Mummers Play - Music

Music

There are several traditional songs associated with mumming plays; the "calling-on" songs of sword dance teams are related:

• The Singing of the Travels by the Symondsbury Mummers, appears on SayDisc CD-SDL425 English Customs and Traditions (1997) along with an extract from the Antrobus, Cheshire, Soulcakers' Play
  • It also appears on the World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. Vol 1. England, Rounder 1741, CD (1998/reis), cut#16b
• The Singing of the Travels was also recorded by the Silly Sisters (Maddy Prior and June Tabor). Silly Sisters, Takoma TAK 7077, LP (1977), cut# 6 (Singing the Travels)
• A Calling-on Song by Steeleye Span from their first album Hark! The Village Wait is based on a sword-dance or pace-egg play calling-on song, in which the characters are introduced one by one
• "The Mummers' Dance," a hit song from the album The Book of Secrets by Loreena McKennitt, refers to traditional mummers' play as performed in Ireland.
• England in Ribbons, a song by Hugh Lupton and Chris Wood is based around the characters of a traditional English mummers' play. It gave its name to a two hour programme of traditional and traditionally-rooted English music, broadcast by BBC Radio 3 as the culmination of a whole day of English music, on St George's Day 2006
• The Mummer's Song, performed by the Canadian folk group Great Big Sea, but originally written by the Newfoundland folk band Simani, is an arrangement of the traditional song The Mummer's Carol, which details the mummering tradition in Newfoundland and Labrador

Also XTC released an album entitled 'Mummer' in 1983.