The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (Vol 1 of 2): With Tunes, Singing-Rhymes and Methods of Playing etc.Gomme, Alice Bertha
History
The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland (Vol 1 of 2): With Tunes, Singing-Rhymes and Methods of Playing etc.
Gomme, Alice Bertha
Folklore -- Great Britain; Games -- Great Britain
(_b_) In the Yorkshire version a ring is formed with one child in the
middle as the ’Oary Man. Whatever he, or she, does, all in the ring must
mimic, going round and singing at the same time. Any one found late in
changing the action or idle in obeying the caperings of the central
child becomes the ’Oary Man in place of the child taking that part. Both
girls and boys play. In the Redhill version, Holy Gabriel kneels in the
middle of the circle. He acts as leader, and always had the fiddle as
his instrument, though he now usually plays the pianoforte as his first
instrument. The other children choose any instrument they like. Holy
Gabriel pretends to play the fiddle, and all the other children play
their own instruments until Holy Gabriel changes his to one of theirs,
when that one must immediately begin to play the fiddle, and continue
until Holy Gabriel takes another instrument or returns to the fiddle.
This is done in vigorous pantomime. In the Luton variant the children
sit in a semicircle, the Drummer faces them. He plays the drum; all the
other children play on any other instrument they like. If the other
players do not at once change their instrument, or neglect to sing the
lines, a forfeit is demanded.
(_c_) Mr. Hardy says some sing this game, “Follow my game an holy man.”
Mr. Hardy once thought it was the remnant of a goblin story of a hoary
man of the gable or house-roof, who presided over the destinies of poor
cottagers, and he had begun to make out the folk tale. The fairy would
sometimes come down, and, playing his antics, compel whomsoever observed
him to follow him in a mimicking procession. Miss Hope writes of “Holy
Gabriel” that the game is played at Mead Vale, a small village in
Surrey, but is unknown at larger villages and towns a few miles off.
Some of the women who played it in their youth say that it began in the
Primitive Methodist school at Mead Vale. It is played at Outword, also a
remote village, and was introduced there by a stonemason, who stated
that he had learned it from a cousin who had been in America. Further
inquiry by Miss Hope elicited the fact that the cousin had learned the
game, when a boy, in his native place in Lancashire. He did not know
whether it was a well-known game there. This information points perhaps
to a modern origin, but in such cases it must be borne in mind that
people are very fond of suggesting recent circumstances as the cause of
the most ancient traditions or customs. The obvious analogy to the
incident in the myth of the Pied Piper, and to the Welsh custom at St.
Almedha Church, near Brecknock, recorded by Giraldus Cambrensis, where
the imitation of a frenzied leader is carried out as a religious
ceremony, rather suggests that in this game we may have a survival of a
ceremonial so common among early or uncultured people, the chief
incident of which is the frenzied dancing of a god-possessed devotee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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