The Lancashire Pace-Egg Play: A Social History

Abstract

The Lancashire Pace-Egg Play: A Social History. By Eddie Cass. (London: FLS Books, n.d. [2001]. Pp. xiv + 257, preface, introduction, photographs, illustrations, appendices, bibliography, index. L13.95 paper) In the best of all possible folklore scholarship worlds, every traditional practice would be the subject of a book like this one. In the preface, Eddie Cass confesses that he saw his first pace-egg play in 1968 "under the influence of T.S. Eliot and, through him, of James Frazer, Jessie Weston, and the Cambridge anthropologists" (xi). It's clear he's come a very long way in the interim; the book is called a social history, but it is much more. Not limited to bibliographical and archival research, it also includes ethnographic work: participant observation and interviews. Personally, I would differ with the romanticised conclusion to the preface: "The custom has to be at least two hundred years old in the county. That in itself makes it a folk tradition worth preserving" (xiii). Lots of old traditions, like racism, sexism, and homophobia, are definitely unworthy of preservation. Yet there is no doubt that pace-egging deserves-and receives-a thorough, respectful, and erudite treatment from Cass. The introduction discusses the play (the hero-combat type) as a calendar custom (usually presented at Easter) and as a "legitimized wealth transfer transaction" (1), by which children and adults gather money and food. Though he does not subscribe to it, Cass points out that the idea that such activities were ritual survivals significantly affected 20th century revival participants' understandings of what they were doing. But he also seems to conflate the ritual/spiritual explanation with the play's meaning per se, as in: "there is no clear historical evidence that the play has a meaning" (3). The concept that any practice, traditional or otherwise, could be without meaning seems bizarre-particularly so when the practice has such a long history as pace-egging. This notion of the play's meaninglessness points to one of a few locations where readers may find Cass's perspective somewhat opaque. The book's first chapter goes through definitions of folk drama and locates the Lancashire pace-egg play within them, as well as in its geographical setting in northwestern England. He points out that "pace-egging was a house-visiting custom within the working class community," not only to raise money from the "merchants and masters" (30), and argues that its decline, then, can be explained in terms of changes within the community, rather than simply alterations in the socioeconomic class structure. This seems a sensible approach, given the pace-egg play's clearly demonstrated adaptability not only to different socioeconomic structures, but also to different contexts within the communities in which it was played. The chapter on performance and performers draws attention to a variety of specifics, from costume to audience participation, focusing primarily upon historical accounts and published or recorded texts. …