Mumming at the Christmas season in Newfoundland is a tradition of very long standing. Two main types of house-visiting are the most common features. The first of these, the house-visit in which the game of guessing identities is played, has already been described fairly fully in H. Halpert and G.M. Story, Eds., Christmas Mumming in Newfoundland (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1969). The second house-visiting custom with all the performance of a play has hitherto received little attention.
This paper traces the evolution of fieldwork and research into the mummers’ play tradition in Newfoundland during the 1960s. A number of field trips were made to various parts of the province in what turned out to be a game of detection which eventually located reports of plays and texts and fragments of texts from a number of widely scattered locations.
The specific play text from the community of Tilting on the East coast island of Fogo will be presented together with some discussion of its context and variation as revealed by the few surviving individuals who remembered the performance.
[Ron Shuttleworth Collection holds audio tape recording, with transcript - under interdict from John Widdowson.]