Miners 'tups' plays or mummers

[MrsMozzy]

This

 

"The word mummer is sometimes explained to derive from Middle English mum ("silent") or Greek mommo ("mask"), but is more likely to be associated with Early New High German mummer ("disguised person", attested in Johann Fischart) and vermummen ("to wrap up, to disguise, to mask ones faces"), which itself is derived from or came to be associated with mummen (first attested already in Middle High German by a prohibition in Mühlhausen, Thuringia, 1351)and mum(en)schanz, (Hans Sachs, Nuremberg, 16th cent.), these latter words originally referring to a game or throw (schanz) of dice."

 

 

explains it quite well (from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummers_Play )

[PopT]

Years ago there was some kind of Mummer's play carried out in the Robin Hood pub at Little M

Matlock, sadly now closed.

 

It was always carried out in the Wintertime.

 

I do not know how it came about, whether it was the Gannister Miners in the area who started the tradition or just the local farmers.

 

Many people forget often with the closure of pubs many traditions also disappear as they were the centre of social activities in many areas, although in the case of the Robin Hood pub this tradition had ended some years ago.

 

Maybe someone in the know will give us some more information about this particular Mummers play?

 

Happy Days! PopT

[derrek]

Although I'm not from the Stannington/Little Matlock area, somebody once told me that there was a custom performed at the Robin Hood pub on 'Kekkin Neet' which was somewhere around Halloween. I think it may have survived there long after it was more widespread around that area.

Youngsters seem to prefer 'Trick or Treating' nowadays, which seems to have come over from our American cousins and our own traditions & customs seem to be shrinking.

[MrsMozzy]

I arrived at the Yellow Lion (Aston) last night just in time to catch the performance. How's that for timeliness?

[fleetwood]

When I was a young'un in Grimesthorpe there was a family called Wilkinson who lived on Botham St North that used to perform on New Years day morning what I now know to be 'Tups', they dressed up as different characters and I always remember 'here comes me an' our owd lass short o' money an' short o' brass'. They went around the neighborhood performing their thing, I have always wondered why 'this family' and what their background was?

[derrek]

Hi Mrs Mozzy,

Arn't you the lucky one!

"The butcher that killed the Tup sir

Was up to his knees in blood

And the boy that held the basin

Was drownded in the flood"

[old tup]

I arrived at the Yellow Lion (Aston) last night just in time to catch the performance. How's that for timeliness?

 

Hi MrsMozzy last time I heard the Yellow Lion was closed down,how long has it been up and running?.

[denise2436]

It still happens round Mosborough. The play is very similar to the Pace Egg Play, performed in my hometown , the Calder Valley, on Good Friday.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pace_Egg_play

 

We lived in Renishaw, My Brother and his friends use to do the Derby Tup around Mosbrough, Renishaw, Eckington, Balborough etc though the 1970's. They use to borrow my mothers Shirley Bassey wig for the wife and came to our house to count up and share out the money, (lots of it ).

 

One year someone from a university tagged along and taped them to keep on record.

 

 

Denise

[derrek]

We were singing the Sheffield village carols at a pub in Grenoside last night when a group of mummers came in from Silkstone Common and performed a play which had St. George, Slasher, a doctor and Beelzebub in the cast.

 

---------- Post added 22-12-2012 at 08:09 ----------

 

We lived in Renishaw, My Brother and his friends use to do the Derby Tup around Mosbrough, Renishaw, Eckington, Balborough etc though the 1970's. They use to borrow my mothers Shirley Bassey wig for the wife and came to our house to count up and share out the money, (lots of it ).

 

One year someone from a university tagged along and taped them to keep on record.

 

 

Denise

I think that would have been Ian Russell (now Dr. Ian Russell), he did a lot of collecting round and about and published papers on his research. He's still doing collecting and research especially into our local carol singing traditions. We were both members of a Tup group which went round Woodseats & Norton in the early 1970's.

[MrsMozzy]

Hi MrsMozzy last time I heard the Yellow Lion was closed down,how long has it been up and running?.

 

Hi old tup. I've been going there weekly for some twenty years - it started off as drink / late tea after a riding lesson at Sammy's (Parklands) and all these years later some of us still go. It's had a patchy few years recently including a complete shut-down as you say, a recent period of not serving food, and some evenings when it's been empty except me and my friends, but now it's back to business as usual with a fairly new manager.

 

---------- Post added 31-12-2012 at 23:14 ----------

 

Tup currently appearing at Mosborough Hall Hotel!!