Carpe Diem #33, All Souls Day/Mummer's Dance

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Another day in Carpe Diem's Paradise ... our adventure continues. Today our prompt is All Souls Day/Mummer's Dance as a kind of 'follow-up' on yesterday's prompt. I am not so familiar with All Souls Day, but I think that it's about souls that have gone over to the spiritworld. It will not be easy for me to write a haiku about All Souls Day, but ... of course I have to do this (smiles).



All Souls Day, Ancestor Worship



sweet perfume
burning incense sticks
for my ancestors

for my ancestors
I enlighten a few candles
in the chapel

in the chapel
the sound of wishpering voices
All Souls Day

Our other part of today's prompt is Mummer's Dance I had never heard of such a thing like Mummer's Dance 'till I heard the song Mummer's Dance sung by Loreena McKennitt. So I had to sought out the Internet. Here below I will give a short piece of information on Mummer's Dance. (here below you can view the video Loreena McKennitt made for this song. (I thank Loreena for using her video. Thank you so much Loreena, Blessed Be).

Mummers Plays (also known as mumming) are seasonal folk plays performed by troupes of actors known as mummers or guisers (or by local names such as rhymers, pace-eggers, soulers, tipteerers, galoshins, guysers, and so on), originally from England, but later in other parts of the world. They are sometimes performed in the street but more usually as house-to-house visits and in public houses. Although the term mummers has been used since medieval times, no play scripts or performance details survive from that era, and the term may have been used loosely to describe performers of several different kinds. Mumming may have precedents in German and French carnival customs, with rare but close parallels also in late medieval England.
The earliest evidence of mummers' plays as they are known today is from the mid to late 18th century.
Mummers' and guisers' plays were formerly performed throughout most of English-speaking Ireland, Europe and Great Britain, as well as in other English-speaking parts of the world including Newfoundland, Kentucky and Saint Kitts and Nevis. In England, there are a few surviving traditional teams, but there have been many revivals of mumming, often associated nowadays with morris and sword dance groups.

Mummers and "guisers" (performers in disguise) can be traced back at least to the Middle Ages, though when the term "mummer" appears in medieval manuscripts it is rarely clear what sort of performance was involved. A key element was visiting people in disguise at Christmas. At one time, in the royal courts, special allegorical plays were written for the mummers each year — for instance at the court of Edward III, as shown in a 14th century manuscript, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. However, apart from being in rhyme, these plays were nothing like the current traditional plays, whose documented history only goes back as far as the mid-18th century.Although usually broadly comic performances, the plays seem to be based on underlying themes of duality and resurrection and generally involve a battle between two or more characters, perhaps representing good against evil.

all souls day
mummers walking through the street
dancing their dance

dancing their dance
ancient dancers mummering
ah! what a sight

ah! what a sight
on the village green
all souls day

Not a strong set of haiku, but I think I have done right to our prompt for today. Enjoy the fun, be inspired and share your haiku with Carpe Diem.

This prompt will stay on 'till November 3rd 11.59 AM (CET). Our next prompt will be rainbow reprise and is the start for our 'Rainbow-week'. I will post this new prompt around 10.00 PM (CET) today.