“Dear me!” the Rector said, “what will they do?”
“Dan Andersen’s boy will come in as a Son,” Dulcie said. “I know that’s what they planned if it happened.”
“And I ’spose,” Dame Alice added, “that idiot Ernie will dance the Fool. What a bore.”
“Poor Ernie, yes. A catastrophe for them,” the Rector murmured.
“Did I tell you, Sam, he killed one of my geese?”
“We don’t know it was Ernie, Aunt Akky.”
“Nobody else dotty enough. I’ll tackle ’em later. Come on,” Dame Alice said. “Get me bundled. We’d better go out.”
Dulcie put her into coat after coat and shawl after shawl. Her feet were thrust into fur-lined boots, her hands into mitts and her head into an ancient woollen cap with a pom-pom on the top. Dulcie and the Rector hastily provided for themselves and finally the three of them went out through the front door to the steps.
Here chairs had been placed with a brazier glowing in front of each. They sat down and were covered with rugs by the parlourmaid, who then retired to an upstairs room from which she could view the proceedings cozily.
Their breath rose up in three columns. The onlookers below them were wreathed in mist. From the bonfire on the other side of the battlements smoke was blown into the courtyard and its lovely smell was mixed with the pungent odour of tar.
The Mardian dolmen stood darkly against the snow. Flanking it on either side were torches that flared boldly upon the scene which — almost of itself, one might have thought — had now acquired an air of disturbing authenticity.
Dame Alice, with a wooden gesture of her muffled arm, shouted, “E venin’, everybody.” From round the sides of the courtyard they all answered raggedly, “Evening. Evening, ma-am,” dragging out the soft vowels.
Behind the Mardian Stone was the archway in the battlements through which the performers would appear. Figures could be seen moving in the shadows beyond.
The party of three consulted their programmes, which had been neatly typed.
WINTER SOLSTICE
The Mardian Morris of the Five Sons
The Morris Side:
Fool — William Andersen
Betty — Ralph Stayne
Crack — Simon Begg
Sons — Daniel, Andrew, Nathaniel, Christopher and Ernest (Whiffler) Andersen
The Mardian Morris, or perhaps, more strictly, Morris Sword Dance and Play, is performed annually on the first Wednesday after the winter solstice. It is probably the survival of an ancient fertility rite and combines, in one ceremony, the features of a number of other seasonal dances and mumming plays.
ORDER OF EVENTS
1. General Entry — The Five Sons
2. The Mardian Morris
3. Entry of the Betty and Crack
4. Improvisation — Crack
5. Entry of the Fool
6. First Sword Dance:
(a) The Glass Is Broken
(b) The Will Is Read
(c) The Death
7. Improvisation — The Betty
8. Solo — D. Andersen
9. Second Sword Dance
10. The Resurrection of the Fool
Dulcie put down her programme and looked round. “Everybody must be here, I should think,” she said. “Look, Aunt Akky, there’s Trixie from the Green Man and her father and that’s old William’s grand-daughter with them.”
“Camilla?” the Rector said. “A splendid girl. We’re all delighted with her.”
“Trousers,” said Dame Alice.
“Skiing trousers, I think, Aunt Akky. Quite suitable, really.”
“Is that woman here? The German woman?”
“Mrs. Bünz?” the Rector said gently. “I don’t see her, Aunt Akky, but it’s rather difficult — She’s a terrific enthusiast and I’m sure—”
“If I could have stopped her comin’, Sam, I would. She’s a pest.”
“Oh, surely—”
“Who’s this, I wonder?” Dulcie intervened.
A car was labouring up the hill in bottom gear under a hard drive and hooting vigorously. They heard it pull up outside the gateway into the courtyard.
“Funny!” Dulcie said after a pause. “Nobody’s come in. Fancy!”
She was prevented from any further speculation by a general stir in the little crowd. Through the rear entrance came Dr. Otterly with his fiddle. There was a round of applause, but the hand-clapping was lost in the night air.
Beyond the wall, men’s voices were raised suddenly and apparently in excitement. Dr. Otterly stopped short, looked back and returned through the archway.
“Doctor’s too eager,” said a voice in the crowd. There was a ripple of laughter through which a single voice beyond the wall could be heard shouting something indistinguishable. A clock above the old stables very sweetly tolled nine. Then Dr. Otterly returned and this time, after a few preliminary scrapes, struck up on his fiddle.
The air for the Five Sons had never been lost. It had jigged down through time from one Mardian fiddler to another, acquiring an ornament here, an improvisation there, but remaining essentially itself. Nobody had rediscovered it, nobody had put it in a collection. Like the dance itself it had been protected by the commonplace character of the village and the determined reticence of generation after generation of performers. It was a good tune and well suited to its purpose. After a preliminary phrase or two it ushered in the Whiffler.
Through the archway came a blackamoor with a sword. He had bells on his legs and wore white trousers with a kind of kilt over them. His face was perfectly black and a dark cap was on his head. He leapt and pranced and jingled, making complete turns as he did so and “whiffling” his sword so that it sang in the cold air. He slashed at the thistles and brambles and they fell before him. Round and round the Mardian Stone he pranced and jingled while his blade whistled and glinted. He was the purifier, the acolyte, the precursor.
“That’s why Ernie wouldn’t clear the thistles,” Dame Alice muttered.
“Oh, dear!” Dulcie said, “aren’t they queer? Why not say so? I ask you.” She stared dimly at the jigging blackamoor. “All the same,” she said, “this can’t be Ernie. He’s the Fool now. Who is it, Sam? The boy?”
“Impossible to tell in that rig,” said the Rector. “I would have thought from his exuberance that it was Ernie.”
“Here come the rest of the Sons.”
There were four of them dressed exactly like the Whiffler. They ran out into the torchlight and joined him. They left their swords by Dr. Utterly and with the Whiffler performed the Mardian Morris. Thump and jingle: down came their boots with a strike at the frozen earth. They danced without flourish but with the sort of concentration that amounts to style. When they finished there was a round of applause, sounding desultory in the open courtyard.
They took off their pads of bells. The Whiffler threaded a scarlet cord through the tip of his sword. His brothers, whose swords were already adorned with these cords, took them up in their black hands. They waited in a strange rococo group against the snow. The fiddler’s tune changed. Now came “Crack,” the Hobby-Horse, and the Betty. Side by side they pranced. The Betty was a man-woman, black-faced, masculine to the waist and below the waist fantastically feminine. Its great hooped skirt hung from the armpits and spread like a bell-tent to the ground. On the head was a hat, half topper, half floral toque. There was a man’s glove on the right hand and a woman’s on the left, a boot on the left foot, a slipper on the right.
“Really,” the Rector said, “how Ralph can contrive to make such an appalling-looking object of himself, I do not know.”