On Friday, 26th of December (known as Boxing Day in the UK*), my husband and I drove up to Oxford to watch a local Christmas event that we had heard about. A Mummers Play, which is an old English folk play acted out in public, usually by men in historical costume.

We were told that in the village, Headington Quarry, on the outskirts of Oxford, a local Morris dancing group would be performing a ‘Mummers Play’ on Boxing Day. The group ‘Headington Quarry Morris’ had been performing this play for many years at Christmas.

A ‘Mummers Play’ is an old English folk play performed by amateur actors, usually all men from the local community. The actors wear costume and play various parts in a play which is about a heroic deed, particularly George and the Dragon. Generally the play themes are about good against evil, light against dark or life versus death. These events were very popular during the Medieval period. particularly during festivals such as Christmas or Easter. Many groups in the UK still perform these old traditional plays today.

On Boxing Day, this group travels between 4 pubs in the village and performs the play at each pub to a gathered audience. By the time we had arrived at the first pub, the play had just finished. The audience and play members were just starting to walk down to the next pub to prepare to act again.

Since we were somewhat early for the next event, we walked towards the local church to see the gravestone of a famous concertina player, William Kimber, which we found. As we left the churchyard, we spotted an information board informing us of that the graveyard contained gravestones for William Kimber, and also the famous writer, C.S. Lewis. We will return someday and look for his headstone next time.

A few minutes down from the church is the local pub, the Six Bells. The Mummers Play was scheduled to start at 11.45 am outside in the pub car park. There were many people already standing around, waiting, wrapped up against the cold. There were many scarves, gloves and brightly coloured woolly hats on show.

A small group of bell ringers stood behind a table, by the building and played carols for five minutes on small hand bells to keep everyone entertained while the Mummers put on their costumes.

When ready, one of the actors walked forward, introduced himself and began to explain the story. The rest of the actors then appeared and acted out their scenes.

Our play was about St George, the hero in the play, sword fighting against a Turkish Knight. Both actors did do play fighting with their swords for a quite a while.
But St George was stabbed by the Turkish man. He was badly wounded and is only saved when a doctor comes to successfully cure him with strange potions and magic.

The crowd shouted ‘Hurray’ when St George recovered. To my surprise the devil, Beelzebub, also made a brief appearance carrying a wooden club. I am still not sure why he was in the play or what he was going to do. Finally, all the actors join together and do some folk dancing.

Once the actors had finished their dancing, we were entertained once again by bell ringers with more carols. It was lovely to hear ‘Silent Night‘ and you could hear that many people in the audience were humming along to this well-known tune.

The actors who had been in the play changed costume and quickly appeared once again, but this time in special rapper dance costume. They danced a short Rapper Sword Dance using flexible steel swords.

Dancing in a pattern, the men twisted, turned and spun until finally they raised their swords, now all woven into each other forming a shining steel star shape.

We had a lovely time watching the men acting and dancing. We enjoyed the experience of seeing something that was very old and traditional.

*Boxing Day was originally a day when gifts were given to the poor but it has now become part of the Christmas festival.