The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #3527   Message #18133
Posted By: Bruce O.
22-Dec-97 - 09:29 PM
Thread Name: Hal An Tow: notes?
Subject: RE: Hal An Tow: notes?
Thank you, Dick. But back to Hal an tow and Furry Dance. These songs look like English Mummers' Plays in miniature. There are a numbers of works on these, but the biggest selection of actual plays I've seen is R. J. E. Tiddy's, published postumously as 'The Mummer's Play', 1923, reprinted 1972. Some of these have short carols at the end, and in some plays the characters danced as the carols were sung.

Not noted as danced is the end song in the Plough Jack Play from North Lincolnshire

Good master and good mistress
As you sit round your fire
Remember us poor plough boys
Who plough the muck and mire
The muck it is so nasty
The mire it is so near
We thank you for civility
For what you've given us here.
We wish you a merry Xmas
And a Happy New Year.
Good master and good mistress
You see our fool's gone out [departed character in the play]
We make it our ability
To follow him about.