The Pace Egg in Rochdale [leisure trust, arts heritage, sports centres, fitness health, rochdale, link4life, entertainment, Rochdale Boroughwide Cultural Trust, museum, middleton arena, gallery, touchstones, local studies, central, bowlee, springhill, marland, heywood, littleborough,]
Boys Pace Egg Steet Team, Sandfield area, Rochdale (c.1900)
Girl's Pace Egg Team, Rochdale (1909)
Boys doing Pace Egg Battle in the Street (c.1930)
Greenbank Primary School Pace Egg Play (1975)
Reviving Bold Slasher. Greenbank Primary School, Pace Egg Play (1975)
Redbrook School Pace Egg Play (1979)
Pace Egg Rehearsal, Central School, Rochdale (1935)
Syke Road, Rochdale (1910)
Children outside Plough Inn, Milnrow - Pub demolished for M62 (c.1910)
In Rochdale and the surrounding area, up until World War l, the weeks before Easter would be characterised by little groups of children, mainly boys and youths, learning their lines for the annual Pace Egg performances. At that time their basic script was probably the 'Chapbook' entitled 'The Peace Egg, or St George, an Easter Play', produced by Messers. Edwards and Bryning of Castle Works, Rochdale. This text would, however, be embellished by ad-libbing, raucous replies to hecklers in the audience, and various songs.
Basically the play involves a mock battle between St George and Slasher, who is killed, but then revived by the Doctor's magical bottle of medicine. The Doctor usually wore a top hat or bowler (always too large) and an oversize coat, and carried a bag for his medicine bottle. Further battles followed, between St George and the Prince of Paradine and Hector, with interruptions by the Fool and other characters, like Tosspot, Beelzebub and Dirty Bet.
Pace Egging was an important street calendar custom in the area, with groups of young players clashing their wooden or iron swords in the mock battles. Each band of players would usually include around six to nine boys, drawn from one or more streets within a small locality. For example, all the team members in the Lowerplace photograph were from the area of Prince Street and Royds Street. They would be playing to their friends and families. Girls were rarely included, with the part of 'Dirty Bet' being generally played by a boy wearing an old apron, tied up with string. There were some separate girls' teams, as evidenced by the photograph in the Rochdale Observer in 1909.
Edwards and Bryning, having been enterprising enough to print the chapbook, went a step further by supplying iron swords and sashes for the actors. Many of the poorer children had home made wooden swords, with sashes made by their mothers and sisters. Cardboard helmets and breastplates worn over everyday clothing (woolly jumpers, knee length trousers and long socks) with blackened faces completed the disguises. The girls in the photo are wearing the sashes, which were used to identify the different characters in the play.
Nor did all children learn their lines from the chapbook. Older members of some teams taught lines and action to younger members as they joined. In a way this became almost a 'rite of passage,' as older boys, preparing to enter the world of work as half-timers, passed on their knowledge to the yet younger generation. This kind of oral tradition may well account for the variations to the chapbook versions of the play. The character Dirty Bet, for instance, did not appear in the chapbook text, and 'she' often spoke lines generally given to Beelzebub or Devil Doubt, with some words of 'her' own, as follows:
'They threw me in for Dirty Bet
I'm noan drest as weel as rest,
I'll stick to eggs and money best,
I've got a basket for mi eggs
Two pockets for mi brass
And two bonny lips to kiss a bonny lass.
If any bonny lass wants to kiss me
Hoo'l have t'hurry else she'll miss me.
('hoo' in Lancashire dialect = 'she')
Dirty Bet, as you can see, played a most important part. Like Devil Doubt she collected the gifts of money and eggs for the team, usually in a wicker basket after the performance. She was a character whose face was blackened - a tradition associated with many mumming plays in the past, particularly amongst children. It was, of course, a form of disguise, much like the tradition of wearing a coat back to front at Halloween, in the days before the Americanised version of 'Trick or Treat'
arrived here. Peter Stevenson, who researched the history of the Pace Egg in 1982, tells us that Dirty Bet was a character in the Rochdale version of the Morris Dance, and that the rhymes, which children chanted, were very similar to playground rhymes of the time. In addition, he reminds us that the children's belief that there should be no performances after mid-day on Good Friday was not derived from the chapbook or any other written source. It was purely traditional.
'Devil Doubt' carried a broom, threatening the spectators if they didn't contribute - although his broom was traditionally intended to create a space for the performance.
His rhyme, shouted at the top of his voice, was:
'Here come I, little Devil Doubt,
If you don't give me money
I'll sweep you all out.
Money I want and money I crave,
If you don't give me money
I'll sweep you all to the grave.'
The play was traditionally given 'in the round,' with the group of players making a widening circle amongst their spectators, usually by the simple means of walking round and round, pushing the boundary further out as they went. As they started the group would chant:
Room, room brave gallants,
Give us room to sport.
For in this room we wish to hold our court,
And here repeat to you our merry rhyme,
For remember good sirs, it is Easter time.
Other characters in the chapbook text included the main stars, St George, Bowd Slasher, the Doctor, the King of Egypt, Hector and the Prince of Paradine, the Fool, Beelzebub and Old Tosspot. The Doctor's part in the play is to revive Slasher. Some folklorists link this act to the revival of spring after the winter.
An article in the Rochdale Observer on 14th April 1909 echoes this idea, saying that in the Pace Egg, " the fight between St George and Slasher is the reproduction of the eternal contest between winter and spring which is to be found in present day folklore throughout the agricultural ceremonials of European peoples and in past ages the religious rituals of the Germans, the Greeks and the Romans. St George is the spring combatant, Slasher the winter. The incident of resuscitation is the rising of winter to fight another day."
In the following exchange between the Fool and the Doctor, we are told what he can cure (with the help of his 'magic bottle'.)
Fool: What diseases can you cure?
Doctor: All sorts.
Fool: What's all sorts?
Doctor:
The itch, the pitch the palsy and the gout; if a man gets nineteen devils in his skull I'll cast out twenty of them. I have in my pockets crutches for lame ducks, spectacles for blind bumblebees, pack saddles and panniers for grasshoppers and plasters for broken-backed mice. I cured Sir Harry of a nag nail almost fifty yards long; surely I can cure this poor man.
The photograph from the Rochdale Observer in 1975 shows pupils from Greenbank Primary School performing the Pace Egg in front of the war memorial in Rochdale Town Centre. As you can see, all the characters apart from the Doctor are 'disguised' by blackened faces. The character with the club and frying pan is Beelzebub, and you can see Dirty Bet with her basket. In the original street plays Beelzebub sang the following rhyme:
Here come I, little Beelzebub,
And o'er mi shoulder I carry a club,
In mi hand a drippin' pan,
And I think myself a jolly old man.
Sweep away, sweep away, sweep the jolly old lads away.
In 1998 the following Pace Egg songs were collected from Mrs Isabella Callaghan, who was then 100 years old. Mrs Callaghan remembered taking part in the Pace Egg as a child, when she lived in the Syke area of Rochdale. They dressed up and performed on various street corners for pennies and sweets.
The next that steps up is old Tosspot you see,
With a bunch of bright ribbons tied under each knee.
He's a merry old man, he wears a pig-tail
And he's always delighting in drinking cowd ale.
Foll-a-day, foll-a-day, foll-a-diddle-I-dum-day.
Jack the sailor killed his wife,
Cut her up with a carving knife!
Weep away, weep away.
Play the fiddle and lads away.
Down in the cellar its fair full o'bugs,
They've eaten mi' stockings and part of mi' clogs.
We'll take a sharp knife and chop their yeds off
And we'll have a good supper of bugs yeds and broth.
Foll-a-day, foll-a-day, foll-a-diddle-I-dum-day.
In 'The Stations of the Sun, A History of the Ritual Year in Britain,' Professor Ronald Hutton proposes that the term 'pace' derives from the Latin adjective paschal' for Easter, rather than 'peace,' as it is titled on some texts. Others relate it to the Jewish 'pasch' for Passover - which again leads us to Easter.
'Dirty Bet' collected eggs and money in her basket, a throwback perhaps to the medieval custom of villages paying a levy of eggs at Easter to both the church and the Lord of the Manor. In that period, the eating of eggs during Lent was prohibited, which may have been part of the reason for the Easter egg custom, when the ban was lifted. Eggs have always, of course, been a symbol of new life and the returning spring.
The play itself also owes something to the pageants of St George that were played out in parts of Kent and Norwich in the early 15th century.
A written sketch, called "Bowd Slasher" in John Trafford Clegg's 'Sketches and Rhymes in the Rochdale Dialect,' published in 1895, is the earliest recorded reference to the street play in Rochdale. In the first sentence he refers to having been a 'Pace Egger' himself, presumably many years earlier, and it is known that printed texts appeared in Manchester in the 1830's.
In his (Lancashire dialect) words: " It's a good while sin' aw went pace-eggin myself, neaw, but aw'm olez interested I' t' Good Friday performances o' th'owd play. Who wrote that stirrin thragedy, aw wonder? It's bin honded deawn moore bi word o' meauth nor printin, aw think, as far as Rachda gwoes, shuzheaw; for yo'll have a job to find two books alike, or ony book where its set deawn same as t'lads play it."
Trafford Clegg goes on to describe the play and its characters (all in dialect).
"An' what grand characthers they are! St George, crowin o'er everybody, olez winnin his battles, swaggerin o'er what he has done an what he's beawn to do; th' king ov Egypt an' his son, wi their oriental Smobridge manners; their champion, Hecthor, wi moore talk nor feight in him; t'docthor, full o' long words, lies an' impidence; th'owd Foo, an' Beelzebub, a bigger foo again; an' above o, Bowd Slasher. That's t'chap! Noane runnin o'er wi empty brag, like St George, olez ready for his wark, full o' gam, cured ov his weaunds in a twinkle, noane spiteful when he's licked, an' gooin off abeaut his business when he's nowt to do I' th' play. Slasher were olez my favouryte,
an' iv aw'd ever bin owt I' th' actin line, that'd ha bin th' part for me."
The sketch also includes the whole play in dialect form. ('Smobridge' is Smallbridge).
In his book 'The Lancashire Pace Egg Play,' Eddie Cass points out that in times of hardship the money collected by the Pace Eggers would be a welcome addition to the family budget - not to be squandered on sweets or the delights of the fair. Under these circumstances it is likely that teams ventured further afield with their plays, as families and friends in their own streets were likely to be poverty stricken too. Elaine Wedge, writing in her thesis 'The Great Pace Egg Robbery,' quotes Mrs Annie Wedge, originally from Milnrow, who at 85 recalled, in the early 1920's… "Coming home, giving my mum the money, and she used to give us a shilling. I think it was a shilling in them days, and going off to the fairground, or the lake to spend it." Their route was from Barratt Square (in Milnrow) and over Harbour Lane, by the Cricket Club round Ladyhouse Lane, back round the main road, by the council offices and back up by the Milnrow Empire, and back home.
The collection of money, whether for the family purse or their own entertainment, was probably partially to blame for the decline of the popularity of Pace Egging by street teams.
By 1909 the Rochdale Observer was critical of their exploits, with a report on 10th April announcing that:
"Of pace-eggers the public had more than enough. They seemed to be more numeraous than ever. Wherever one went on Thursday night or yesterday morning, whether into a main thoroughfare or into a side street, there they were, regaling the long suffering inhabitants with the soul-stirring story of St. George, Slasher, the Doctor, the Black Prince, and dirty Bet. Generally it was a very realistic performance. Sometimes the thread of the story wa interrupted to allow an angry altercation between some of the actors, but peace was as a rule restored and the "play" was resumed. In some cases, dirty Bet in her anxiety to be up-to-date, had donned a motor-veil, and in one case at any rate, the craze for being abreast of the times was illustrated by a choice representation of that noted character, who bore a more-or-less white card bearing the motto "Votes for Women."
In 1914 the Observer reported that the performances had "dinned the long suffering householders into a state of mental distress" and five years later they declared: "It is time it stopped."
And stop it almost did, as alternative entertainments came on the scene and interest in the play declined amongst those who gave it. There are the effects of World War 1 to consider too, as older brothers who probably encouraged the performances, were lost to the trenches and perhaps forever.
This text emerged in 1930 and was a compilation of at least 11 versions of plays about St George, including Edwards and Bryning's Rochdale chapbook.
John Priestnall and William Mitchell wrote this text, named 'The Play of St George, the Knights and a Dragon'. Priestnall was a teacher at Rochdale Secondary School, where he was housemaster of Royds House at Rochdale Secondary School on Nelson Street. William Mitchell was an undergraduate at Manchester University at the time.
Pupils from Royds House, including girls, performed the play for the first time in 1930. It soon became a popular annual event, initially performed outside the school, but later moving to the Cattle Market on the Holme (where the Police Station stands today). Any money that was donated was given to charity. In 1935 the play was broadcast live by the BBC.
This version, like the Edwards and Bryning chapbook, does not have a place for Dirty Bet. Nor does it employ Devil Doubt or Beelzebub. Several more 'respectable' characters replace them, including St. David, St. Andrew and St. Patrick.
A number of local schools have carried on this tradition at different times over the years, including Littleborough, Wardle, Redbrook and Greenbank. Sticking to the Priestnall and Mitchell script they echo briefly the older and far more rowdy tradition of street performances given by bands of local children.
Mike Harding, the Crumpsall born comedian, folksinger and writer, was instrumental in the revival of the Pace Egg in Middleton in the 1970's. In Middleton the play is performed by adults.
References.
Cass, Eddie. The Lancashire Pace Egg Play. FLS Books, 2001.
Cole, John. Rochdale Revisited, Vol.2. Kelsall, 1991.
The Peace Egg, or St George, an Easter Play. Chapbook, (play text). Edwards & Bryning. No date.
Priestnall, John & Mitchell, William. The Play of St George, the Knights & the Dragon. (play text) 1930
Stevenson, Peter. The Peace Egg or St George, an Easter Play. Traditional Drama Research group,1982
Wedge, Elaine. The Great Pace Egg Robbery. Unpublished thesis, 1996.
All the above books may be consulted at the Local Studies Library, Touchstones, Rochdale.
With thanks to the Manchester Weekly Newspapers Group for permission to use images from the Rochdale Observer and the Middleton Guardian.
