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Chapter 12 - Regional Performance as Intangible Cultural Heritage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2021

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Summary

The maidens came. The bailey beareth the bell away;

When I was in my mother's bower, The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.

I had all that I would. And through the glass windows shines the sun.

The bailey beareth the bell away; How should I love, and I so young?

The lily, the rose, the rose I lay. The bailey beareth the bell away;

The silver is white, red is the gold; The lily, the rose, the rose I lay.

The robes they lay in fold.

Lines from the Durham Song, as recited by Dylan Thomas.

BETWEEN 2013 AND 2018, the project Records of Early English Drama North-East gathered some ten thousand textual records pertaining to drama, music, ceremony, and public festivity in England's northeast, from the earliest beginnings in the eighth century to the onset of the English Civil War in 1642. The haul included manuscripts with medieval pilgrim and mystery plays, accounts of rites that were customary in Durham Cathedral before the Reformation, but also evidence on popular entertainment, such as medieval stag ceremonies and May games. Some of the material attested to anonymous groups of performers, while other documents hinted cryptically at individuals, such as “Mother Naked,” an entertainer of tantalizingly unknown talents once employed by the Priory of Durham. Among the texts of major significance from the region, we studied the Anglo-Saxon Harrowing of Hell (before 750, perhaps from Lindisfarne), probably the oldest play surviving in the British Isles, and we recited and performed the Durham Song, a Tudor musical fragment connected with festivities in old Durham which inspired such luminaries as Igor Stravinsky and Dylan Thomas. In its entirety, the corpus we investigated constitutes important evidence of Britain’s—and indeed Europe's and the world’s—dramatic heritage. Durham is itself a UNESCO World Heritage Site: Norman cathedral and medieval castle, once residence of Durham's Prince Bishops, are situated on a peninsula framed by the River Wear; this intact ensemble of riverbank, surrounding woodland, and imposing architecture allows visitors to appreciate vistas that have not changed much since the days of King Charles I and Oliver Cromwell. Nor has the cathedral ever been out of use: the complex has been a living and working World Heritage Site for over a thousand years.

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Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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