This chapter had already been written when an important article, by Dr Jevons, entitled Masks and the Origin of the Greek Drama appeared in Folk-Lore (Vol.  XXVII.) The author, having discussed the different forms of Greek Drama, and the variety of masks employed, decides that “Greek Comedy originated in Harvest Festivals, in some ceremony in which the Harvesters went about in procession wearing masks.”  This ceremony he connects directly with the English Mumming Plays, suggesting that “the characters represented on this occasion were the Vegetation Spirit, and those who were concerned in bringing about his revivification—­in fine, Greek Comedy and the Mumming Play both sprang from the rite of revivification.”  At a later stage of our enquiry we shall have occasion to return to this point, and realize its great importance for our theory.

The Morris Dances differ somewhat from the Sword, and Mumming Dances.  The performances as a rule take place in the Spring, or early Summer, chiefly May, and Whitsuntide.  The dances retain little or no trace of dramatic action but are dances pure and simple.  The performers, generally six in number, are attired in white elaborately-pleated shirts, decked with ribbons, white mole-skin trousers, with bells at the knee, and beaver hats adorned with ribbons and flowers.  The leader carries a sword, on the point of which is generally impaled a cake; during the dancing slices of this cake are distributed to the lookers on, who are supposed to make a contribution to the ‘Treasury,’ a money-box carried by an individual called the Squire, or Clown, dressed in motley, and bearing in the other hand a stick with a bladder at one end, and a cow’s tail at the other.

In some forms of the dance there is a ‘Lord’ and a ‘Lady,’ who carry ‘Maces’ of office; these maces are short staves, with a transverse piece at the top, and a hoop over it.  The whole is decorated with ribbons and flowers, and bears a curious resemblance to the Crux Ansata.[26] In certain figures of the dance the performers carry handkerchiefs, in others, wands, painted with the colours of the village to which they belong; the dances are always more or less elaborate in form.

The costume of the ‘Clown’ (an animal’s skin, or cap of skin with tail pendant) and the special character assumed by the Maytide celebrations in certain parts of England, e.g., Cornwall and Staffordshire,[27] would seem to indicate that, while the English Morris Dance has dropped the dramatic action, the dancers not being designated by name, and playing no special rôle, it has, on the other hand, retained the theriomorphic features so closely associated with Aryan ritual, which the Sword Dance, and Mumming Play, on their side, have lost.[28]

A special note of these English survivals, and one to which I would now draw attention, is the very elaborate character of the figures, and the existence of a distinct symbolic element.  I am informed that the Sword dancers of to-day always, at the conclusion of a series of elaborate sword-lacing figures, form the Pentangle; as they hold up the sign they cry, triumphantly, “A Nut!  A Nut!” The word Nut==Knot (as in the game of ’Nuts, i.e., breast-knots, nosegays, in May’).  They do this often even when performing a later form of the Mumming Play.