Everyone knows about the wren boys, and indeed there was a custom in south-west Ireland of persecuting the robin. But the bird's life was spared - the tail was pulled out, and, according to W.R. Le Fanu in Seventy Years of Irish Life, "in severe winters a robin with a tail was rarely seen". The mummers have not died out yet - an English importation, and the most recent manifestation was on the Christmas card of the bold Davey Hammond of Belfast. The front of it shows three raggedy young musicianers, with the script "Room Room, my gallant boys, give us room to rhyme", and inside continues the text of their theatricals. He explains on the phone that while the characters in these mini-dramas change, there is always a main character killed, but likely to come to life again. It might be Cromwell. It might be, as in this case, the Turkish Champion. The hero in this particular rhyming drama is Prince George. . . "I've conquered many nations and caused the rest to run." But the Turkish Champion challenges him and is killed. The mother wails: "O Geordie, O Geordie, what have you done? You have went and slayed my only son. A doctor, a doctor - £10 for a doctor." Dr Brown arrives. "Here come I, wee Dr Brown, the best wee doctor in the town." The mother asks what his cure is. To which the doctor answers in the best of mummer style: "My cure is hens' pens, peasy weasy, midges rib and bumbees' bacon, the sap of the poker, the juice of the tongs, three turkey eggs nine miles long. Put that into a moose's blether, stir it up with a tam cat's feather, put three drops in Jock's left lug, and he'll get up and sing you a song." He administers the medicine and the Turkish Champion rises. He tells all: "Once I was dead but now I'm alive, God bless the wee doctor who made me survive. We'll all shake hands and fight no more and be as big brothers as we were before."
And then all sing, the mummers presumably having been given some food or cash and a happy Christmas and a bright New Year is wished all around. This sort of crazy-gang rhyming drama still exists, Davey says. He has seen it as near Belfast as Ballycarry, a few miles north, in Antrim, and as far west as Enniskillen. It came, of course from England, but mummers, he says, have even penetrated into Irish-speaking parts of Donegal.