CHRISTMAS MUMMERS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1008, 24 December 1910, Page 12

CHRISTMAS MUMMERS.

Years ago Christmas pastimes; were of rather a wilder order than they are in these days. All. sorts of pranks wore played; there was -nothing in tile way, of law and order. So much might almost be gathered from the fact that a Lord of Misrule was appointed to direct in a misdirected kind of manner the festivities. He was master, of the cercipomes from Christmas Eve until Twelfth Night, Each big baronial hall where friends "and relatives, retainers, and the people of the neighbourhood did congregate, had its Lord of Misrule. Villages and other com-, munities frequently appointed one. He had full powers-to help all to enjoy the fun by giving themselves up completely to the spirit of the time. On his .appointment he made a humorous speech,, inviting tho people to be wise enough to make fools of themselves, and claiming that he had been invested with magic powers enabling him to turn all present into children. Therefor^,. they must all bo children for the time, and act as such. He had plenty to do, this Lord of Misrule. As one of the historians—a somewhat disgruntled one—puts it, tho time was spent in "revelling, epicurisme, wantoncsse, idlenesse, dancing, drinking, stage plaies, masques, and carnal pomps and jollity." Tllo "plaies" and masques were great events. Stagecraft in those days— long before mid long after Elizabethan times—was not what it is now, but in high places the masque, a quaint sort of play, was produced on a really magnificent scale, esepccially at the court, where tho Lord of Misrule held sway even over lioyally. Among the characters appearing in the medley were heathen deities, angels, elves, l'airios, other spirits, and demons.