling and orthography. There are a few capitalisation errors, and a few incorrect letters (for example, "pees" instead of "pus"--meaning "purse"). The only significant orthographical difference is the speech designation for "F. Rowe." The "F" does not resemble other capital "F" letters in the manuscript. It does however resemble the capital "J" letters, although it has the appearance of being crossed. I believe it to be a "J." "F. Rowe" is therefore identical with "John Rowe," this actor playing the bit parts of "father Christmas," "sampo," and "ould belzey bob."

Other than orthography, Peter's main error was to place the page of unnumbered speeches incorrectly between speeches seventeen and nineteen. The consequences are the dislocation of the cure, remarked on by Chambers, and the incongruous assignment of two adjacent speeches to William Williams, once as the Doctor and then as the "bloody Woror." Although there are indisputable examples of similar adjacent speeches elsewhere in the manuscript (speeches 20 and 21 are both assigned to William Solomon, and speeches twenty-five and twenty-six are assigned to Henry Crossman), the correct position of the unnumbered page should be between speeches 11 and 12. The full sequence of pages and speeches is therefore as follows.

* Page one. Speeches 1-3, Introducer and "father Christmas"

* Page two. Speech 3 (continued) and speech 4, "king of eagypt" [plus speech 18 for insertion]

* Page three. Speeches 5-11, Dispute between "son George" and the Turkish Knight.

* Page four. Unnumbered speeches, lament, "sampo," plus the doctor's travels and cures.

* Page five. Speeches 12-17, the cure and the Turkish Knight's plea for pardon.

* [From page two]. Speech 18, "ould belzey bob" (supernumerary).

* Page six. Speeches 19-23, "bloody Woror," "little man John," and King of France ...

* Page seven. Speeches 24-27, King Henry Filth's Conquest of France.

* Page eight. Speeches 28-31, "bing bing," "vornal bould," and conclusion.

This corrected sequence is more consistent with other plays. The Doctor's speeches are more coherent, and "ould belzey bob" appears more conventionally after the cure, along with the other supernumeraries. Also, William's incongruously adjacent speeches are separated (although those of Solomon and Crossman remain).

The Actors

Five actors are named in the script--William Solomon (forty-eight lines), John Rowe (alias "F. Rowe," ten lines), Pentecost Langdon (alias Penty Landin, sixty-six lines), William Williams (forty-eight lines) and Henry Crossman (eighty-two lines). This set of names seemed sufficiently distinctive to justify searching genealogical sources for a time and place where they coincided. In searching, it was assumed that the actors would have been approximately the same age. On the other hand, it was not assumed that they had lived in Mylor. Therefore, records for the whole of Cornwall were searched for the period from 1759 (the most recent historical allusion in the text) to 1905 (the year Peter obtained the text from Enys).

Figure 1 shows the location of key places mentioned in this paper. They are all on the western shore of Carrick Roads in western Cornwall, which is itself at the extreme southwestern tip of England.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

In assuming that the play was performed by a single synchronic generation, the question then arose of what age the actors were when they performed the play. Three references to Cornish plays, dating from the early nineteenth century, state that they were performed by children and very young people [5]. This strongly implies that they would have been unmarried, which is an important consideration for genealogical research. Unfortunately, Davies Gilbert's account of western Cornish performances in the late eighteenth century does not give the age of the performers (Gilbert 1823). However, it seems reasonable to assume that eighteenth-century performers were of the same age group.

The initial approach was to search family history sources on the Internet for information on people with the actors' names in Cornwall. A variety of websites were used, the most useful of which was the FamilySearch database of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (1999-2001). Subsequently, key biographical details were checked and supplementary material located in parish registers and church accounts for St Mary's and Kenwyn, and other manuscript sources held by the Cornwall Record Office and the Royal Institution of Cornwall. The more useful sources included Gay et al. (1940), Cornwall Family History Society (1984), the Myra Williams Burial Index (Williams 2000), and Kenwyn Churchwardens' Accounts (1780-1814; 1814-46).

A general pattern emerged of the names appearing in ones and twos in scattered locations and dates throughout Cornwall. However, all the names did come together convincingly in relative abundance during the period in one place. That place was not Mylor. A few isolated records were found relating to Mylor, for people named John Rowe and William Williams, but both these names are common in Cornwall, and the occurrences at Mylor appeared no more significant than other isolated records elsewhere in the county. The place where the actors' names did come together was in Truro (SW8244), particularly the central Truro parish of St Mary's, and the extensions of Truro in the parish of Kenwyn [6]. Together, these formed the manor of Truro and Kenwyn, which was owned by the Enys family [7]. These districts were investigated in more detail.

The distinctive name Pentecost Langdon turned out to be not quite as unique as it first appeared. Pentecost was a traditional family name passed from father to son over a 200-year period, and similar situations also applied to the other actors' names. This was potentially a problem because there could have been several generations with parallel names that might have been possible teams. However, fortunately, there was only one generation where all the names were synchronised; the generation born between 1768 and 1772, which for brevity I shall call the generation of 1770.

Four of the five names come together impressively in one document--the Constable's List for Truro compiled in 1803 (Constable's List 1803a) [8]. There are six entries in the Truro list for men with our actors' names, of whom three were enrolled in the Truro Light Infantry Volunteers. Four are listed as cordwainers (that is, boot-makers and shoe-makers)--Henry Crossman, John Rowe, William Solomon and William Williams. The remaining two are another William Willams (servant) and another John Rowe of unstated trade. It seems probable that the latter John Rowe was a cordwainer too, because six other Rowe men are listed as cordwainers, as are two more Solomons. There can be no doubt that members of the generation of 1770 are present in this list. It is also certain that they all had cordwaining family connections, whether or not they were cordwainers themselves

In total there are eighteen entries in the Truro list for men of the four families. By contrast, the Constable's List for the neighbouring parish of St Clements (Constable's List 1803b) has only five, three of whom are called John Rowe, of diverse trades, including a father and son. The absence of any Langdons from either list is probably because they lived in the neighbouring parish of Kenwyn, for which no list is available. (Martha Langdon, a daughter of Pentecost, was christened in 1806 in Kenwyn.)

Pentecost Langdon was christened on the 29 May 1768 in Gwennap (SW7340), about 6 miles south west of Truro. However, both his parents--Pentecost senior and Susanna--hailed from Kenwyn, Truro. Also, by the time he married Jane Vivian on the 24 October 1791, he was living in Truro. All their children were christened in Truro or Kenwyn, which takes us to the year 1808. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find the date and place of his death or burial. Pentecost senior was born in 1728, and will have been too old to have performed in this play. Pentecost junior interrupted the family tradition by not naming any of his sons Pentecost. His youngest son John resumed the tradition in 1846. However, this Pentecost is too recent to have been the actor in the manuscript.

Henry Crossman was baptised on 5 April 1772 in Truro, and died in Truro on 14 May 1849. He was one of the witnesses to the marriage of Pentecost and Jane Langdon in 1791, and he was entered in the Constable's List of 1803 as an unmarried cordwainer. There is nothing in the parish records for Truro and Kenwyn to indicate that he ever married or had children.

William Solomon was born on 22 November 1769 in Truro, and was christened on Christmas Eve. His parents were James and Mary (nee Crossman). He married Mary Sara on the 5 April 1795 in Truro, which is where all his children and some of his grandchildren were born. He died on 24 December 1839 in Truro, leaving a will, in favour of his wife (Cornwall Record Office, 1839). It is likely that this William Solomon is the lame cordwainer listed in the Constable's List for Truro. One of the witnesses to William's will was Richard Solomon, and the Constable's List also gives a cordwainer with this name. Another witness was Mark Rowe, who may have been the "taylor" in the List. On the other hand, the will gives William's trade as "painter," but he may have changed profession in old age. Incidentally, the style of William Solomon's signature bears no resemblance to the handwriting of the play manuscript.

With William Williams, the situation is less clear, because three William Williams were born in the town in the period 1769-72, with a fourth born in 1776, all to different parents. I have been unable to identify any further biographical information for the two baptised in 1772--one each in Kenwyn and Truro. It is possible that they died in infancy, which might explain why there are only two William Williams in the Truro Constable's List.

The William Willams who is most likely to have been the actor in the play, because of the similarity of his age with the other actors, was baptised on 12 February 1769 in Kenwyn. His father was Francis Williams. William married Mary Merrifield in Truro on 28 March 1790, and he was buried in Truro on 12 August 1827. His age makes it likely that he was the cordwainer in the Constable's List.

Also because of his age, the other William Williams in the Constable's List--the unmarried servant--was probably the son of William and Jane, baptised on 17 March 1776 in Truro. It is possible that his father was the William Willams born about 1746 and buried in Kenwyn on 5 July 1833 at the ripe old age of 87. William senior would not have appeared in the Constable's List because at 57 he was too old to qualify.

John Rowe is the actor's name for which the least satisfactory biographical information is available. The closest match, in terms of date, is the John Rowe baptised in Kenwyn on 5 October 1772, and who married Sarah Williams on 18 July 1793 in Camborne. His age and marital status are consistent with him being the cordwainer in the Truro Constable's List. However, there is an older John Rowe, married on 8 April 1770 in Truro, who just possibly could also be the cordwainer. Then again, if he was over 22 years old when he married, he would have been too old to qualify for the list. This is cutting it fine. I have not been able to find records for the second John Rowe in the List of unstated trade, unless it is the one baptised in distant Lanivet (SX0364) on 9 October 1774 and who married Jane Pascoe in Truro on 3 September 1797. However, his age and marital status do not seem to tally with the "Second Class" status of this person in the List. On balance, the John Rowe born in 1772 is most probably the play actor, because of his similar age, his marriage to a member of the Williams family, and his likely cordwaining occupation.

True Location and Date of the Manuscript

While the available biographical information for the actors is incomplete, there is nonetheless sufficient information, taken with physical aspects of the manuscript, to reach some firm conclusions. The first is that the true location where the play was performed was Truro rather than Mylor. This is because Truro/ Kenwyn is the only place where all the actors' names come together at the same time.

For the same reason, the second conclusion is that the play was performed by a generation born between 1768 and 1772. The four known marriages for this generation were at roughly the same age between 1790 and 1795, and in 1803 at least four of the five actors were working as cordwainers. In fact, members of the Rowe and Williams families were still listed under Truro as boot-makers and shoe-makers in Pigot's Directory of 1830 (Pigot 1831). Naturally, the actors' deaths were not synchronic. The three known deaths were between 1827 and 1849. In addition to their shared cordwaining trade, there are documented links between the families. Most directly, Henry Crossman witnessed the marriage of Pentecost and Jane Langdon. Less directly, James Solomon--Willam's father--married Mary Crossman. Finally, a member of the Rowe family--Mark Rowe--witnessed the will of William Solomon.

The biographical dates, plus the nature of the paper and handwriting of the manuscript, all firmly point to date in the late eighteenth century or early nineteenth century. The characteristics of the watermarks and the orthography suggest that the date is more likely to be eighteenth century. This is also supported to some degree by the subject matter of the text. It includes references to military events in the mid eighteenth century, but does not have any references to people or events from the Napoleonic Wars. This suggests that the play predates the Napoleonic Wars, especially as Napoleonic heroes featured in nineteenth-century folk plays in many parts of England, including Cornwall (for example, Sandys 1833, cx).

The text is relatively long and sophisticated for a folk play, and probably required actors of mid-teenage to late teenage as a minimum. Local practice appears to have been for the plays to be performed by young unmarried actors. The earliest marriage among the actors was 1790 and, if the correct John Rowe has been identified, he may have moved to live in Camborne when he married in 1793, if not before. Consequently, it is possible to deduce that the play was performed sometime in the late 1780s. This makes it one of the oldest available English folk-play texts.

Textual Parallels

The text of the Truro play is a pastiche containing a mixture of lines from traditional folk plays, literary sources, and lines that appear to be unique to Truro. Their approximate relative contributions are as follows:

* 40% of lines, found in other folk play texts.

* 15% of lines, Addison's (1707) Rosamond: an Opera.

* 10% of lines, the ballad King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France (c. 1730).

* 35% of lines, not yet found elsewhere in folk plays or in literary sources.

In the last category, there are about ninety "extra" lines. Some of these lines could simply be regarded as abstruse variations of lines found in other folk play texts. Others have the appearance of coming from literary or ballad sources. I therefore ran an exhaustive series of searches for keywords and phrases from the extra lines, using a variety of spellings, word stems, and so on, in the Literature Online or LION database (Chadwyck-Healey 1996-2001), which is currently the most comprehensive available full-text database of literary sources. I also ran searches, as far as was possible, against a combination of the Digital Tradition and Bodleian Broadside databases (Greenhaus et al. 1988-2001; Bodleian Library, 1999). The Digital Tradition database is a full-text database of the lyrics of traditional and other songs, but its coverage is dependent on the good will of its contributors, and there is no formal quality control. However, it is a useful tool for identifying song titles and first lines, which can then be investigated further in the Bodleian Broadside database and elsewhere. The Bodleian database is only searchable on titles, first lines and subject terms, but images of the original broadsides can be viewed and read on-line, often with multiple editions of a given ballad. Despite the wealth of material in these three databases, my searches failed to find any of the Truro lines, except for the following, spoken by the King of France:

   but let him com I will thonder him
   back he can not me with stand
   my milk wite corls my rid Caps my yallow fethers
   deccar my resoralson stout and bould

The italicised phrase appears in the following excerpt from Deloney's Iohn Winchcomb (Iack of Newbery):

   When Iacke had receiued this charge, hee came home in all haste, and
   cut out a whole broadcloath for horsemens coates, and so much more
   as would make vp coates for the number of a hundren men: in short
   time hee had made ready fifty tall men well mounted in white coates,
   and red caps with yellow feathers, Demilances in their hands ...
   (Deloney 1626, 30).

The match between the italicised phrases is reasonably convincing, but it is an isolated case. There is nothing else in the adjacent text and context that suggests Deloney's prose was used as the source for this part of the Truro text.

Returning to the literary inclusions and the diverse content of the Truro text, this is by no means uncommon in English folk plays. Craig Fees gives an excellent overview of stage plays and non-Saint George themes in English folk plays (Fees 1994, 3). The Truro text also adds ballad sources to Fees' discussion, although one Robin Hood ballad--Robin Hood and the Tanner--is already known to have replaced Saint George's combat in some plays [for example, Shipton-under-Wychwood in Tiddy (1923, 209-13)]. The re-dating of the Truro text brings the focus of this phenomenon to the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, with most of the identified literary and ballad sources predating 1750. Fees cites several Cornish sources in his discussion, including William Borlase on scripture subjects, Davies Gilbert for drama-like Christmas sports, Robert Hunt and William Bottrell for "Duffy and the Devil," and Robert Hunt on Giant Blunderbuss and Tom, with St George and the Turkish Knight attached (respectively, Borlase 1758, 299; Gilbert 1823, iii-vi; Hunt 1865, 718; Bottrell 1873, 1-2 and 26; Hunt 1896, 60). To these can be added the following contemporary observations:

   Scarcely any two sets of actors perform them alike, though the
   characters and plot, if it may be called one, are similar.

   So little do the actors know the history of their own drama, that
   sometimes General Wolfe is introduced, who first fights St George,
   and then sings a song about his own death. I have also seen the
   Duke of Wellington represented ... (Sandys 1833, cx).

This, together with Fees' sources, therefore indicates that the Truro play very much conformed to the local pattern of its day.

Setting the literary sources aside, the Truro play has textual similarities with at least three sub-types of the traditional hero-combat play:

* The Irish plays, typified by the Christmas Rhyme chapbooks, of which the earliest example is dated 1803-18 (Smyth and Lyons 1803-18; Boyes et al. 1999).

* A group of plays typified by the presence of the characters Father Christmas and the Turkish Knight, which occurs in the southern half of England. There is no known published archetypal source for this group of plays, therefore the ensuing discussion draws mainly on other plays of this type from Cornwall.

* Alexander and the King of Egypt, typified by the Newcastle and Whitehaven chapbooks of that title, of which the oldest edition is dated 1746-69 (Preston et al. 1977).

Irish Parallels and their Implications

The main similarities between Truro and the Irish plays are Saint George's introductory speech and Beelzebub's part, although there are a few other matching lines. I will compare the Saint George speech first:

Truro Play

   Hear comes I son George
   from England have I sprung
   sum of my worndras works now for to begin
   first into a Closat I was put
   then into a Cave was lock

   5 I sot my foot upon a Rockke Stone
   where there I made my sad & grievous moan
   how many men have I slew
   and rund the firehe dragon thrue

   10

   I fought them all Courragesly
   and stil got of thire victory
   England's right England admorration
   now ear I drow my bloody meepon

15 ho is the man that doth be fore me Stand
   I will cut him down with my Courrageus hand

Smyth and Lyons (1803-18)

   Here come I knight George
   from England have I sprung
   one of those noble deeds of valour to begin
   seven long Years in a close Cave have I been kept
   and out of that unto a prison leapt
   and out of that unto a rock of Stone
   where there I made my sad & grievous moan
   Many a Giant I did subdue
   I run the fiery Dragon thro' & thro'
   I freed fair Sabra from the stake
   what more could mortal man then undertake
   I fought them all courageously
   and still have gained the victory
   and will always fight for LIBERTY
   here I draw my bloody weapon
   shew me the man that dare me stand
   I'll cut him down with my courageous hand

Setting orthographical differences aside, the variation between equivalent lines in the two speeches generally consists of unremarkable paraphrasing. Lines seven have radically different wording, but essentially convey the same type of boast--that is success in battle. I am not aware of Truro's "how many men have I slew" occurring in any other text.

The significant difference is line thirteen, which is worthy of further discussion. As far as I am aware, the use of the word "admorration" [admiration] is unique to the Truro version of the line, although the line conforms to a pattern found elsewhere, where a variety of alternative rhyme words are used. The most common alternatives are "nation," "reason" and "wrong," all of which more or less rhyme with the subsequent "bloody weapon" line. With this degree of variation among the sixteen or so examples I have been able to locate, it is difficult to say what the original couplet would have been. Conflating several similar versions, one distinct variant of the couplet appears to be:

   England's right and England's reason
   That makes me carry this bloody weapon

However, the variant that is more relevant to Truro is:

   England's right and England's nation
   Here I draw my bloody weapon.

The rhyme seems not to be satisfactory in either variant, and the other variations may have arisen as a result of attempts to resolve or improve the rhyme. Because of its Anglo-centric sentiment, it is easy to imagine that the latter variants might not have been popular in Ireland. However, an Irish adaptation was recorded in Ballybrennan, Wexford, about 1818:

   For England's right and Ireland's nation
   Here I draw my bloody weapon (Kennedy 1863, 584).

The few other occurrences of this variant I have found from Ireland use the same wording. From the Irish perspective, it may be an improvement on the English version, but it still could have been at odds with Irish sensitivities of whatever persuasion. This could explain the use of a replacement line regarding liberty in the Irish chapbook texts and their derivatives. Furthermore, the capitalisation of the word "liberty" in the early nineteenth-century editions of the chapbooks (Boyes et al. 1999) suggests a deliberate attempt to indulge protestant Irish sentiments [9]. The verses of the Irish chapbooks are all in couplets but, in using the "liberty" line, a pair of couplets is transformed into a triplet plus an isolated line. It is likely, therefore, that the "liberty" line was substituted for an earlier "nation" line.

A conclusion to be drawn from this discussion so far is that there appear to have been two early versions of the Irish plays--the chapbook version, and a pre-chapbook version. Evidently, the Truro and the pre-chapbook Irish versions originally drew their material from the same ultimate source. While the Truro text predates the Belfast chapbook (the earliest Irish text) by ten to fifteen years, the ultimate textual source could equally have been Irish or English. In Ireland, a standardised pre-chapbook form (for example, Ballybrennan) was used as the basis for the Christmas Rhyme chapbook. A few changes or adaptations were made for the chapbook, but along the way some material was evidently lost. Most obviously, the cure is missing from the chapbook, even though the doctor is called in.

Returning to the "nation" couplet, in England these lines normally come immediately after the following variant of Prince, King or Saint George's self-introduction:

   I am Prince George that noble knight
   Who shed his blood for England's right.

In some versions, George may be "valiant" rather than "noble," and his blood may be "spilled" or "spent" for England's right, or "lost by English fight." This couplet itself may be succeeded by an alternative to the "nation" couplet, as follows:

   England's right I will maintain
   I'll fight for old England once again

To complicate matters, the latter lines also appear in the Truro play in speech seventeen:

   had it ben a thousand or ten thousand such men as thee i would fight
   for to mentain grait britans right
   great britians right I will mentain
   and fight free for england wance again

It seems possible, therefore, that two different versions of the traditional play were collated in the Truro text.

The Truro text lacks the Irish couplet about freeing Sabra. On the other hand, Sabra's name is typically found in other Cornish plays, in the line: "By which I gained fair Sabra the King of Egypt's daughter." These lines come from the text published by Davies Gilbert (1823), and similar lines can be found in the texts published by Sandys in Hone's Every-day Book (Hone 1826, 2:122-6) and in Sandys' own Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern (Sandys 1833). This line also appears in the play from Silverton, Devon (Fox-Strangways 1899/1900).

The texts of the Irish folk plays before about 1900 conform to a single standard, albeit with a small number of variations between the chapbook and pre-chapbook versions. However, plays with "Irish" features are found in a number of locations outside Ireland--Tenby, Hulme, Manchester, the Isle of Man and of course Truro--all on or close to the Irish Sea coast. There remains the question of how the texts were transmitted. Irish immigration may account for the occurrences in Hulme and Manchester (Cass et al. 2003), but fast packet shipping may also have been a factor. It was, for instance, the reason why there were Liverpool readers of The Cornwall Gazette and Falmouth Packet in 1801 and 1802 [10].

Father Christmas and the Turkish Knight

At this point, I need to digress to make the observation that there appears to be a distinct sub-type of the hero-combat play (as defined in Cawte et al. 1967, 27 and 37) that is characterised by the co-ocurrence of Father Christmas and the Turkish Knight. For instance, out of a representative sample of thirty-one plays containing at least one of these characters, twenty-three (74%) contained both. I hope to explore this hypothesis in more detail at a later date, but for now I will make a few general remarks regarding the sub-type's cast and geographical distribution.

Father Christmas is the introducer of the play, and Saint/King George is the hero, with the Turkish Knight as his adversary. As with all hero-combat plays, the Doctor is brought in to cure the loser of the conflict. A particular characteristic in this sub-type is that the Doctor carries with him a bottle of elecampane. (The bottle of elecampane is also found in the Irish plays, which also have a Turkey Champion with different lines, rather than the Turkish Knight.)

Plays of this subtype are most well known from Hampshire and adjacent counties, but they are also found in the West Country. There is, however, no obvious published archetype, such as a chapbook, that can be used for the purposes of comparison. For this study, therefore, I have used four other texts from Cornwall--two different unlocated versions (Sandys in Hone 1826, 2:1226; Sandys 1833, 177), one from Camborne (Tiddy 1923, 144-7) and one from St Keverne (Nance 1925). I will use the descriptive designation Father Christmas and Turkish Knight (or just Father Christmas for brevity) for this group of plays.

Truro is the oldest of the Father Christmas and Turkish Knight plays, but this does not necessarily make it the original source, although it is of course likely that all the plays of this sub-type did ultimately develop from the same original text. The principal difference between Truro and the other Father Christmas plays is Saint George's introductory speech. As already discussed, Truro has the speech used in the Irish plays, whereas the other Father Christmas plays have a different speech, such as the following:

   Here am I, Saint George,
   That worthy champion bold.
   And with my sword and spear
   I won three crowns of gold (Sandys 1833, 177).

Alexander and the King of Egypt, and Evolutionary Implications

The previous speech (for Prince George) is also found in the Alexander and the King of Egypt chapbook text, as are certain other Father Christmas and Turkish Knight lines. Because Truro does have other lines that are found in the Alexander text, and in fact has more such lines than Father Christmas, Truro's omission of the Prince George speech is significant. A probable explanation is that the "Irish" speech was substituted deliberately when the Truro play was compiled from its various sources. Otherwise, the main Alexander lines that also appear in Truro are the speeches of the King of Egypt and Sampo, plus a few of the Doctor's lines.

Allowing for slight variations in the wording, the presence of lines from Alexander and the King of Egypt in both the Truro/Father Christmas and Irish plays provides clues as to their possible evolution. All the Alexander lines that appear in the Irish plays also appear in the Truro/Father Christmas plays. On the other hand, the elecampane speech and the seemingly related Turkish Knight and Turkey Champion characters occur in the Truro/Father Christmas and Irish plays, but not in the Alexander text. Consequently, the evolutionary links between the Alexander and Irish plays must have involved the Truro/Father Christmas plays as an intermediate. Three ancestral routes are possible:

Alexander [right arrow] Truro / Father Christmas [right arrow] Irish

In this case, Alexander lines are lost at each step, and other new lines are added.

Irish [right arrow] Truro / Father Christmas [right arrow] Alexander

Here, Alexander lines are added at each step, perhaps to replace older speeches.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Here, lines are added on the Alexander branch, but are lost on the Irish branch.

Of these, Alexander [right arrow] Truro/Father Christmas [right arrow] Irish is the most likely. This is first because the dates of the versions are consistent with this lineage [11]. Second, there is a strong tendency for texts to lose lines during transmission, rather than gain them, and this is the only route where each step entails a loss of Alexander material.

Unidentified Traditional Parallels

While the three sources discussed account for nearly all the Truro lines that are found in other folk plays, there remain a number of relatively common Truro lines that have not been covered. The more notable examples include:

   Introductory speech number three
      hopen the doar and Lat me in
      i hope your faver i shall wind
      wether irise or wether ifoll
      i will do my endeavour to please you all

   Lines from Saint George's speech number seventeen
      great britians right iwill mentain
      and fight free for england wance again

   The Doctor's cure from speech number thirteen
      are jack take a little of my drip drop
      pour it up in the tiptop

   Lines from the final speech number thirty-one
      here comes i that never come yate
      with a great head and litle wit

These speeches are found in a variety of other folk plays, but it is not yet possible to tell whether they come from another distinct class or classes. They may, however, provide useful leads in the search for such hero-combat subtypes.

Conclusions and Residual Issues

The key conclusions to be drawn from investigating biographical information on the actors listed in this manuscript are that its actual location should be Truro rather than Mylor, and that its date of performance must have been in the late 1780s--making it one of the oldest known English folk-play texts. This corrected date is also supported by physical characteristics of the original manuscript. In addition, it has been possible to determine the correct order of speeches, as a result of which the text conforms more to conventional sequences than the earlier published transcripts.

Someone with easier access to archives in Cornwall may be able to find further information to fill the gaps in the actors' biographies. Such information should improve confidence in the new place and date. Similarly, an expert paper historian may be able to contribute more precise information on the date and provenance of the manuscript's paper.

A consequence of the re-dating of this text is that the inclusion of literary and ballad material in English folk-play texts is now focused on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, emphasising that the plays were generally more variable in content during this period than later. No new literary or ballad parallels were found during this study, but it would be worthwhile repeating the search in the future, when more material has been added to the various full-text online databases.

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.

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.).]

[3] The sheets were folded in half for writing. This is evidenced by the word "sum" [sic] in speech number five that appears in the top right of its sheet. Because the rough corner of the deckle edge is incomplete, the "m" was written on the sheet below, which in this case is the sheet with unnumbered speeches. When working on the latter sheet, the scribe evidently felt that the "m" was an error or blemish and crossed it out. However, with the sheet folded, the original word can still be clearly recognised.

[4] The paper has laid markings, with watermarks in the centre of each half of the folded sheet. The main watermark is a crowned insignia showing Britannia seated above a crossed shield, holding out an olive branch in one hand and with a trident or spear inclined over her other arm. She sits within an inner circle 2 and 1/4 inches in diameter, and an outer double circle 3 and 3/16 inches in diameter. The space between the circles is void, apart from the letter "H" above Britannia's head. The crown resting on the top of the circular badge is 1 and 1/8 inches tall, including the cross, and about 1 and 3/4 inches wide. The countermark is a smaller circle 1 and 1/2 inches in diameter, containing either a decoration or an emblem. Its nature is not totally clear. It may be the flower head of an iris or flag. Alternatively, it may be inverted relative to the figure of Britannia, in which case it could be a representation of three feathers, or possibly a fleur-de-lys. If it does show three feathers, they could represent George IV when he was Prince of Wales (born 1762) and/or Prince Regent (from 1811 to 1820).

[5] Three Cornish sources refer to age of the performers. First, Fortescue Hitchins and Samuel Drew wrote in 1824: "... the practice of these dramatic exhibitions is almost wholly confined to children, or very young persons" (Hitchins and Drew 1824, 1:718). Second, soon afterwards, "J. S. jun" referred to the actors of an unlocated Cornish play as "boys" and "urchins" in a florid letter written to William Hone for his Every-Day Book (Hone 1826, 2:74-5). Third, William Sandys, writing in 1833, stated that in the West of Cornwall the plays were performed "only by persons of the lower order, chiefly young persons ..." (Sandys 1833, cx). It is also worth noting that a small loose leaf at the very end of the Enys Memoranda (n.d.) has the following quotation from Polsue's volume of Parochial Records of Cornwall, which relates to Penryn: "Christmas plays have been continued in this town from time immemorial; but the performance of these dramatic representations are now almost wholly confined to very young persons and boys" (Polsue 1868, 2:92). The wording of the latter half of this sentence seems to paraphrase the wording in Hitchins and Drew.

[6] The family names do not feature as property owners or occupiers in a book on Kenwyn Churchtown and vicinity (Palmer 1996), which suggests that they lived elsewhere in Kenwyn parish, most probably in the built-up area abutting the Borough of Truro.

[7] The Enys family were, and still are, major landowners in western Cornwall. Samuel Enys bought the manor of Kenwyn and Truro in 1706. Their country mansion is at Enys, near Mylor Bridge and Penryn, but they also had town houses in Truro.

[8] The Constable's Lists were compiled in 1803 for each parish, as part of the mobilisation for the war with France. They list all men between the ages of 17 and 55, giving their occupations, and classifying them into four broad categories according to age and marital status:

* First Class. Men aged between 17 and 30, unmarried, no children living under 10 years.

* Second Class. Men aged between 30 to 50, unmarried, no children living under 10 years.

* Third Class. Men aged between 17 to 30, married with two children under 10 years.

* Fourth Class. Remainder of men aged between 17 and 55.

There are also remarks regarding infirmity and membership of the local militias. The Royal Institution of Cornwall holds the Constable's Lists for the Borough of Truro and the adjacent parish of St Clements, but the list for Kenwyn either no longer exists, or has been lost.

[9] While "liberty" has a long history as a war cry for revolutionaries worldwide, in Ireland the slogan "civil and religious liberty" is particularly associated with the protestant Orange Order.

[10] In 1801 and 1802 the masthead of The Cornwall Gazette and Falmouth Packet boasted "Circulated with utmost expedition through London, Liverpool, Hull, Bristol," etc. This was because Falmouth, being the westernmost port for packet ships in England, was often the first recipient of news from overseas, and the direct packets to Liverpool could deliver the news faster than the time it took for coaches to reach London and then travel on to the provinces.

[11] Alexander and the King of Egypt is currently the oldest known full hero-combat text, dated by Preston et al. (1977) somewhere between 1746 and 1769. Truro is the oldest Father Christmas and Turkish Knight text, now dated in this paper in the late 1780s. The earliest Irish text is the Smyth and Lyons chapbook dated somewhere between 1803 and 1818 (Boyes et al. 1999)

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Biographical Note

Peter Millington is a founder member of the Traditional Drama Research Group, whose website he manages (www.folkplay.info). He gained his Ph.D. in 2002 at the University of Sheffield on "The Origins and Development of English Traditional Drama." His long-standing interests include the folk plays and related customs of Nottinghamshire, and the use of computers as an aid for analysing traditional texts.

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