The Bampton Mummers

Bampton is famous for its Traditional Morris dancing, but there is another tradition, The Bampton Mummers, that is not quite as famous, but certainly has created as much interest amongst writers of books on folklore, myths and mythology. In spite of all that has been written and researched, there is still a lot of doubt as to its origins and history, but these doubts have had the tendency to maintain the interest of people in the play. Different village Mummer plays will often have identical words. For instance, parts of the Blewbury play, are word for word the same as Bampton's, yet spoken by a completely different character in their play. There are many Mummer plays performed throughout the country; some have been revived after being in hibernation for decades or longer; some have been adopted from other villages or areas; but according to local knowledge, the traditional Bampton play can be traced back to at least the Nineteenth Century. It is quite possible that such plays are older still.

Up until the 1960s, the words were handed down by word of mouth, providing scope, one could presume, for adulteration. In 1970, however, an interesting thing happened which would seem to suggest that the words of the Bampton play - and perhaps therefore also the others - are in fact still the original ones used from when the play was first performed. Actors were in short supply, and the Company was desperately looking around for someone to play Father Christmas, when they managed to acquire the services of one Bobby Wells (son of the legendary Jingy Wells), who had last performed the Mummer play in 1938. Without referring to the script, Bobby used the exact same words that were in the script! Now then, this is not as unusual as it might seem, because it has long been established that, for instance, where poems and verse are handed down by word of mouth only, and not written down, and where the recipient is being strictly tutored by the person handing the words down, then the words are likely to be handed down over centuries without change. An example of this is the children’s rhyme ‘Eenie, meenie, minie, mo’, still taught to English children by their parents, and which is a rhyme based on a counting system which certainly predates the Roman occupation of Britain!

But back to the Bampton Mummers!

The Bampton play has ten characters – with such characters as Father Christmas, Robin Hood, St. George, a ‘doctor’, and a Prussian King - and is performed in two acts, which researchers have shown is unique in itself, since other Mummer plays have only one act. The plot however, seems to be very close to the other plays performed elsewhere, with people being killed, but then revived by the ‘doctor’. The acts of being killed and then being raised from the dead, may have something to do with pagan rituals of the past, and indeed could be an echo of real human sacrifice designed to ensure the return of the sun in times when the nights were longest. Alternatively, it could be linked simply to the death of the old year, and the birth of the new. But the truth is that the origins of the plays have been lost in the mists of time, although you never know when some archaeologist or historian might just uncover something to shed light on the mystery.