 'For remember, good people, this is pace-egging time ...'
If I were so inclined, I could spin a plausible yarn about the Mossley Pace Egg Play, performed each Easter Monday (and this coming one is no exception) – pagan ritual (undertones of human sacrifice, of course), origins lost in the mists of time, traditional death-and-resurrection drama linking us with our distant ancestors and the precursor of the modern Christian festival.
Instead, I recommend that you read Eddie Cass’s The Lancashire Pace–Egg Play: a social history (FLS Publications, 2001). Dr Cass finds that the pace (or peace) egg play, featuring such combative characters as St George, Bold Slasher, Hector, Beelzebub and (perhaps most obscurely) The King of Egypt, arose in the county’s cotton towns in the 1840s (perhaps with a little help from chapbooks published during the previous century) and that 'for Lancashire pace eggers of the nineteenth and up to the period prior to the Second World War, the play was little more than a legitimized wealth transfer transaction' – in other words, begging!
The plays languished in obscurity until the folk revival in the second half of the last century. The Mossley play was discovered in the EFDSS library and first performed (mainly by members of Mossley Morris Men) in 1976, acquiring new characters such as Dirty Bett (possibly in a nod to the Elizabethan theatre’s practice of transvestism – or possibly not) and The Black Knight of Ashton-under-Lyne over the years.
As befits a morris activity, the play is now perambulated around local hostelries; this year, the favoured venues are as follows (note particularly that the times given tend to become more approximate as the afternoon wears on, since the performers become fatigued and have to force down alcoholic beverages in order to maintain the standard for which this eagerly-anticipated annual event has become notorious):
12 noon: Church Inn, Stockport Road, OL5 0RF
12.45pm:Britannia Inn, 217 Manchester Road, OL5 9AJ
1.30pm: Roaches Lock, Inn, 387 Manchester Road, OL5 9BB
2.15pm: Tollemache Arms, 415 Manchester Road OL5 9BG
3.00pm: Royal George Hotel, Manchester Road, OL3 7HX
3.45pm: Dysarts Arms, Huddersfield Road, OL5 9BT
Begging, of course, will take place (traditional, you see); but when Little Devil Doubt threatens that 'if you don’t give me money I'll sweep you all to your graves', bear in mind that any contributions from spectators will this year go to the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA). Check out their website at www.ssafa.org.uk – and don’t miss the Mossley Pace Egg ‘Boys’ on Monday afternoon.
- Dave Tuxford
|
Subscribe to North West Folk
