In Comes Robin. It’s About Time.

IS THERE a mummers mafia? Surely there can’t be a mummers mafia.

I’ve written a brand new Robin Hood mummers play for the Calverton Real Ale and Plough Play Preservation Society (that’s CRAPPPS to you) to perform at Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire next week. But am I in trouble?

Before my script came along, and I really had no idea about this when I wrote it, and I’m not sure my script even counts as ‘official,’ the last traceable Nottinghamshire Robin Hood mummers script appears to have been recorded by a chap called Dean S. Reynolds Hole in 1901. And Mr Hole’s just recording it, in a book called Then And Now, which suggests the script was probably written before 1901.

The script is here if you want to have a butcher’s. I must admit, my script includes a lot more winky jokes.

So have I really, and entirely inadvertently, written the first Nottinghamshire Robin Hood mummers script in at least 122 years? Surely I can’t claim this. Surely there must have been another one, maybe written in 1972, scribbled in a notebook by some fella called Brian or Big Ken, performed only once at Bobbers Mill, or Long Clawson, or on the bus, by the Papplewick Obby Orse Players (POOPS) to an audience of nine men and three ducks.

Surely someone remembers something Robin Hoody and mummery taking place between 1901 and 2023 in Nottinghamshire. Not just at Long Clawson. Is there a Short Clawson? Must remember to check. Surely this can’t be a massive piece of history we’re creating in Sherwood next week.

And … if I claim that my script is the first official Nottinghamshire mummers play about Robin Hood to be a) written and b) performed in this county in more than a century, will I be in trouble with the mummers mafia?

Is there a mummers mafia? Surely there can’t be a mummers mafia. Will they come out to arrest me for making lofty claims? Will I ever be seen again if they do?

Anyway. We’re on next week (Sunday 15 October) performing the Calverton Robin Hood Play. Free performances take place at 1.00 pm and 3.00 pm.

All of us here at CRAPPPS shall make no lofty claims about our script unless we are (far too easily) persuaded to drink too much and let such lofty claims blurt out, at which point the law enforcement wing of the mummers mafia will surely come out to decry us and demand we cease and desist. I imagine this law enforcement wing will be called The Cidermen.

Either way, it’s been really good knowing you, and you haven’t seen me. Right?

Robin Hood Mummers Play (By Order of the Sheriff!)