Door to door folklore - the mummers of Fermanagh

Brian McManus, in the top hat, taking part in a mumming performance

As folk traditions go, they don't get much "folkier" than mumming - characters tailored to the local area in costumes made of straw.

"Thirty years ago, we thought mumming was unique to Fermanagh and indeed, to Aughakillymaude," said Brian McManus from the Aughakillymaude Community Association.

"As we progressed, in our association and the formation of our mummers, we found that there are mummers across the world.

"It is a really unique tradition and it's something we really enjoy, bringing communities together and just demonstrating what went on down the years and how they enjoyed life to the full in fact, with no TVs and no computers and all of these instruments that you have today."

It's a time 87-year-old Violet Wilson remembers well.

"We went out about maybe 7 o'clock in the evening and one night we did 23 houses," she recalled.

"The wren, that was me, she went round and round and said what she had to say."

When younger Violet Wilson played the part of the wren

Violet had a rhyme about being a wren, the smallest bird with the biggest heart.

Some straw-wearing performers were known as the Wren Boys, after the tradition of hunting fake wrens on St Stephen's Day to mount on a decorative pole.

But traditions like this are becoming very much a thing of the past. That has prompted ethnographer Jim Ledwith, with help from Fermanagh and Omagh District Council and European funding, to create a Folk Traditions Forum.

"A lot of these old rituals are in people's heads, but aren't written about and haven't even been shared with others," he said.

"So the Folk Traditions project proposal is to have an online presence where we'll make accessible people's old documents, photos, convert old videos that are lying in people's attics, because in time, they'll be lost."

Strawboys

Even with a tradition like mumming, still in existence in parts of Fermanagh and Tyrone, long-lost rituals have already been discovered through the research.

"The Folk Traditions project has unearthed a very strong tradition in south east Fermanagh in the Teemore area in particular, the phenomenon of homecomings.

"That's where wedding couples, on returning from their wedding reception away for the day, would be met by strawboys.

"And a dance would be had with the bride and the bridegroom, in return drink would be got, and after the drink was taken, the strawboys would go off down the lane and burn their hats.

The next generation of mummers, Keava and Fearghal

"It was a ritual of welcoming the bride into the new family home.

"We've also found out the very strong custom of a mummers' dance at the end of the mumming season.

"An empty house would be got. A fire would be lit. Food and a quarter or half barrel of porter would be struck up and they would dance the whole night out in order to turn and celebrate the passing of midwinter and looking forward to the spring."

The straw played an important part, being twisted and plaited to form the costumes and masks for the performers. In many traditions and rituals, participants often went to huge lengths to disguise their identities.

But Violet is happy to disclose her part in the mumming performances that she played back in the day.

"We often got two or three hundred pounds a night, money to give to charity," she remembered.

"Everybody liked to see the mummers. We were offered tea and we were offered drinks, which we never accepted, only one in Fr McNamara's house because that was the last house in Killesher. Not strong drink, now!

"We all knew each other and were very fond of each other.

"I think if I was able, I'd go out again.

"I'd love to see other people taking up where I have left off, or near enough left off."