From a Cornish Window Part 29

DECEMBER.

Hard by the edge of the sand-hills, and close beside the high road on the last rise before it dips to the coast, stands a turfed embankment surrounded by a shallow fosse. This is none of our ancient camps ('castles' we call them in Cornwall), as you perceive upon stepping within the enclosure, which rises in a complete circle save for two entrances cut through the bank and facing one another. You are standing in a perfectly level area a hundred and thirty feet in diameter; the surrounding rampart rises to a height of eight or nine feet, narrowing towards the top, where it is seven feet wide; and around its inner side you may trace seven or eight rows of seats cut in the turf, but now almost obliterated by the gra.s.s.

This Round (as we call it) was once an open-air theatre or planguary (_plain-an-guare_, place of the play). It has possibly a still older history, and may have been used by the old Cornish for their councils and rustic sports; but we know that it was used as a theatre, perhaps as early as the fourteenth century, certainly as late as the late sixteenth: and, what is more, we have preserved for us some of the plays performed in it.

They are sacred or miracle plays, of course. If you draw a line from entrance to entrance, then at right angles to it there runs from the circ.u.mference towards the centre of the area a straight shallow trench, terminating in a spoon-shaped pit. The trench is now a mere depression not more than a foot deep, the pit three feet: but doubtless time has levelled them up, and there is every reason to suppose that the pit served to represent h.e.l.l (or, in the drama of The Resurrection, the Grave), and the trench allowed the performers, after being thrust down into perdition, to regain the green-room un.o.bserved--either actually un.o.bserved, the trench being covered, or by a polite fiction, the audience pretending not to see. My private belief is that, the stage being erected above and along the trench, they were actually hidden while they made their exit.

Where the trench meets the rampart a semi-circular hollow, about ten feet in diameter, makes a breach in the rows of seats. Here, no doubt, stood the green-room.

The first notice of the performance of these plays occurs in Carew's _Survey of Cornwall_, published in 1602:--

"Pastimes to delight the mind, the Cornishmen have guary miracles and three-men's songs: and for exercise of the body hunting, hawking, shooting, wrestling, hurling, and such other games.

"The guary miracle, in English a miracle play, is a kind of Interlude compiled in Cornish out of some scripture history with that grossness which accompanied the Romans' _vetus comedia_. For representing it they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open field, having the diameter of this inclosed plain some forty or fifty foot.

The country people flock from all sides, many miles off, to hear and see it; for they have therein devils and devices to delight as well the eye as the ear; the players con not their parts without book, but are prompted by one called the Ordinary, who followeth at their back with the book in his hand and telleth them softly what they must p.r.o.nounce aloud."

Our Round, you observe, greatly exceeds the dimensions given by Carew.

But there were several in the west: one for instance, traceable fifty years ago, at the northern end of the town of Redruth, which still keeps the name of Planguary; and another magnificent one, of stone, near the church-town of St. Just by the Land's End. Carew may have seen only the smaller specimens.

As for the plays--well, they are by no means masterpieces of literature, yet they reveal here and there perceptions of beauty such as go with sincerity even though it be artless. Beautiful for instance is the idea, if primitive the writing, of a scene in one, _Origo Mundi_, where Adam, bowed with years, sends his son Seth to the gate of Paradise to beg his release from the weariness of living (I quote from Norris's translation):--

"O dear G.o.d, I am weary, Gladly would I see once The time to depart.

Strong are the roots of the briars, That my arms are broken Tearing up many of them.

"Seth my son I will send To the gate of Paradise forthwith, To the Cherub, the guardian.

Ask him if there will be for me Oil of mercy at the last From the Father, the G.o.d of Grace."

Seth answers that he does not know the road to Paradise. "Follow," says Adam--

"Follow the prints of my feet, burnt; No gra.s.s or flower in the world grows In that same road where I went-- I and thy Mother surely also-- Thou wilt see the tokens."

Fine too is the story, in the _Pa.s.sio Domini Nostri_, of the blind soldier Longius, who is led forward and given a lance, to pierce Christ's body on the Cross. He thrusts and the holy blood heals him of his blindness.

Local colour is sparingly imported. One of the executioners, as he bores the Cross, says boastfully:--

"I will bore a hole for the one hand, There is not a fellow west of Hayle Who can bore better."

--And in the _Resurrectio_ Pilate rewards the gaoler for his trustiness with the Cornish manors of 'Fekenal, Carvenow and Merthyn,' and promises the soldiers by the Sepulchre 'the plain of Dansotha and Barrow Heath.'

A simplicity scarcely less refreshing is exhibited in _The Life of St.

Meriasec_ (a play recently recovered) by a scholar whom a pompous pedagogue is showing off. He says:--

"G.o.d help A, B, and C!

The end of the song is D: No more is known to me,"

But promises to learn more after dinner.

Enthusiasts beg us to make the experiment of 'reviving' these old plays in their old surroundings. But here I pause, while admitting the temptation.

One would like to give life again, if only for a day, to the picture which Mr. Norris conjures up:--

"The bare granite plain of St. Just, in view of Cape Cornwall and of the transparent sea which beats against that magnificent headland. . . . The mighty gathering of people from many miles around hardly showing like a crowd in that extended region, where nothing ever grows to limit the view on any side, with their booths and tents, absolutely necessary where so many people had to remain three days on the spot, would give a character to the a.s.sembly probably more like what we hear of the so-called religious revivals in America than of anything witnessed in more sober Europe."

But alas! I foresee the terrible unreality which would infect the whole business. Very pretty, no doubt, and suggestive would be the picture of the audience arrayed around the turf benches--

"In gradibus sedit populus de cespite factis--"

But one does not want an audience to be acting; and this audience would be making-believe even more heroically than the actors--that is, if it took the trouble to be in earnest at all. For the success of the experiment would depend on our reconstructing the whole scene--the ring of entranced spectators as well as the primitive show; and the country-people would probably, and not entirely without reason, regard the business as 'a stupid old May game.' The only spectators properly impressed would be a handful of visitors and solemn antiquarians. I can see those visitors.

If it has ever been your lot to witness the performance of a 'literary'

play in London and cast an eye over the audience it attracts, you too will know them and their stigmata--their ineffable attire, their strange hirsuteness, their air of combining instruction with amus.e.m.e.nt, their soft felt hats indented along the crown. No! We may, perhaps, produce new religious dramas in these ancient Rounds: decidedly we cannot revive the old ones.

While I ponder these things, standing in the deserted Round, there comes to me--across the sky where the plovers wheel and flash in the wintry sunshine--the sound of men's voices carolling at an unseen farm. They are singing _The First Nowell_; but the fourth Nowell--the fourth of the refrain--is the _clou_ of that most common, most excellent carol, and gloriously the tenors and ba.s.ses rise to it. No, we cannot revive the old Miracle Plays: but here in the Christmas Carols we have something as artlessly beautiful which we can still preserve, for with them we have not to revive, but merely to preserve, the conditions.

In a preface to a little book of carols chosen (and with good judgment) some years ago by the Rev. H. R. Bramley, of Magdalen College, Oxford, and well edited in the matter of music by Sir John Stainer, I read that--

"The time-honoured and delightful custom of thus celebrating the Birthday of the Holy Child seems, with some change of form, to be steadily and rapidly gaining ground. Instead of the itinerant ballad-singer, or the little bands of wandering children, the practice of singing carols in Divine Service, or by a full choir at some fixed meeting, is becoming prevalent."

Since Mr. Bramley wrote these words the practice has grown more prevalent, and the shepherds of Bethlehem are in process of becoming thoroughly sophisticated and self-conscious. For that is what it means. You may (as hara.s.sed bishops will admit) do a number of irrelevant things in church, but you cannot sing the best carols there. You cannot toll in your congregation, seat your organist at the organ, array your full choir in surplices, and tune up to sing, for example--

"Rise up, rise up, brother Dives, And come along with me; There's a place in h.e.l.l prepared for you To sit on the serpent's knee."

Or this--

"In a manger laid and wrapped I was-- So very poor, this was my chance-- Between an ox and a silly poor a.s.s, To call my true love to the dance."

Or this--

"Joseph did whistle and Mary did sing, And all the bells on earth did ring On Christmas Day in the morning."

These are verses from carols, and from excellent carols: but I protest that with 'choirs and places where they sing' they will be found incongruous. Indeed, Mr. Bramley admits it. Of his collection "some," he says, "from their legendary, festive or otherwise less serious character, are unfit for use within the church."

Now since, as we know, these old carols were written to be sung in the open air, or in the halls and kitchens of private houses, I prefer to put Mr. Bramley's proposition conversely, and say that the church is an unsuitable place for carol singing. If the clergy persist in so confining it, they will no doubt in process of time evolve a number of new compositions which differ from ordinary hymns sufficiently to be called carols, but from which the peculiar charm of the carol has evaporated.

This charm (let me add) by no means consists in mere primitiveness or mere archaism. Genuine carols (if we could only get rid of affectation and be honest authors in our own century without straining to age ourselves back into the fifteenth) might be written to-day as appropriately as ever.

'Joseph did whistle,' &c., was no less unsuited at the date of its composition to performance by a full choir in a chancel than it is to-day.

But whatever the precise nature of the charm may be, you can prove by a very simple experiment that such a performance tends to impair it.

a.s.semble a number of carollers about your doorstep or within your hall, and listen to their rendering of 'The first good joy,' or 'The angel Gabriel;' then take them off to church and let them sing these same ditties to an organ accompaniment. You will find that, strive against it as they may, the tune drags slower and slower; the poem has become a spiritless jingle, at once dismal and trivial. Take the poor thing out into the fresh air again and revive it with a fife and drum; stay it with flagons and comfort it with apples, for it is sick of improper feeding.

No, no: such a carol as 'G.o.d rest you, merry gentlemen,' has a note which neither is suited by, nor can be suited to, what people call 'the sacred edifice': while 'Joseph was an old man,' 'I saw three ships' and 'The first good joy' are plainly impossible. a.s.sociate them with organ and surpliced choir, and you are mixing up things that differ. Omit them, at the same time banning the house-to-house caroller, and you tyrannically limit men's devotional impulses. I am told that the clergy frown upon house-to-house carolling, because they believe it encourages drunkenness.

Why then, let them take the business in hand and see that too much drink is neither taken nor offered. This ought not to be very difficult.

But, as with the old plays, so with carol-singing, it is easier and more consonant with the Puritan temper to abolish a practice than to elevate it and clear away abuses: and the half-instructed mind is taught with fatal facility to condemn use and abuse in a lump, to believe carol-singing a wile of the Evil One because Bill once went around carol-singing and came home drunk.

In parishes where a more tolerant spirit prevails I am glad to note that the old custom, and even a taste for the finer ditties, seem to be reviving. Certainly the carollers visit us in greater numbers and sing with more evidence of careful practice than they did eight or ten years ago: and friends in various parts of England have a like story to tell.

In this corner the rigour of winter does not usually begin before January, and it is no unusual thing to be able to sit out of doors in sunshine for an hour or so in the afternoon of Christmas Day. The vessels in sight fly their flags and carry bunches of holly at their topmast-heads: and I confess the day is made cheerfuller for us if they are answered by the voices of carollers on the waterside, or if, walking inland, I hear the note of the clarionet in some 'town-place' or meet a singing-party tramping between farm and farm.