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Our final airing of the Gower Christmas Sport Mummers play saw us start at the Beaufort Arms in Kittle. This had a lovely carpet which the Valiant Knight was very grateful for as he ended up lying on it following his sword fight with King George!
The Valley and the Joiners of Bishopston next received our attention, and it was lovely to see so many people in the Valley which has reopened after several months closure. Good luck to the place and hope to see it open for years to come! Folk in the Joiners enjoyed the general craziness of the play, although Otis, a Bulldog, had to be refrained from joining in! The Valiant Knight complained about the slate tiled floor upon which he had to lie! The Southgate Club at Pennard was visited and Valiant Knight further appreciated the really good carpet there and the play was well received. Newbies Claire and Hannah came to watch us. Our final performance of the year was the King Arthur in Reynoldston where we can think of no better place to end up in with its open fire, several hand pumped ales, and friendly staff. We performed, played some festive tunes, and enjoyed chatting to several of the people eating and drinking in there. See the printed archive for further information about the night! So that is us done for another year! In total we have collected £797.83 from the good people of Mumbles, Swansea Valley and Gower, and that money will be donated to Wales Air Ambulance, which is a very worthy charity. Also, importantly, we have been able to keep alive this 200 year old Gower Christmas custom for another year. Sweyn’s Ey Morris have been performing the Mummers play at Christmas for the last 45 years! Photos by Alison Haworth.
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We went out with a different Mummers play last night, performing Crwmpyn John in the Swansea Valley. This old play was performed by youngsters from Halloween to Christmas in the coal mining villages of Ynysmeudw, Ystalyfera & Godregraig from around the turn of the C20th until the late 1950s. Members of the Pontardawe Valley Folk Club kept it going until the 1980s and Sweyns Ey Morris have carried on performing it ever since.
We enjoyed the hospitality of the pubs we visited and folk made generous donations to our collecting buckets which will all go to Wales Air Ambulance! So far we have collected £652.93 for this life saving, worthy charity. So, we visited the Miller’s Arms Ynystawe, The Butcher’s Alltwen, Y Gwachel Pontardawe, The Chameleon Ystradgynlais and the Wern Fawr Ystalyfera where Crwmpyn John introduced the play to unsuspecting audiences who had no idea that mortal combat was about to take place right there before them, between King John and Bold Robin Hood! King John is killed in a brutal fashion with a wooden sword and then a Ten Pound Doctor is summoned up to cure the fallen knight with a magic potion contained in a hip flask. A bouncy ‘Jingle-in’ character dressed in rag jacket and with bells a jingling enters the room inviting money from the audience and the whole jolly event was rounded off with a short song and merry Christmas tunes on the fiddles & melodeon played by Sian, Di & Keith. The photos show what actually happened with Paul being Crwmpyn John, Geoff taking the part of King John, Alistair finding his true alter character in Robin Hood, Keith as Doctor Brown and Di as Jingle In, and Sian as herself playing fiddle. With luck, what we collected will help keep the rotors spinning on the Wales Air Ambulance! The Christmas Sport was taken out and performed in several well packed pubs last Friday evening. We started off in the White Rose where we competed with considerable noise levels coming from a very packed pub oozing festive atmosphere. The Narrator and Old Father Christmas could hardly be heard but King George managed to defeat the Valiant Soldier, adapting quickly to overcome his southpaw sword play and despatching him after the Valiant Soldier had hit him after the bell.
We next visited Waterloo Stores where there was enjoyable banter with some of the customers who had not seen the play before. Mumbales in Newton Road was visited unannounced and the play went down exceptionally well with the owners and the clientele there. Valiant Knight took a ‘dive in five’ to continue the boxing analogy and was brought back to life by The Ten Round Doctor who administered his Elecampane smelling salts! We stayed awhile with Sian & Keith playing some festive tunes on their fiddle and melodeon whilst the collecting bucket for Wales Air Ambulance was passed around. We then joined in with singing of the Twelve Days of Christmas, before walking down Chapel St; where we found that Johnnies was still open. This prompted Old Father Christmas to buy chips, whilst others chose fish cakes and finding them almost as good as they were fifty years ago! Our final round was had in the Victoria Inn which was, again, well rammed with merrymakers thoroughly enjoying their evening. The space where the play was performed was so small, and the bar so packed, anybody standing further than 10’ away was probably unaware of us performing! It was a good place to end the evening’s performances. Photos by Alison Haworth. After a cracking start to our mumming season at The Park Inn in Mumbles, our second tour of the year saw us in Sketty and Killay. The evening almost got off to a tricky start, when the new landlords of the Vivian Arms at Sketty Cross hadn’t realised we were coming, but made us all welcome nonetheless.
We proceeded to the Village Inn in Killay, where I joined the group – rather dramatically, springing from the back of the pub where I had been waiting for the play to start – and almost throwing Old Father Christmas off his stroke. A very friendly welcome awaited us, and several of us got chatting to some of the punters who stuck around to watch the crazy spectacle and listen to a few choons played by our lovely musicians. A quick stop in The Black Boy, with a nice welcome and a decision (I think) to reduce the number of times the Valiant Knight was allowed to collapse/moan/roll around/pretend to die etc. Much ad-libbing ensued, and then the entire company headed out into the night towards our final destination, the much loved Railway Inn. It was here that events took a turn for the slightly surreal, as more pints were quaffed, engagement with other punters was super-friendly and the musicians (especially Siân, who kept going for ages) entertained the crowds with their extensive repertoires and virtuoso performances, to their delight and delectation. The evening got slightly fuzzy after that, and Old Father Christmas slipped further into his fuzzy happy warm place (extremely warm, to be frank – that costume is seriously toasty, never mind the beard). A straw had been procured at some point, which helped him sip his chosen tipple without messing up his profusion of facial hair, and the yarns got longer and longer, until none of us knew what was true, what was legend, and what was utter nonsense! When finally we’d all had enough, the company dispersed and melted into the night, ready for some proper shut-eye after what had been a brilliant evening. Many thanks to all the pubs who hosted us, and everyone who came out to support us and made such kind donations to the cause. Words by Di Clark, Paul’s pics from last year’s tour. We visited the Park last night, with some of us joining in with the music session there. At 9pm some of us sloped away to dress up in our Mumming kit and we delivered the Christmas Sport Mummers play to a friendly, appreciative and very generous audience!
Gower provided a rich harvest of these wacky folk plays, there being about 8 different versions collected from the area. They date back nearly 200 years, providing mirth and merriment to all! Sweyns Ey Morris have kept this old traditional Christmas play going for the past 45 years! We collected for Wales Air Ambulance and made a good start to our collection. There was a sad post script to this tour as a couple of days after we performed at The Park, the landlord decided it was time to permanently close the pub, so, another pub gone which we will never see re-opened. Luckily for Di she was able to relocate her monthly music sessions to the wonderful Railway Inn at Killay. Still sad to see the Park go! Saturday 2nd of December saw us heading to Neath for our third outing in 8 days. We met at 10:45am at Neath Castle for their Victorian Fare where we danced to entertain the queue entering the castle. It was so cold that Keith suggested we danced with our sleeves rolled down, contrary to age-old Sweyn’s Ey custom. We went further and danced in rag-jackets and gloves.
The mayor and town-crier arrived at the head of a procession and then escorted us to various spots in Neath (the junction of Green Street and New Street, outside the Market, by St. David’s Church and Angel square). We performed a couple of dances at each spot with the idea of encouraging the good folk of Neath to get up to the castle for free mince pies and more entertainment! Several of our regular dancers were unavailable but we have a strong enough side these days that we are still able to put on an entertaining display. Sian and Kev provided the music; the dancers were Alex D, Alison H, Erin, Geoff, Keith, Ken and Nige. We didn’t have enough dancers for any 8-person dancers; Keith and Nige dusted off their calling skills. No sooner had we danced than it seemed time to move on, I lost track of which dances we performed but we stuck to Stewart’s set list and, most of the time, entered the dance-space as a set. Once we had completed our obligations for the day a few of us visited the Castell-Nedd Arms as it was the nearest pub to our last dance spot and we were thirsty. Yet again Erin turned up with a generous supply of hot-water bottles, these proved especially popular with the musicians. Write Up by Nige, Photos by Erin |
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AuthorSMost of our blog posts are written by Paul Tarrant (our archivist), with occasional contributions from other members of the side. Each post goes up first on our Facebook page, alongside a lot more photos than we put on the blog. Check out our Facebook page right here if you want to see more! Archives
November 2024
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