I often wonder if the mumming plays of Europe were the forerunner of the Masonic 3rd degree ritual called "The Murder of Hiram Abiff." Dale Cockrell was of the opinion that mumming plays might have been the origin of blackface minstrelsy and he has some excellent points. But I don't recall that Professor Cockrell linked the mumming play to the 3rd degree ritual.

The mumming play consisted of a troupe of young bachelors going from door to door offering to the occupants a play performed in the kitchen for donations. Permission being received, one man took a broom and swept off part of the kitchen floor and within this hallowed area, the play commenced.

The casst of characters ran something like: hero, damsel (played by a man), villain, doctor, singers, etc. Hero and villain battle for the damsel. The villain wears blackface. During the battle, the villain slays the hero with sword or knife. At this point, mock blood and realistic acting is employed to produce fright among the audience a real slaying has just taken place. Ladies of the house were known to faint during the mock-slayings.

Other characters lament over the hero's death and a doctor is brought in. The doc announces that he has special powers learned from his travels to exotic foreign lands. He beds over the body and does some mumbo-jumbo and the body quickens and rises. He vanquishes the villain and takes the damsel's hand and there is great celebration with much song and dance. One man would go through the audience with a hat or tray or cup and and people would throw in what they thought appropriate.

I am struck by the similarities between the mumming play and the 3rd degree ritual and believed that the ritual may have derived from the play. The blackface villain represents the darkness and the hero is the autumn sun. During that time of year, the nights grow longer than the days and so the dark villain overcomes the hero. But after the passing of the winter solstice, the days begin to lengthen once again and the solar hero is likewise resurrected and the earth celebrates by blooming forth with life.

According to a friend who is a Mason, they do indeed recognize within the lodge that Hiram Abiff is the sun. The above astro-theological explanation was Professor Cockrell's explanation of the myth underlying the mumming play. So we see the connection.

Some of the early American minstrels were preserved on 19th century postcards and they are often astonishing. One depicts a blackface character with a broom and a hero and a man in drag as the damsel and several musicians. The title of the postcard is "Fun in the Kitchen" which again points directly to the mumming play as the originator of blackface minstrelsy since the mumming play itself was never known to have reached the shores of the United States.

I was struck by the blackface man with the broom because the broom or besom was supposedly to many pagans what the cross was to Christians. Yet the story plot is quite similar to that of Jesus. But also of many earlier saviors. Then Eliade relates that New Guinean boat captains often don blackface and put a broom up in the mast. And the blackface character in the mumming play was quite often a ship captain by trade. It's all very odd, isn't it?

Even stranger is that Freemasonry did eventually create a real Hiram Abiff when some NY Masons in 1826 murdered a defector known as Captain William Morgan. Curiouser and curiouser.

With minstrelsy gone pretty much, the 3rd degree ritual of Freemasonry may be the only surviving remnant of the mumming play. And if both mistrelsy and Masonry have the same source in the mumming then minstrelsy can be said after a fashion to Masonic music.