Sherwood Forest is a region that still retains much of the quaint
customs and holiday games of the olden time. A day or two after my
arrival at the Abbey, as I was walking in the cloisters, I heard the
sound of rustic music, and now and then a burst of merriment,
proceeding from the interior of the mansion. Presently the chamberlain
came and informed me that a party of country lads were in the servants'
hall, performing Plough Monday antics, and invited me to witness their
mummery. I gladly assented, for I am somewhat curious about these
relics of popular usages. The servants' hall was a fit place for the
exhibition of an old Gothic game. It was a chamber of great extent,
which in monkish times had been the refectory of the Abbey. A row of
massive columns extended lengthwise through the centre, whence sprung
Gothic arches, supporting the low vaulted ceiling. Here was a set of
rustics dressed up in something of the style represented in the books
concerning popular antiquities. One was in a rough garb of frieze, with
his head muffled in bear-skin, and a bell dangling behind him, that
jingled at every movement. He was the clown, or fool of the party,
probably a traditional representative of the ancient satyr. The rest
were decorated with ribbons and armed with wooden swords. The leader of
the troop recited the old ballad of St. George and the Dragon, which
had been current among the country people for ages; his companions
accompanied the recitation with some rude attempt at acting, while the
clown cut all kinds of antics.
To these succeeded a set of morris-dancers, gayly dressed up with
ribbons and hawks'-bells. In this troop we had Robin Hood and Maid
Marian, the latter represented by a smooth-faced boy; also Beelzebub,
equipped with a broom, and accompanied by his wife Bessy, a termagant
old beldame. These rude pageants are the lingering remains of the old
customs of Plough Monday, when bands of rustics, fantastically dressed,
and furnished with pipe and tabor, dragged what was called the "fool
plough" from house to house, singing ballads and performing antics, for
which they were rewarded with money and good cheer.
But it is not in "merry Sherwood Forest" alone that these remnants of
old times prevail. They are to be met with in most of the counties
north of the Trent, which classic stream seems to be the boundary line
of primitive customs. During my recent Christmas sojourn at Barlboro'
Hall, on the skirts of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, I had witnessed many
of the rustic festivities peculiar to that joyous season, which have
rashly been pronounced obsolete, by those who draw their experience
merely from city life. I had seen the great Yule log put on the fire on
Christmas Eve, and the wassail bowl sent round, brimming with its spicy
beverage. I had heard carols beneath my window by the choristers of the
neighboring village, who went their rounds about the ancient Hall at
midnight, according to immemorial custom. We had mummers and mimers
too, with the story of St. George and the Dragon, and other ballads and
traditional dialogues, together with the famous old interlude of the
Hobby Horse, all represented in the antechamber and servants' hall by
rustics, who inherited the custom and the poetry from preceding
generations. The boar's head, crowned with rosemary, had taken its
honored station among the Christmas cheer; the festal board had been
attended by glee singers and minstrels from the village to entertain
the company with hereditary songs and catches during their repast; and
the old Pyrrhic game of the sword dance, handed down since the time of
the Romans, was admirably performed in the court-yard of the mansion by
a band of young men, lithe and supple in their forms and graceful in
their movements, who, I was told, went the rounds of the villages and
country-seats during the Christmas holidays.
I specify these rural pageants and ceremonials, which I saw during my
sojourn in this neighborhood, because it has been deemed that some of
the anecdotes of holiday customs given in my preceding writings,
related to usages which have entirely passed away. Critics who reside
in cities have little idea of the primitive manners and observances,
which still prevail in remote and rural neighborhoods.
In fact, in crossing the Trent one seems to step back into old times;
and in the villages of Sherwood Forest we are in a black-letter region.
The moss-green cottages, the lowly mansions of gray stone, the Gothic
crosses at each end of the villages, and the tall Maypole in the
centre, transport us in imagination to foregone centuries; everything
has a quaint and antiquated air.
The tenantry on the Abbey estate partake of this primitive character.
Some of the families have rented farms there for nearly three hundred
years; and, notwithstanding that their mansions fell to decay, and
every thing about them partook of the general waste and misrule of the
Byron dynasty, yet nothing could uproot them from their native soil. I
am happy to say, that Colonel Wildman has taken these stanch loyal
families under his peculiar care. He has favored them in their rents,
repaired, or rather rebuilt their farm-houses, and has enabled families
that had almost sunk into the class of mere rustic laborers, once more
to hold up their heads among the yeomanry of the land.
I visited one of these renovated establishments that had but lately
been a mere ruin, and now was a substantial grange. It was inhabited by
a young couple. The good woman showed every part of the establishment
with decent pride, exulting in its comfort and respectability. Her
husband, I understood, had risen in consequence with the improvement of
his mansion, and now began to be known among his rustic neighbors by
the appellation of "the young Squire."