GQZ5 059 SOULS' KIOMT'S DREAM—POTTER T«0?-tPSON.-t!1E EWe l.AMB> By LONIIOM .KIN MATHEWS, CORK STREET attiata. Slew ^otk BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 The date shows when this volume was taken. To renew thlsjjook copy the call No. and give to < the llbraTUn. HOME USE RULES ../' All Books suhject to recall All borrowers must regis- ter in the library to borrow books for home use. ' All books must be re- turned at end of college year for inspection- and repairs. Limited books must be - returned within the four' * week limit and not renewed. "' Students must return all books before leaving town. ■ " Officers should arrange for the return of books wanted during their absence from town. Vohimes of periodicals and of pamphlets are held ' in 'the library as much as possible. For special pur- '^ poses they are given out for -^ a limited time, Borrowera should not use tiieir library privileges for the benefit of other persons. Books of special value and gift books, when the giver wishes it, are not allowed to circulate. Readers are asked to re- port all cases of books marked or mutilated. Do not daface booln by marks and writuig:. PR 6025.OM95P7"'"'"' "-"""^ ."ays Of the Ridings, 3 1924 013 647 866 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013647866 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS BY F, W. MOORMAN AUTHOR OF '*THE MAY KING I A PLAV " AND EDITOR OF "YORKSHIRE DIALECT POEMS, 1673-1915" LONDON if 1 ELKIN MATHEWS, CORK STREET 1919 p CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE .... .7 AN ALL souls' NIGHT's DREAM . . ,27 POTTER THOMPSON . . . .43 THE EWE LAMB ..... 73 PREFACE This little volume of Yorkshire dialect plays is meant to be a sequel to the volume of dialect verse, entitled Songs of the Ridings, which I published a year ago. My former purpose was to furnish poems which might be read in the cottage and recited or sung at social gatherings of the people. My appeal now is to the peasant or artisan actor, and my hope is that I may do something to quicken an interest in dramatic art in Yorkshire and help in the establishment of folk- festivals of song and dance and drama throughout the towns and villages of the three Ridings. " Back to the land " is the slogan of to-day, but it will soon degenerate into a meaningless parrot- cry, unless steps are taken to make life on the land worth living. Parliament may put up cottages for the peasant, fix a standard wage for him or establish him in a small-holding ; but, having spiritual needs, he cannot live on bread and bricks alone. The war has stimulated his imagination, and, by bringing him from the cottage to the camp, has deepened his need of comradeship ; and it is in providing opportunities for comradeship and the free play of the imagination that the village life of England to-day fails most of all. Those of us whose acquaintance with the country- side is mainly confined to a summer holiday bring back into the towns a false impression of the peasant's life. It is not only that we witness his labours at the pleasantest season of the year, but we also see him 7 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS under abnormal conditions. The harvest is almost the only prolonged occupation of farm life which provides comradeship for the agricultural labourer ; most of his other tasks are plied in solitude. Where shall we find a lonelier figure than the" ploughman in his furrow, the shepherd on the roofless moor or the cowman in his byre draining the udders dry by the feeble light of a stable lantern in the hours that herald in a winter dawn? It is solitude rather than bitter weather or long hours that breeds dis- content in the countryman and drives him to the town. "Whosoever is delighted in solitude," says Bacon, quoting Aristotle, " is either a wilde Beast or a God," and the peasant, being neither the one nor the other, but a man conscious of social instincts, finds no pleasure in solitude. There was a time when the peasant's life was far less lonely. Before the commons were enclosed, and when the labours of the farm were performed on the communal strips of arable land, the country-side was very like what Langland describes at the opening of Piers Plowman : A fair field, full of folk, found I there between. All manner of men, the mean and the rich, Working and wandering, as the world asketh. Some put them to the plough, and played full seldom, In earing and in sowing, swinked full hard. Above all, the mediseval peasant had his seasons of recreation, his festival holidays, when the labours of plough and sickle ceased, and when he gave himself up to mirth and mumming. The circling , year was to him like the rosary over which he recited his aves and paternosters ; the " gaudies " or larger beads were the holidays set at regular intervals along the 8 PREFACE string, while the smaller beads that lay between were the days for labour in the field. January brought with it Plough Monday, when, bedecked with ribbons or quaintly disguised as grotesques, the peasants carried their plough through the village, sang folk-songs, danced morris dances and bade the householders " Remember the plough-boys." February followed with its Shrovetide wakes, whUe March or April ushered in Easter with all its ceremonial rites and the performance of the play of St George. May Day was high festival, with the dances of Robin and Maid Marian round the maypole. Whitsuntide and Corpus Christi, when the mystery plays were acted, made way for the mystic rites of Midsummer Day, and some time in the summer there were " yeddings " or song contests for all the villagers. Lammastide and Harvest Home, with the racing in the corn-fields for the " mell-sheaf," brought the summer to a close, but the festival mirth continued through Michaelmas and Hallowe'en, tiU it ended in the glories of Christmas. Almost all of this has vanished from the country-side, and the peasant is the poorer in spirit for the loss of it. This festivcil mirth provided something more than relaxation of body and recreation of mind. It made a direct appeal to the imagination, and it laid the foundations of the arts of music, dancing, poetry and the drama. Much of it, too, was religious in origin, and, though the original symbolic significance was often lost sight of, a new interpretation frequently took its place. A Lincolnshire peasant, asked as to the meaning of the dances of the beribboned " plough- Jacks" on Plough Monday, declared: "There's been pleugh-Jacks iver sin' th' Flood. When they coom'd oot o' th' ark an' put th' fost pleugh into th' ground, 9 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS they dressed theirsens up i' bits o' things, an' danced an' capered aboot ; an' they've doon it i' mem'ry o' that iver sin'." Still closer is the connection between th6 folk- festival and poetry. Ballad, song and drama sprang originally from festival mirth and festival worship, and, like Keats's draught of vintage, they tasted of Flora and the country green, Dance and Frovenfal song and sunburnt mirth. In the refrains of the old Scottish ballads, and in the Hymen o Hymenaee of Catullus or the Hey nonino of Shakespeare we may still overhear the beating of the feet of the communal throng as they moved in rhythmic dance. Still closer do we approach to the folk-festival in the choral odes of Pindar and the dramas of ^schylus or Aristophanes. Here the communal throng is visibly before our eyes, and in the development of Greek tragedy and comedy we watch the gradual triumph of the individual element in poetic composition over the communal element which gave it birth and fostered its early growth. With the advance of civilisation poetry has tended to lose touch with the folk and has become more and more the expression of the thoughts and emotions of the individual singer. There has been a great advance in technical skill, but for the gain in subtlety and complexity there has been a corresponding loss in spontaneity and in naturalness of expression. The process of change is well illustrated by the history of the sonnet. As its name implies, this was originally a song-lyric, the song being accompanied by music. It was Proven9al in origin and, like all the other forms of Provencal lyric, it sprang from the folk. But when in the twelfth century the folk-songs of Provence 10 PREFACE were transformed into a troubadour minstrelsy the sonnet lost its primitive character. There was breathed into it the spirit of courtly chivalry, and later, in its new home in Italy, the spirit of Platonic idealism ; it became intricate in structure and elaborately psychological in content, until, in the hey-day of the Renascence, its folk-origin was wholly forgotten ; it took on the most artificial of poetic forms, while the thoughts and emotions to which it gave expression were those of the mediEeval Courts of Love and the Symposium of Plato. In England the ultimate triumph of the individual over the communed element in poetry is to be found in the works of Swinburne. The rich inheritor of all that was best in classic and romantic verse, he invested poetic diction with a richness of colour, and poetic rhythm with a symphonic music, which they had never known before. Moreover, unlike Tennyson, he stood apart from the dominating thoughts of the men and women of his age ; in political and social ideas he spoke for himself and not for the community to which he belonged. In a word, he is the individual artist, not the interpreter through art of the thoughts and aspirations of his fellows. Our poetic art has travelled far since Swinburne published the first series of his Poems and Ballads and the movement has been in the direction of greater simplicity and naturalness, and towards closer sympathy between the thoughts and emotions of the poet on the one hand and those of the folk on the other. The gospel of the Romantic Revival was " a Return to Nature." With master-spirits like Rousseau and Wordsworth, Nature meant something very compre- hensive indeed ; but, as the movement advanced, II PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS there was a gradual narrowing of the horizon, until Nature came to mean simply what men call inanimate Nature, and " a Return to Nature " was simply an escape from society. To Byron High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture, and Byronism became a European cult. The twentieth- century poet needs either to hark back to the larger significance of Rousseau's gospel of a Return to Nature, or to substitute for it the new gospel of "a Return to the Folk." Such a gospel would bring poetry into touch with the progress of modern democracy and with the rise of the twentieth-century folk to self-realisation. Modern democracy cannot do without art and poetry, nor can art and poetry do without democracy ; the sooner a spiritual fellowship is established between them the better will it be for both. By " a Return to the Folk " I mean something more than that the poets of to-morrow, born like Shelley or Swinburne in the hall, or like Tennyson in the rectory, should choose miners or fishermen or loom-workers or agricultural labourers as the heroes of their poems instead of Arthurian knights or the gods and titans of Greek mythology. Poems of this sort are greatly to be desired, but they will not be folk-poetry : they may be for the people and of the people ; they wilt not be by the people, as the primitive folk -poems were and as all true folk- poems must be. The most that the professional poet can do is to train the true folk-poets in the technique of verse or in the structural art of drama, and to arouse in the folk a consciousness that poetry is a prime necessity of a full and rounded life. The real 12 PREFACE folk-poetry can only come from the folk, and the first step towards the creation of a new folk-poetry is the realisation by the modem folk-community of a communal life. Trade unionism and socialism have done much to bring this sense of a communal life into being, but the soci^ist and trade unionist have so far directed their endeavoiirs only towards the further- ance of economic and political ends. Before a modem folk-poetry can arise there must be a recognition of the spiritual oneness of the folk and the creation of a folk-imagination of which folk-poetry is the direct and concrete expression in the symbolic language of art. In the meantime, helpful work can be done by bridging the gulf which separates the old folk-poetry from the new. Scholars and antiquaries have done much to recover the old folk-songs and folk-ballads ; more recently the labours of men like Mr Baring- Gould, Mr Cecil Sharp and Mr Frank Kidson have made us acquainted with much of the old folk -music and many of the old f olk-dS.nces, which were at the point of passing into oblivion. It may well be that the new folk-poetry and folk-drama, when fuUy evolved, will not resemble very closely the folk-poetry of primitive times. The modern folk-community is different from the old in many respects ; it will fashion for itself a new interpretation of life, and a new art wherewith to give expression to new ideas. At the same time it is probable that the new folk- poetry will need to be drafted on to the old ; first, because there is no other stock on which to graft it, and secondly, because folk-poetry is in the main the expression in art of the primary thoughts and emotions, and these are not greatly changed by the progress of civilisation. 13 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS But before a new folk-poetry, or any other form of folk-art, can arise it is necessary for the modern folk- community to feel communally, above all to develop what I have already called a folk-imagination- The Rochdale pioneers, together with the early apostles of trade unionism and socialism have done much to make the people of Western Europe think com- munally, but a communal imagination, expressing itself in poetic or plastic art, has as yet scarcely come to birth, and works of art are looked upon by the people at large as a luxury for the rich rather than as an essential need of the whole community. The reason for this is a spiritual blindness to the intimate relation of art to life. All great art should rise spontaneously from the life of the community. It should be the expression in maVble or bronze, on canvas or on the printed page, of the faith and aspirations of the people in whose midst it takes shape. It should be as natural as the flower to the plant that produces it, as much in har- mony with its surroundings as the triple-towered minster of Durham is to the rock on which it stands and whence it was hewn. When we consider most of our modern art from this standpoint, we realise how unnatural and in- harmonious it is. The heterogeneous collection of pictures in our art galleries, like the buildings in which they are housed, have little relation to the life and thought and sense of beauty of the people for whose education and enjoyment they have been brought together. Among the visitors to these galleries there will be a few to whom the artist's thought and emotion are intelligible, but from the great majority all this will be hidden, and these works of art will 14 PREFACE seem, not an interpretation of life, not an expression of joy or a realisation of prayer, but simply the accumulation of costly articles, useless in themselves and valued merely as symbols of the material well- being of the city or person that owns them. The separation of art from life is carried to its furthest extreme in drama. Of all the arts that of drama should come nearest to .life, for its purpose, as its greatest master has instructed us, is no other than "to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature, to show . . . the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." We all know that the average play of the London and provincial theatres makes no pretence to fulfil this purpose. So far from holding a mirror up to nature, it is wholly bent on presenting to us the unnatural and abnormal, and in effecting an escape from reality. The conflict of ideas, wills and passions, the romance, humour and pathos of real life, and all else that constitutes dramatic action, are to be met with every- where in modern life — except on the stage. The war from which we have at last emerged has been a shrewd tester of the artistic, as well as of the military and economic, prowess of the nation, and it is interesting to compare the effect of the world- struggle upon drama and poetry respectively. The spiritual energy and exaltation of mind, which a war for international justice and freedom has en- gendered, have found their highest expression in the poetry of the years 1914-1919. Never before in the history of England has there been such a chorus of soldier and civilian song. Much of it will soon be forgotten, but none of it has been in vain. It has sustained the nation in its bitter life-and-death 15 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS struggle, inspired our soldiers with courage and our non-combatants with endurance. Often common- place in expression, it has always been noble in sentiment and sincere in utterance ; using little or nothing of the alloy of rhetoric, it has spoken from the heart to the heart. And what of the drama ? Never since the clarion call of Shakespeare's " God for Harry, England and St George ! " rang in the ears of Elizabethan gentlemen has such a golden opportunity been afforded to our dramatists and theatre managers to stiffen the fibre and quicken the pulse of the nation. How have they availed themselves of this opportunity? Their response has been the revue and the melodramatic spy-play, the latter of which, ignoring all the nobler emotions which the confUct has enkindled, has bat- tened on the baser passions which war everywhere let loose — ^the Bolshevist lust for blood and the blind fury that springs from fear. To restore the drama to life and health, to make it worthy of the great heritage bequeathed by Shake- speare, is a task of supreme difSculty and supreme urgency. The repertory theatres of London and the provinces are rendering splendid service to this end ; but they are at present too few in number to effect very much in staying the downward progress of drama. Before reform can come, there must be a new understanding of the nature of drama ; it must be recognised that dramatic art, like all other art, is the crystallisation of the thoughts of the people, the embodiment in the ideal world of the stage of the conflicts and passions, the hopes and fears, the aspira- tion and despair of human nature in its upward struggle from darkness to light, from the beast to 16 PREFACE the divinity. It is useless to inculcate this doctrine merely by precept ; it must pierce to the hearts of men through the coiiviction that comes from concrete example. It is a task of national scope and import- ance, but the bigness of the task, no less than the bigness of the nation, makes it exceedingly difficult to undertake a reform of the drarfta on a national scale. The War has taught us to think imperially ; the Peace must teach us to think parochially. We must turn our backs upon the metropolis, and seek out the provinces — the provincial city, the market- town, best of all the village, with its village school. As a consequence of this, we must look for help in the reformation of our drama not so much to the professional actor as to the amateur. English drama owes much to the amateur actor, and his past achievements have rarely met with their due. Shakespeare holds him up to ridicule on two occasions — once in Love's Labour's Lost, where he presents to us the grammar schoolmaster, Holof ernes, with his pageant of the Nine Worthies, and again in A Midsummer Night's Dream, with its "most lament- able comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe " as performed by the immortal Bottom and his fellow-artisans. But our enjoyment of Shakespearean humour at the amateur's expense must not blind us to the fact that the supreme master of dramatic craftsma,nship owes his pre-eminence in no small measure to the fact that he is standing on the shoulders of Holofernes and Bully Bottom. The great romantic drama of the Elizabethan age is the result of the grafting of the gramrriar-school play of classical origin upon the crude but virile stock of the native mystery play as it had been performed in the provincial towns of B 17 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS England by the mediaeval trade-guilds since the days of Edward III. Quince the carpenter, Bottom the weaver, Snug the joiner, and all the rest of the "rude mechanicals " are the direct descendants of those men who, when the Church had cast the infant drama adrift upon the world, took it under their fostering care and watched over its growth and development. Iii like manner, Holofernes is in the direct line of descent from Nicholas Udall and the other Humanist schoolmasters who fashioned the earliest English comedies on Plautine and Terentian models. It is on the Holofernes and Peter Quinces — ^the schoolmasters and working men — of to-day that the future of British drama largely depends ; it is for them to determine whether there shall once more be in England a drama which interprets the spiritual life of the nation and reflects what is most significant in our struggle through discord to harinony. The time is propitious for concerted action. The trade unions and all the other associations of the modern folk-community are in every way more powerful than the mediaeval trade-guilds. Their members are better educated and have more leisure. The existence in our midst to-day of such a powerful corporate body as the Workers' Educational Association is an indica- tion that the modern wage-earner has at last awakened to a sense of his need of spiritual culture. It may well be that he has not yet realised the importance of the drama and of intelligent amateur acting in the cultivation of the mind and spirit of man. How should he do so when the public theatres present him with so barren a repast ? But this realisation will follow when our dramatists become once more aware that the true function of drama is to interpret life. i8 PREFACE If the organisations of working men and women may do much, the schools of to-day may do still more. The child is by nature an actor, because, like the poet, he is of imagination all compact. The most enlightened of our teachers, whether in elementary or secondary schools, have long been a\yare of this, and have realised the educative value of dramatic performances in the training of children. Slowly but surely we are awaking to a sense of the need of quickening and directing the human imagination. " The great instrument of moral good is the imagina- tion," said Shelley, and he proceeded to show how potent is the influence of drama and poetry in strengthening this faculty. How much of the oppres- sion and mental obtuseness that stalk theworld to-day are due to a defective imagination, to the inability of the tyrant or the fanatic to put himself in another's place ! Now the secret of all acting is just this ability to put oneself in another's place — ^to live for a few short hours the life of an Antigone, a Hamlet, a Gretchen, or a Cyrano de Bergerac. What a purgation of the soul is thereby effected ! How mean and puny seem the buffets of fortune to which we are exposed when we take upon us the agony of Lear ! What incentives to endurance and high endeavour come to us through our impersonation of an Imogen ! Finally, I would plead for the revival in our villages and towns of the old folk - festivals of "Merrie England." Folk-dance, folk-song and folk-drama must be given back to the people. Why should the seasons of ploughing, sowing and reaping pass without the tribute of song and the meed of thanksgiving ? Is the labour of the field or mine or factory so stimulat- ing to the imagination and the spirit of man that we 19 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS can allow the miracle of springtide to drift away un- heeded ? Let us restore to our villages their may- poles and hock-carts, and let us see that every village is provided with a recreation hall which has a floor oh which folk-dances can be danced and a stage on which folk-plays can be enacted. We all know what Oberammergau with its Passion play has meant for the spiritual life of the Bavarian peasant, and what the Eisteddfod has meant for the artistic and imagina- tive culture of the Welsh miner. It is time, now that our minds are set on reconstruction, to claim these good things, or others like them, for the towns and villages of England. Given a village stage, we have next to consider what plays will be most suitable for our amateur actors. The first answer to this question will probably be,, the plays of Shakespeare. But a moment's con- sideration will show that there are serious difficulties in the way of an adequate representation of Shake- spearean drama on a village stage. His plays are very long, and make heavy demands on time and equipment. What is needed, in the first instance, is something less exacting. What we want are one- act or two-act plays, the theme of which bears some direct relation to the life and thought of the village in which they are acted, so that the main purpose of drama — the interpretation of the life about us, the holding up of a mirror to nature — ^may be clearly recognised by all. Moreover, Shakespeare's plays, though perennially young, belong nevertheless to the past ; and a nation cannot live upon its past, even though that past be an Elizabethan age and its inter- preter Shakespeare. We must have plays which present the life and ideas of to-day. Such plays may 20 PREFACE well draw upon the ancient storehouses of history, legend and romance for their materials, but we must learn the Euripidean art of interpreting the old in the spirit of the new. Our new drama must be a live drama, quickening the mind with new truths, or with old truths created afresh in the light of modern thought and modern experience. The demand is therefore for a new drama, with new principles of stage-craft to meet new needs. Nor is there any reason to believe that our dramatists will fail to respond to this demand. The f uUness of present- day life, fraught with social and ethical problems of supreme interest, is displayed before the dramatist's eyes every time he opens his newspaper or mingles with his fellows. The future, with all its unknown possibilities, is a very dream-world of romance, a new Pacific upon which the playwright inay gaze with the eagle eyes of a Cortez, a Newfoundland on which the dramatic prospector, equipped with the theodolite which measures the heights of human aspiration, may give free wing to his constructive genius. A new drama may well demand a new technique — time will show. At any rate the new playwright will be able to shake off some of the fetters which hamper free action. The current dogma in the stage world of to-day is that it is the dramatist's purpose to create an illusion of reality ; he must cajole'his spectators into the belief that what they see on the stage is actual life. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he fails in his purpose, and where he succeeds he sacrifices a greater aim to a lesser. The fallacy is an old one. It took its rise, in the early days of the Italian Renascence, from the critical works of Castelvetro and his contemporaries. It was part of the doctrine 21 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS of dramatic verisimilitude, and it led at once to the tyranny of the unities of time and place, which put the neo-classic drama in the stocks for three hundred years. We Englishmen have never ceased to admire the classic restraint and purity of line in the great masterpieces of Racine or Alfieri, but, having been brought up at the feet of Shakespeare, we are bound to admit that these great tragedians, in their adher- ence to the unities, "wear cruel garters." The Romantic Revival brought deliverance to the captive drama, but since then new fetters have been forged with the purpose of creating an illusion of reality. The "aside " has been struck out of drama — ^which does not matter much — and with it has gone the soliloquy — ^which matters a great deaJ. Not even the transcendent poetry of Hamlet's soliloquies has saved it. We are told that some people do not talk to themselves in real life, and therefore, insomuch as the dramatist's purpose is to simulate real life, the soliloquy must go. Finally, we have insisted on this illusion of reality in all that pertains to scenery and stage accessories. If, in Cymbeline, the song ascends, " Hark, hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings," there must perforce be a wire contraption somewhere off the stage mimicking a lark's song, lest the spectators should rise in a body and call the singer a liar. If the dramatists and dramatic critics who insist on verisimilitude and the illusion of reality would regard the drama in the light of the sister arts, they would realise what a will-o'-the-wisp has been leading them astray. The sculptor, who interprets life and holds a mirror up to nature no less than the dramatist, has rarely been troubled by the illusion of reality. 22 PREFACE When Michelangelo fashioned his David of marble, or Rodin his John the Baptist out of bronze, they made no attempt to deceive our senses. They realised that the world of art is an ideal world, and they left the illusion of reality to Madame Tussaud. Now on our amateur stage, with amateur actors from the town or village, this pretence of creating an illusion fades like mountain mist before the morning sun. Nobody is going to cajole us into the belief that the boy who struts on the stage is really Robin Hood or Prince Arthur. We of the village know quite well that we can see him any day catching gudgeon in the mill-stream. Nothing will convince us that the lady of the balcony window is a flesh and blood Juliet ; we drove home with her market- merry from the fair last Tuesday. In other words, the dramatist of our amateur village theatre is able to cast aside all fetters, and to enter upon his heritage as a free citizen of the ideal world of art, having as much right to use all the helpful conventions of that ideal world as his brother, the poet, has to make use of the conventions of rhyme and metrical rhythm. A word in conclusion about the three plays which follow. I fully recognise that they are not folk- drama any more than my Songs of the Ridings are folk-song. They are written in the Yorkshire dialect by one who is not a Yorkshireman, and by one who is so far separated from the folk-community that the main activities of his life are not bound up with the forge or field or mill, but with the university lecture- hall and the study. But my hope is that they may prove a step towards the achievement of the real thing — a folk-drama by the people for the people. I offer them to the amateur actors of Yorkshire as 23 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS something with which they can experiment before their genuine folk-drama takes shape. Our soldiers when in training for their foreign campaigns were given first of all dummy rifles for their musketry drill, before they were entrusted with the real thing ; well, these are dummy plays. The first of the three is a fantastic interpretation of the theme, hope is better than memory. It is a dream-play, and I trust that those who produce it will treat it as such, and will not insist on creating an illusion of reality in their presentation of it. , The second play is an attempt to dramatise what has always seemed to me the most beautiful of York- shire legends — ^the finding of King Arthur and his sleeping knights by Thompson, the Richmond potter, in a cavern beneath Richmond Castle. Following out a purpose which I have already indicated in this Preface, I have tried to give to this old-world legend a modem significance, and have made Potter Thompson a herald of international peace. The play has not been written during or since the war, but before ; it was acted by students of the University of Leeds in February, 1913. I felt when I wrote it that the cause of international peace, together with what we have since learnt to call the League of Nations, was swiftly coming to its own ; but I also felt that the way to it lay through martyrdom. And so the conclusion of the play is, like every other martyrdom, a blending of tragedy and triumph. The last of the three plays is a rustic farce. I wanted to write a play for the sheep-farmers of the Craven dales, among whom my holidays are spent. But I could think of nothing that was nearly so worthy of their attention as the famous Nativity 24 PREFACE play of the Wakefield Mystery Cycle. My idea was therefore to turn this old Yorkshire play into modern Yorkshire dialect and preserve it in its integrity. But I soon realised that for a popular audience of dalesmen the play in its original form was unsuitable. The intricate metre of the stanzas, the frequent change of scene, and above all the sudden transformation of this sheep-stealing farce on a Yorkshire moor into a Nativity play of Bethlehem shepherds with the Virgin and Child, would have confused them past all bearing. I therefore contented myself with taking the main thread of plot in the old story and tying it into a new knot. The Ewe Lamb may ex- asperate serious students of English literature, but I shall put up with that if I can interest the farmers of the dales in drama, and give them some little insight into the life of pre-Ref ormation England. 25 AN ALL SOULS' NIGHT'S DREAM AN ALL SOULS' NIGHT'S DREAM Characters MoRSHEAD Eliza Mary Ann Charlie Time : The Present The scene presents a corner in the churchyard of a Yorkshire market-town, as seen in the light of a November moon. The church is in the background, while the foreground is taken up by numerous graves. On the left is the lich-gate, and by it sits Morshead reading the local paper. He has the appearance of a vigorous, athletic man of about fifty, but his form is largely concealed by the oil- skins and sou'wester which cover him from head to foot. Before him is a brazier with glowing coke, behind him a watchman's shelter. The clock on the church-tower points to midnight. At the first stroke of the hour a movement is seen on the surface of one of the graves in the foreground and a moment later a woman emerges resolutely from .it. She is dressed in white, ■ but otherwise bears no resemblance to the sheeted ghosts of popular belief. She is very much alive, and has the appear- ance of a robust; determined, complacent York- shirewoman of the artisan class ; her age is fifty- four. She yawns, stretches' herself, and after taking a deep breath moves up and down in front of her grave, as though to exercise her limbs. She 29 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS next proceeds to read, at first with approval, hut then with growing disapproval, the inscription on her tombstone. After a moments pause a thought seems to strike her, and, acting upon it, she steps lightly over the graves towards the lich-gate. In so doing she attracts the attention of Morshead. MoRSHEAD (laying down his paper). What the cross- bones are you doing treading on my beds ? Mary Ann. I want to git out o' here. It's Boggard Neet. Morshead. Boggard Neet ! What's that ? Mary Ann. Why, t' neet afore All Souls' Day, o' course. Morshead {picking up his paper and glancing at the date). All Souls' Day ! So it is.' But you've no right to be treading on my beds, whatever night it is. What are you in such a hurry about ? Mary Ann. Hurry ! I reckon you'd be in a hurry if you had bin scumfished i' t' grund for well-nigh a twelvemonth, same as if you was a mowdiwarp. That's t' worst o' deein' at Christmas ; you've so lang to wait for your neet out. One hour in three hundred an' sixty-five days. That's all us boggards are 'lowanced. I wonder what sarvant lasses would say to that ! But who are you, I'd like to know ? Are you t' neet-watchman, or t' sexton's assistant ? Morshead [grimly). Sexton is my assistant. Mary Ann. What do they call you ? Morshead. I've heard it said that I was christened Thanatos Morshead, but people call me Old Mors for short. Mary Ann. Owd Moore's ! Owd Moore's Awmin- ack ! Well, if that don't cap aught that iver I heerd ! 30 AN ALL SOULS' NIGHT'S DREAM To think that Owd Moore gits all his information through havin' a talk with boggards like me ! Gow ! but I'm fain to set een on thee. I reckon we're owd friends. Reub and me have ta'en thee in reg'lar, ever sin' we were wed. MoRSHEAD {pointing in the direction of her tomb- stone). It seems as if I'd taken thee in at last. Mary Ann. Thou '11 have seen what Reub has putten on my headstone ? MoRSHEAD {lapsing into dialect). Nay, I'm that thrang wi' wark, I've no time for readin' headstones. Mary Ann. Just thou coom alang wi' me then. {She seizes Morshead hy the arm and leads him, somewhat against his will, towards her grave ; then she reads in a slow, impressive voice the following inscription :) Mary Ann. " Sacred to the memory of Mary Ann, beloved wife of Reuben Toplady. She entered into her rest on 29th December 1917, deeply mourned by her four sons and her inconsolable husband." Morshead. There's naught wrang wi' that, is there ? Mary Ann. I wrote it out for Reub misen on a bit o' paper, so as he sudn't forgit it, same day as I joined t' Burying' Society. But if Reub had had so mich sense in his head as a broody hen, he'd have added a postscrip' sayin' as how I deed o' 'pendicitis. When you dee of a quality ailment you may as well let fowks know about it. But theer, there's no sense in wearin' time here ; I'm off to see my Reub. {She moves swiftly in the direction of the lich-gate.) Morshead. Howd on ! If thou'll tak my advice, thou'll bide wheer thou is. It's awlus young boggards like thee that wants to go bawboskin' about on All 31 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS Souls' Neet. When they've bin here a two-three year, they larns to lig douce and quiet i' their beds. Mary Ann. I'll do naught o' t' sort. Thou'll noan catch me liggin' i' my bed when it's my neet out. MoRSHEAD. Well, o' course, thou art free to go; but, if thou goes, thou'll happen rue it. Mary Ann. Rue it ! An' who'U make me rue it, I'd like to know ? I tell thee I'm off to see Reub. Thou'll know my Reub ? MoRSHEAD. Can't say. that I do as yet. Mary Ann. Poor owd Reub! How he'll hae missed me ! He's gotten nobody i' t' house now to keep him teetotal an' mak him bide at home o' neets. MoRSHEAD {ironically). Poor owd Reub ! Mary Ann. By t' Megs ! but he'll be fair pinin' to set een on his own lass. I'll happen find him in his bed. My word ! but he'll be moithered when he sees a boggard. It'll be like Hamlet i' t' play. {At this point the head of Eliza is seen emerging from a grave adjoining that of Mary Ann. Eliza catches ^ight of Mary Ann and with- draws her head. A moment later she re- appears, and, coming out of the grave, hides behind a tombstone and overhears the corir versation. Eliza is dressed similarly to Mary Ann, but is somewhat younger — a spare, taciturn woman with thoughtful grey eyes.) MoRSHEAD. Thou art not t' first boggard that has come to me with that sort o' tale. I let 'em out and off they lowp, as lUty as fleas in a feather bed ; but, afore hafe-an-hour's gone, back they coom wi' their heads hangin' down an' faces as lang as a wet week. There isn't mony that axes to be let out next All Souls' 32 AN ALL SOULS' NIGHT'S DREAM Day ; they bide i' their beds, or just tak a turn round t' churchyard. Mary Ann. Aye, but it's different-like wi' Reub an' me. We were that lovin' there's nobody would have ta'en us for man an' wife. He'll have pined away to a natomy wi' me putten out o' t' road. MoRSHEAD. It's not for me to argify wi' a weel- set-up boggard like thee ; but I'd have thee know that I've bin at this job for a vast o' years, and what I say is this : Churchyard fowks isn't missed same as they think for ^without they are lile lads or lasses that can hardlins toddle. Mary Ann. I sud have thought it was just them that fowks aboon t' grund could do without. MoRSHEAD. Mebbe thou art reight. All I can say is that t' churchyard fowks that coom back frae their homes on Boggard Neet wi' smilin' faces is mostly childer. Mary Ann. Thou can say what thou likes, but thou'll noan stop me frae seein' my Reub. He mun put what I deed of on my headstone ; I'M have it graved wi' letters o' gowd. (Mary Ann moves toward the lich-gate and opens it. Eliza rises from behind her tombstone and advances.) Eliza. Mary Ann Toplady ! Mary Ann. By t' Mass ! It's Liza Laycock. {She moves towards her.) Eliza. That was. Mary Ann. That was ! Thou hasn't changed thy name hasta ? Of course, thou means thou's lossen thy name sin' thou was putten out o' t' road. Eliza. Mebbe I do, mebbe I don't. Mary Ann, Well, for sure, who'd have thought c 33 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS to have fun' thee here ? Thou art nobbut forty-nine, an' I awlus said that a maiden woman like thee, wi' no childer to contend wi', an' no fellow to worrit the life out o' thee, would live to see a hundred. If I might axe for a plain answer to a plain question. What has brought thee here afore thy time ? Eliza. Mussels. ' Mary Ann. Mussels ! {She looks startled and conscience-stricken at first, hut soon affects a nonchalant, superior air.) Poor Liza ! Was t' mussels bad ? Eliza. Rotten bad. Mary Ann. I'm sorry for thee, Liza. If there's one thing that's comfortin' when you're liggin' i' your grave it's to know that you've deed of a quality ailment. Eliza. Posh ! Mary Ann. I'm thankful to say that my family have awlus had sense an' mense enif to dee respect- ably and i' their own beds., My muther deed o' dropsy ; my twin sister was took wi' variegated veins and phlebites. {^ith unction.) Thou'll have heard what I deed on ? Eliza. Colic ? Mary Ann {fiercely). It wasn't colic, nor ony other mak' o' bellywark ; 'twas 'pendicitis. If fowks says I deed o' colic, they ought to be 'shamed o' theirsens. I call it reight wicked to illify them that's putten out o' t' road. It's Reub's fault ; he sud have graved it on my headstone. ,{While this conversation has been proceedings Charlie, a hoy of nine,has stepped out of one of the children" s graves, and has wandered at first light-heartedly, and then more and more slowly and sadly, from one grave to another, reading 34 AN ALL SOULS' NIGHT'S DREAM the inscriptions upon them. He now catches sight of Mary Ann, and with a joyful cry of "Mother!" he rushes towards her. Sud- denly he stops, realises that he has made a mistake, and hursts into tears.) Mary Ann {patting Charlie on the head). Eh, honey- bam ! Did thou think it was thy muther ? Niver thou mind; I'll be a muther to thee, that I will. Just thou tell me what's wrang wi' thee. Charlie {between his sobs). 1 want Roger. Roger hasn't played fair. Mary Ann. Who's Roger ? Charlie. Roger's my little brother. He came to see me in the nursing-home, after I had been thrown out of Daddy's car, and he said that if I was to die, he would die too, because I was his favourite brother and had let him ride my pony. But he hasn't kept his word. I've read all the names on the tombstones and I can't find his anywhere. Roger hasn't played fair. {Bursts into tears.) Mary Ann. Poor barn ! It'll coom hard on thee not to find thy Roger. Sithee ! I'll tell thee what I'd do, if I were thee. Thou's gotten thy hour off same as t' rest on us. Just thou go an'' talk to t' owd lad yonder that's readin' t' paper. Tell him what thou wants, an' happen he'll let thee out o' t' gate. Then thou can run alang home and find out what's wrang wi' Roger. I sal be foUowin' thee misen, soon as I've had my clash out wi' Liza here. (Charlie runs to Morshead, who has returned to his seat by the brazier. As Charlie comes up to him, he pats him gently on the head and lets him through the lich-gate.) Mary Ann. Now then, Liza, I can't bide here mich 35 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS , langer, talkin' to the likes o' thee. I'm off to see my Reub. Thou can coom alang wi' me if thou has a mind to. Eliza. I reckon I'll bide here. Mary Ann. Well, of course, thou art an owd maid that has no call to go traapsin' around to f owks'houses. It's different when you've left behind you a hin- consolable husband an' fower grown lads, wi' wives an' childer o' their own. Thou'll be lonely. I ommost wonder what for thou took thy neet off at all. Eliza. Read yon. (She nods with her head in the direction of her toifibstone.) Mary Ann. Read what ? Eliza. My headstone. (Mary Ann moves towards Eliza's grave and reads as follows: — ) Mary Ann. "Sacred to the memory of Eliza, beloved wife of Reuben Toplady. " Reuben Toplady ! What Reuben Toplady is yon ? (Shrilly.) Thou hasn't gone an' wed my Reub, efter I was putten out o' t' road ! Eliza. Read for'ard. Mary Ann (continuing to read). " She departed this life on loth July 1918, deeply mourned by her four sons and her inconsolable husband. Not lost but gone before. (She glances for a moment at the wording of her own tombstone, and then bursts into a flood of angry tears. Eliza remains entirely unmoved.) Mary Ann. Thou's a wicked female, Liza. It were robbery an' bigamy to tak' away f rae me a poor feckless gowk like my Reub, that couldn't say Boh ! to a goose, let alone a brazzend stride-wallops like thee. When did Reub wed thee ? Eliza. Last Whissuntide. 36 AN ALL S6ULS' NIGHT'S DREAM Mary Ann. Last Whissuntide ! An' he'll have bin walkin' out wi' thee afore that, an' me nobbut five months i' my grave. I'm fit to brust wi' shame an' flustration. Eliza. It-were all quite reg'lar. Bans were putten up three times by t' parson. Mary Ann. Fowks ought to have forbid t' bans. It's bigamy, I tell thee, that's what it is. An' thou standin' theer as cool as a cowcumber ! Eliza. There's no call for gittin' flustrated that I knows on. Mary Ann. Happen not for a flee-by-sky like thee. But I'm fair stagnated that t' childer that I've bred an' born haven't putten thee i' t' horse-pond. Eliza {glancing at her tombstone) . ' ' Deeply mourned by her four sons." Mary Ann. They're not thy sons, they're mine. Eliza. I took 'em ower when I were wed, alang wi' t' furnitur an' calicoes. Mary Ann. Calicoes ! Thou's noan bin wearin my shifts ! Eliza. Nay, they'd ower mony holes in 'em. Mary Ann. Holes in 'em ! Holes i' my shifts ! To think that I sud be insulted like this on my neet out ! (Weeps.) Morshead {looking up from his paper). Now then, you two gabble-ratches, I can't do wi' all this f ratchin'. Boggards mun lam to behave theirsens same as other fowks. You'll be treadin' on my beds, that's what you'U be doin'. I tak a vast o' pride i' my beds, I'd have you know. I've beds wi' calcies an' geraniums, an' beds wi' marble chips ; an' I like to see 'em a' lookin' nice an' snod. Mary Ann. It's Liza. Shoe's bin insultin' me 37 pLays of the ridings while I'm fit to roar. Gert scrawmy trail-tengs! Shoo's gotten a tongue sharp enif to shave a hedgehog. MoRSHEAD (to Mary Ann). What's wrang wi' thee ? I thowt thou was wantin' to see thy Reub ! Mary Ann. My Reub ! I wouldn't see my Reub, not if thou'd gie me all t' neet off. I'm sadly begone wi' Reub ; he's tret me rgight shameful. MoRSHEAD. Then thou'll bide here while turnin '-in time. That's reight ; that's awlus my advice to boggards like thee. Mary Ann {moving towards the lich-gate' as a sudden thought strikes her). Gow ! but I'd like to gie Reub a taste o' my mind efter all he's done to me. To think that t' owd hallockin' hasn't lossen t' yallow off his neb at his time o' day. But 'tweren't his fault, nowther ; 'twere Liza's. Shoo's bin makkin' sheep's een at him an' gotten him to wed her — her that's^bin an owd maid all her life. MoRSHEAD. Gotten him to wed her, has shoo ? Well, shoo hasn't kept him varry lang, choose-how. What did you say they called him ? Mary Ann. Reuben Toplady, cobbler ; works for Sam Pickersgill, top o' Finkle Street. Morshead. Happen I've coom across that name, somewheer. {He takes up his paper and examines it.) Ay, I thowt as mich. Here 'tis. Mary Ann. He'll noan have gotten wed again ! Morshead {reading). "We deeply regret to announce that Mr Reuben Toplady, cobbler, of this town, expired suddenly last Sunday morning." Eliza. Poor owd Reub ! Mary Ann. It's a judgment on him for weddin' thee. Morshead {reading). "Mr Toplady was at work 38 AN ALL SOULS' NIGHT'S DREAM on Saturday, but in the evening, he is said to have partaken too freely of mussels and died in his bed early next morning. We would again warn our readers of the danger which attends the consumption of these succulent bivalves. Eaten in small quantities, they may be nutritious ; but if partaken of too freely, especially if accompanied by malt liquor, disastrous results may be looked for." Eliza. Poor owd Reub ! To think that he couldn't keep hissen frae t' beer an' mussels, wi' me as a warnin' straight afore his een. Mary Ann. It's a judgment on him ; that's what it is. MoRSHEAD {reading). "What is most peculiar in the situation is that a report is current in the town that Mr Toplady has lost two wives under exactly similar circumstances." (Mary Ann, conscience-stricken, and realising that there is no appeal against the infallibility of journalism, sinks to the ground. Eliza runs to her and supports her with her arms. MoRSHEAD relentlessly continues his reading.) Morshead. " Mr Toplady was a skilled workman, and will be greatly missed in the town. He wUl be followed to the grave by his four sons and his in- consolable widow." {Lays down the paper.) Mary Ann {raising herself a little from the ground, and speaking in a moaning voice). Widdy ! Did he say widdy ? Liza, it's — ^it's trigamy. Eliza. Poor Mary Ann ! It cooms harder on thee nor it does on me. Mary Ann. Liza, tak me home. Eliza. Home ! Mary Ann. Aye, home. {She makes a motion with 39 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS her head in the direction of her grave, towards which Ei,iZA. gently leads her. ) (Re-enter Charlie ; he is carrying a " Teddy bear " in his hand and looks radiantly happy. He advances towards Mary Ann and Eliza.) Charlie. Look! It's Roger's "Teddy." Mary Ann (gloomily). Did thou run alang home, or wasn't there a home for thee to run to ? Charlie (very cheerfully). I went through the door of our house and ran upstairs to the nursery, where Roger and I had our cots. And there was Roger fast asleep. So I said : " Roger, youhaven't played fair." And Roger turned round on his pillow and said, so softly in his dream : " I do wish I could see Charlie." And then somehow I knew it wasn't his fault. Mary Ann. And then thou came back here ? Charlie. No, first of all I looked across his cot, and there was mine, all made up with clean sheets, just ready for me to slip in ; and lying on my pillow was Roger's. " Teddy " that Grannie gave him last Christmas. He'd given it to me, and he liked it the best of all his toys. So I just gave Roger a kiss, and crept downstairs and came away. (Sadly.) Now I suppose I must get back to where I came from. I wish I needn't. Oh ! I do wish I could stop up late, like they do at parties. (He looks wistfully at Morshead, who reluctantly shakes his head.) Good- bye ! See you next All Souls' Day. (He retires towards his grave and disappears.) Mary Ann. Owd Moore was reight ; it's childer that f owks misses. Eh ! but it's a cruel world. Why sudn't we be missed same as t' childer ? Eliza. I'dnoanblamet' world, Mary Ann. Fowks thinks to live agean i' their childer, an it's gey hard 40 AN ALL SOULS' NIGHT'S DREAM when t' childer's ta'en afore them that browt 'em into t' world. That's worse nor death ; it's death o' hope. Mary Ann. Death o' hope ! I reckon it's that sort o' death that's happened me. An' to think how I looked forward to All Souls' Day ! - Eliza. Don't worrit thisen ower mich, lass. There's no sense i' feightin' agean natur. Natur says that fowks can look back'ard if they've a mind to ; but whativer else they do, they mun think for'ard. We isn't heathen Chinese that lives on our past an' worships our forbears. Christians lives i' t' future. Hope's better nor memory, an' t' world has gotten to grow. Mary Ann. If that's t' world's way o' growin', I'm fain that I've gotten shut o' t' world. Eliza. Nay, lass, thou '11 be glad to live agean i' thy childer. There's no death o' hope for thee ; thou has niver lossen a barn. {Sadly.) It's for fowks like me to taste o' t' death o' hope. Mary Ann (so/ifewwg). Eh! Liza, that's true. I'd forgotten thou niver wed while thou were turned fotty-five. (Mary Ann, still supported by Eliza, has now reached her grave. She notices a wreath of everlasting flowers lying on her grave.) Mary Ann. Was it Reub that put them everlastings on my grave ? Eliza. Nay, I put 'em theer, the day I was wed. Mary Ann. 'Twas kind o' thee, Liza. Liza, I've forgiven thee. Eliza {kissing her). I thank thee, Mary Ann. I was hard on thee a while sin' ; I was in one o' my threapin' tempers. But I niver meant no harm to thee when I wedded thy Reub. He told me he was lonely. 41 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS Mary Ann. Men is feckless gowks. They're nobbut lile childer while they're putten out o' t' road. Reub will be coomin' here sooin. Not lost but gone afore. I reckon I sal have to forgive Reub, too. Men is feckless gowks. Eliza. Aye, thou'll forgive thy Reub. Mary Ann. Liza, I'm lonely ; thou won't leave me. It's dowly wark Hggin all alone, an' there's a vast o' room for both on us down theer. Eliza. I'll follow thee, Mary Ann. Aye, an' we'll mak a place for Reub too. We'll just lig side by side like sisters. {The two women slowly descend into ' Mary Ann's grave and disappear. There is a moment's pause "and then Morshead rises from his seat and advances with reverent steps towards the grave. He rearranges the surface of the grave with reverent care, and his appearance and bearing seem to acquire new dignity at every moment. Then he divests himself of his oilskins and sou'wester and stands revealed as a noble knight, arrayed from head to foot in burnished armour. For a few moments he remains silent, gazing into the grave, with his arms folded across his breast.) Morshead. "The world's a city full of straying streets, And death's the market-place where each one meets." {Then he lifts his hands, as though in benediction, and discloses to view the skull and cross-bones emblazoned on his breastplate. The clock chimes and strikes one.) Curtain 42 POTTER THOMPSON 3n /Ibemotiam CAPTAIN THOMAS HUFFINGTON, M.A., OF THE University of Leeds, who, in the person of King Arthur in Potter Thompson, championed the cause of international peace, and a little later, on the battlefields of France, laid down his life to achieve it. POTTER THOMPSON Characters Potter Thompson Jock Armstrong, a /loWey Marjory Thompson, his Mike Yeoman, a potter wife Townsfolk of Rich- Sim Mawson, a master- mond potter King Arthur Sir Bedivere Sir Gawayne Sir Galahad Sir Tristram Isolde Elaine The scene is laid at Richmond, Yorkshire, about the year 1430. Introductory Note. — At Richmond, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, there is a legend that King Arthur and his Knights are lying asleep beneath the castle rock, ready to come forth when England shall have need of them. Also, that once upon u time a certain Potter Thompson discovered the secret entrance to Arthur's cavern and found the King and his Knights amid their slumbers. Scene i (A potter's workshop, with potter's wheel, benches, pots, pans, etc. Mawson, Armstrong and Yeoman are at work ; Mawson is turning the wheel, and is leading the following song, in which the other two join : — ) 47 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS A potter's life is a life for a king, With a hey, and a rumbelow ! As his wheel gangs round, he loves to sing. With a hey, and a rumbelow ! He shapes his clay into wassail bowls, And mugs he maks for thirsty souls. Cups and platters for begging friars' doles ; With a hey, and a rumbelow ! He sits at his bench frae morn till eve. With a hey, and a rumbelow ! He plies his foot, and he plies his neive. With a hey, and a rumbelow ! Then he trails his wares aboot the toon, Mugs, or plates, or pitchers broon, Sold good-cheap and your money doon ; With a hey, and a rumbelow ! Man is a potter, and life's his clay. With a hey, and a rumbelow ! At the wheel of Time he shapes his day. With a hey, and a rumbelow ! Maks it brittle, or maks it Strang, Moulded for reight, or moulded for wrang, Shapen with sighs, or shapen with sang ; With a hey, and a rumbelow ! Mawson. Aye, aye, there's naught like a sang ; but it's gey hard to sing when your belly's clemmed. Armstrong. Clemmed is t' word, lad, and a true one. What wi' t' parson's tithes, t' baron's dues, and t' king's taxes, it's no laikin' job for a Richmond potter to finnd bread and brose for hissel, t' wife, and t' bairns. 48 POTTER THOMPSON Yeoman. And what's worse is t' Peter-pence for His Holiness at Rome. Mawson. Whisht ! None of your LoUardry here 1 I've heerd pilgrims say that t' Pope's t' poor man's friend ; he weshes t' beggars' feet ivery Maunday Thursday, and melts doon his triple croon ivery Can'lemas to provide an awmous for t' poor. Yeoman. Melts doon his triple croon, does he ? I've heerd tell of him meltin' doon t' kirk lead to mak bullets for yon new-f angle weapons that soldiers feights wi' noo. Armstrong. Well, Pope or parson, king or baron, it's all t' same. There's alius taxes for poor folk to pay. If it were not for t' wife and t' childer, I'd away wi' t' dawn to t' greenwood, join hands wi' Robin Hood and Guy of Gisburn, and feed fat on t' king's red deer. (Humming.) The wood-weele sang, and wold not cease. Sitting upon the spray, So loud he wakened Robin Hood In the greenwood where he lay. Mawson. Nay, cheer up, lads ; things will mend. Ye know t' tale that t' auld wives tells to t' childer : , King Arthur and his knights are liggin' asleep under Richmond Castle rock, and one day they'U wakken up and set us poor thralls free. Yeoman. Hark to him ! He talks like Potter Thompson, daft Potter Thompson, as t' lads calls after him when he cooms doon t' street wi' his big blue een starin' up into t' sky, as if he saw Noah's ladder, wi' all t' holy angels, saints and martyrs runnin' up and down, like rabbits in and oot of a warren. D 49 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS Armstrong. Jacob's ladder thou means. Noah was him that fetched beasts into t' ark. Yeoman. Noah or Jacob, ladder or ark, I care naught aboot it. What I say is that Potter Thompson's a fool and a knave — a fool to tak thought to all this blether aboot King Arthur, and a knave to gang wool-gatherin' an' leave his wife arid bairns to fend for thersels. Mawson. They say as how it all cooms of him gaddin' aboot Swaledale i' t' moonleet, and that t' fays and warlocks hae gotten ho'd on him and filled his brain-pan wi' hempseed. Armstrong. Aye, and yon neet-hags would have carried him away on a broom-stick, if he hadn't gotten a leaden cross, teed on wi' a bit o' band, aboot his weasand. Mawson. He was noan runnin' aboot Swaledale after t' fays and warlocks. He was lookin' for t' hole into t' cave, wheer, he says, King Arthur and his merry men are sleepin'. Armstrong. Mebbe thou's reight ; but King Arthur's nobbut a wisht warlock hissel, for all t' good he'll do us potters. And 'twere a vast better if Count Alan, that cam ower to Richmond f rae Brittany wi' William t' Conqueror, had gotten shut of all his tales of Arthur, and not brought 'em here for poor folk to mell on. Yeoman. Thou hast spokken a true word, Jock Armstrong. For it's twee days sin' Potter Thompson's shadow darkened yon doorway, and not a char of work has he done at his pottin' sin' Tuesday forenoon. No gettin's no havin' i' Richmond toon ; but it's cruel hard on his wife and childer. 50 POTTER THOMPSON {Enter Marjory Thompson, a comely, bustling woman of about thirty-five.) Marjory. Has onybody here seen aught of Potter Thompson ? Mawson. We haven't set een on him sin' Tuesday. Marjory. A murrain on him, t' feckless gowk ! Here am I toilin' and moilin' up at t' castle, scourin' pots, turnin' t' spit, weshin' t' steps, while my feet " are as cauld as paddocks, and all because Potter Thompson's turned bedlam, and wean't work at his pottin'. Mawson. Cheer up, Marjory lass. T' cloods don't fall doon oot o' t' sky ; they rise up off o' t' earth. Marjory. It'll be Potter Thompson that'll rise up off o' t' earth, when I finnd him ; and it wean't be in a chariot o' fire neither. Here have I bin bawboskin' aboot t' lanes and t' dale-boddoms efter him, while I'm sweatin' like a black puddin' fresh frae t' stew-pot. And wheeriver I gang, folks calls oot efter me, "Yon's Marjory that's seekin' t' daft potter." Yeoman. I'm sorry for thee, Marjory, but folks say thou leads him a heart-sick life when thou has him at hame. Thou knows t' owd nominy : A reekin' hoose and a scoldin' wife Mak a man weary o' his life. If I'd wedded thee, Marjory, I's thinkin' I'd be gaddin' aboot Swaledale i' t' moonleet, sure enif, seekin' King Arthur, or auld King Cole, or mebbe t' divil hissel. Marjory. Ho'd thy din, Mike Yeoman. Nobody can say I's a fratchin' woman, and it's thee that has a reekin' hoose. Thou'U noan daunt me, as thou 51 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS daunts thy poor gaumless wife Tibby, wi' stale saws and fools' tales. I've my cross to bear, as the Lord he knows, wi'out thee drivin' nails intil it. And t' warst is t' bringin' up o' t' childer ; for no sooner dbes Potter Thompson coom hame but he talcs all three of 'em on his knees and tells 'em all maks o' blether aboot King Arthur an' t' Holy Grail, an' green knights that run across t' floor wi' no heads on their shoulders. It's fair maddenin', and t' childer harken to him wi' een and mooth all agape, like a fish new-drawn frae t' watter. Mawson. Niver mind, lass, it's noan so bad but it might be warse. Marjory. Warse is it ? Sithee, it's nobbut three silver groats that he's addled this fortneet ; an' what's a two- three silver groats for four hungry mooths, let alone clothes and firin'. By t' Mass ! but it's hard to be wife to a daft potter, that can do naught but talk hissel dazed aboot King Arthur. An' to think that I might hae wedded Rafe Flesher, the earl's hengman, that addles fippence a day, wet or fine, and gets t' leather jerkins o' them hd's henged. (Potter Thompson enters slowly, travel-siained, but with a rapt expression on his face.) Potter Thompson. The brand Excalibur I Sir Bedivere 1 An arm rising out of the mere 1 King Mark, Tristram, and Isolde of the white hand I There's a ship on the sea. Ah 1 is the sail white or black? Look! There's Galahad 1 The Grail, the Holy Grail 1 Yeoman. T' Holy Grail is it ? Nay, lad, it's nobbut a mug. {Lifts mug from the table.) P. Thompson. Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight —The armed warriors about the Round Table — ^The 52 POTTER THOMPSON bowers of Camelot and the Isle of Avalon. I see them all, all through a mist. Marjory {going up to her husband and shaking him). Potter Thompson ! Daft Potter Thompson ! Wakken up ! There's no Arthur nor Babylon here. It's Potter Mawson's shop i' Richmond ; yon's Mike Yeoman and Jock Armstrong, and I's thy lawful wife, Marjory, that was fool enif to wed a hallockin' like thee. P. Thompson {coming slowly to himself). Methinks I have been dreaming. I thought I was in the com- pany of knights in shining armour, and of fair queens with roses in their hair ; they showed me all the wonders of Avalon — the brand Excalibur, the magic horn of Merlin, yea, and the Holy GraU. Marjory. Aye, thou's bin wool gatherin' instead of workin'. AU this cooms o' t' chantry-priest lamin' thee to read when thou was a bairn, an' tellin' thee tales o' King Arthur and hidden caves beneath Richmond Castle. Get shut o' thy lamin'. Potter Thompson, or mebbe I'll get shut o' thee. There's mony a man i' Richmond toon that would fain tak up wi' Marjory, though I say it misel at sudn't. For she can bak' and she can brew, and she's bonny to look at when she weshes her face of a Sunday. Armstrong. It's a daft thing is larnin' and gram- mary ; it maks a man weak in his head. It bores intil his brain, same as a maggot bores into timber, and then he rots, and rots, and rots. Yeoman. Sithee, Potter Thompson. I'll gie thee a good rede, and axe naught for it. Do thou clear all them sackless stories o' King Arthur reight oot o' thy head, and do thou put thy trust i' pot. I's a potter, and my fader and my fader's fader were 53 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS potters afore me. I was born on pot ; I grew up on pot; I married on pot; I've raised five and buried seven on pot — and they wasn't cheap coffins neither. I've lived fotty-four year on pot, and by t' blessed saints an' martyrs I'll dee on pot, and I'll niver know pot to fail me. P. Thompson. Speak not against King Arthur, friend. He is the guardian of the land, the healer of old sores, the righter of old wrongs. Mawson (laying his hand on Potter Thompson's shoulder). Aye, aye, lad, but what aboot t' new sores and t' new wrangs ? I'm an auld man noo, and I've seen a vast o' trouble i' my time. I call to mind t' plague, when I was a lile lad no bigger nor thy Walter. We were eight i' t' hoose when t' plague came, and when it was gone we were nobbut three — three orphans, wi' neither bite nor sup. They tell abopt merry Richmond, but there was no mirth in yon days. There was weepin' an' wailin' up an' doon t' streets ; t' crops were rottin' i' t' fields for want o' harvesters ; there were hungry mooths and lean bellies, an' there was naught fat but t' kirkyard. And then came t' wars — alius warrin wi' somebody. First, it was t' Percies warrin' agean t' King, and then t' King warrin' agean t' Percies. But worst of all is t' wars wi' t' Frenchmen that they're fightin' noo. I've three lads at t' wars : mebbe they're alive, mebbe they're clay-cauld i' t' grund ; an' t' auld wife sits i' t' ingle- nook, frettin' her een oot for her three bairns that she'll niver see no more. So what I axe is, will Arthur mend t' new wrangs and heal t' new sores ? P. Thompson. He will, he will. The word has gone forth that he will come from out his hiding-place, when the people of England shall have need of him — 54 POTTER THOMPSON the peojde, the down-trodden people, not the nobles. He is the goaidian of the people ; he will bind up the widow's broken heart, and bring joy into the eyes of little children. He will enthrone justice in the hearts of our rulers ; he will root up oppression as the ploughman roots up the bind-weed that grows along the furrows. Arhstkong. Nay, but Arthur was a king, an' a king's a sort of gentry ; I've alius heerd tell that gentry are agean poor folk. P. Thompson. But not King Arthur. He is the poor roan's friend, and one day we shall find the place where he is sleeping, and shall waken him and lead him forth to redeem the land ; for so it has been foretold by Thomas of Ercddoune. Yeomah. Thomas of Ercddoune ! \Mio's Thomas of Ercddoune ? I've heerd tdl o' Thomas a Becket that was henged for sidin' wi' t' Pope agean t'King, and I've heerd tell o' dootin' Thomas i' t' Bible-book. I tell thee. Potter Thompson, I's dootin' Thomas. I set no count by aU thy tales o' King Arthur. Bide thou at home, lad, along wi' thy bairns an' thy wife Marjory, and don't thou gang roamin' aboot Swaledale i' t' dark o' dusk. A roUin' stane, folks says, gethers nau^t but muck off t' midden ; and it's muck off t' midden and not King Arthur that thoull bring back wi' thee frae t' beck-side. King Arthur, i' faith ! Who's King Arthur, an' whafU he do for us potters ? Say, wiU he tak off t' King's taxes ? Armstrong. Will he pay t' baron's dues ? Yeoman. WUl he set us free frae Peter-pence ? Marjory. W^ill he stop a daft potter frae gaddin' aboot Swaledale, soilin' his britch, and leavin' his wedded wife and childer to fend for thersels ? Got 55 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS upon thee. Potter Thompson, for a feckless gowk ! Thou has neither sense nor mense i' thy head. Tak and heng thysel' wi' King Arthur's braces. Armstrong and. Yeoman (together). Daft Potter Thompson ! Silly-billy Thompson ! (Marjory, Armstrong and Yeoman drive him out, throwing lumps of wet clay after him. Mawson makes ineffectual attempts to restrain them.) Curtain Scene 2 {At the foot of the rock on which Richmond Castle stands. It is the evening of the same day. Enter Potter Thompson. There is still a rapt look in his eyes, but he is weary after a long and fruitless quest.) P. Thompson. I've searched and searched, until my feet are bruised With clambering over stones ; my hands drip blood From thorns and brambles that beset my path. Could I win in, then surely would I find The King ; I'd clasp his feet with both my hands, Bid him come forth, and heal the festering wounds Of poor, down-trodden folk in England's realm. Alas ! my countrymen, that prostrate lie Beneath the iron heel of proud-foot barons ! Comes no one now to raise them from the dust. To wipe the bitter tears from out their eyes. And suage their teen ? Wat Tyler tried, but tried 56 POTTER THOMPSON In vain ; the traitor knight stabbed him to death At Smithfield ; Ball upon the gallows hung, An unfrocked priest. But 'tis not given to me To bring the great king forth. For I shall fail To find the path that leads to Arthur's halls, Even as in days of yore Sir Lancelot failed To gaze upon the grail. (He continues his search, moving painfully among the rocks and brambles.) Stay ! What is here ? A cleft within the rock, All choked with stones and spindrift from the flood. (He clears the rubbish away, and, widening the cleft, forces a passage through. A curtain rises and discloses a spacious cavern, very dark, with figures of knights and ladies dimly visible as they lie asleep in the background- On a table is a horn.) Thompson. Ha ! what is this ? A cavern 'neath the rock ? And through the murky light I can discern Dim forms that lie at ease. Silent they are ; I cannot hear them move ; and if they breathe, Their breath falls gentlier on the listening ear Than that of dreamless children put to sleep With lullabies. Let me step nearer now, Groping with hands and feet amid the gloom. Lest haply I may fall and loose the spell. What do I see ? — a table, and a horn. (He takes up the horn.) 'Tis set with jewels — rubies red as blood, Sapphires as blue as Saxon maidens' eyes, And opals that have wizard power to charm. Men say that fairies, when they hear the horns 57 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS Of elf-land blowing, straight must leave their glades. Their moon-lit meadows, and obey the bests Of mortal men. What if I sound the horn ? Perchance 'twill waken Arthur from his sleep. And bring him summons to redeem the land. {He blows the horn. At the third, blast the cavern is flooded with light, and King Arthur is beheld asleep on his throne, with Tristram and Isolde, Galahad, Bedivere, Gawayne and Elaine at his feet. Arthur slowly wakens from his sleep. Potter Thompson falls on his knees.) P. Thompson. Jesu, Maria, shield us well ! (Crosses himself.) Arthur {advancing slowly). What mortal man art thou that darest sound The horn that wakens Arthur from his sleep ? P. Thompson, Men call me Potter Thompson. Arthur. And thy home ? P. Thompson. In Richmond town I dwell, where Alan, Count Of sea-washed Brittany, once built his keep, Hard by the eddying waters of the Swale. Arthur. Merlin hath told of him and of his race. How cam'st thou here ? P. Thompson. I found a hidden cleft Beneath the castle rock, through which I passed. And saw all these asleep upon the ground. Upon the table lay this horn, which thrice I blew, and thou awaked'st. Arthur. What would'st thou have ? 58 POTTER THOMPSON P. Thompson (rising from his knees and throwing himself at AKiuvn's feet). I crave a boon, O King. This Britain land, That once was thine, is scourged with bitter famine ; A murrain wastes the flocks, and o'er the fields, Instead of golden sheen of mellowing grain. Rank mildew spreads, and blasts the farmers' hopes Of harvest-home. The burghers cry aloud 'Gainst taxes, foreign wars ; the children starve For lack of mother's milk. Arthur. Of what avail Am I ? No longer am I Albion's King ; Another sceptre sways the commonweal, And Camelot towers are level with the plain. P. Thompson. But men have said, in England's hour of need, A man should find thee in the halls of sleep. And lead thee forth in conquest for the right ; Till, in the name of justice, thou should'st shake The high-embattled citadels of wrong. Arthur. Vain fables all. Fond dreams men dream of Arthur For some have said that like a winged fowl, Sea-mew, or sable raven, he doth haunt The shores and echoing caves of one Tintagel. Others have seen his wraith at twilight hour Rise from the yeasty waves of Lyonesse, And cast effidgence o'er the windy main, When Breton sailors, homeward bound from sea, Furl sails to the mast and beach their deep- keeled boats. And here and everywhere the rumour runs 59 PLAYS OF THE RIDINGS That, in the fulness of the days, once more He'll take the helm of state and governance, Which fell to him from Caesar's nerveless grasp. When yet the world was young. It may not be. P. Thompson. It may not be ? Then is my quest in vain. Wrong must prevail, nor welcome succour come To this spent realm, if Arthur lend not aid. Arthur. Idly thou speak'st. Why put thy trust in Arthur ? Are there no longer men alive who know That right has thews to quell a myriad wrongs ? Stay, let me speak my mind once and for all ; And, that my words may win memorial power. Straight will I rouse my comrades from their sleep. Knights of the table round, high-lineaged dames, Who shall reitei'ate my solemn words. And drive home courage to thy fainting heart. Gawayne, my nephew, Tristram and fair Isolde, Sir Bedivere, and thou, love-lorn Elaine, Put off this silken slumber from your eyes ; A mortal guest hath broke our charmed sleep, And asketh parley with us. Wake thou too,, Sir Galahad, the white-souled knight, and hear. {The sleeping knights and ladies awake one by one as Arthur calls them by name and advance towards the King and Potter Thompson.) P. Thompson. How fair a vision comes before my gaze. These, these are they, the heroes of my dreams — Day-dreams, that filled with joy my loneliest hours, 60 POTTER THOMPSON Yet brimmed mine eyes with tears. And may I give Them greeting ? Arthur. Say what thou wilt, but swiftjy. A phantom life we lead ; we may not long Have speech with men that walk the wide-wayed earth. P. Thompson (