Border Crossing: Mumming in Cross-border and Cross-community Context

by Anthony D. Buckley (Editor), Seamus O Cathain (Editor), Séamus Mac Mathúna (Editor)

'This welcome and admirably edited volume is the outcome of an international conference held at the University of Ulster's Academy of Irish Cultural Heritages in Derry in 2003, itself arising from an inter-institutional survey - the 'Room to Rhyme' project - to review the current state of mumming (rhyming) in northern Ireland.

It is an important contribution to our knowledge and understanding of this and a number of related traditions of seasonal house visiting that have perhaps escaped - or purposefully avoided - detailed academic scrutiny.

The results of the above survey - that bring together printed sources, questionnaires and the documentation of contemporary manifestations - are assessed by Críostóir Mac Cárthaigh, and recent examples are discussed in two significant articles by Ray Cashman and Henry Glassie on practices in the border counties of Tyrone, Fermanagh and Donegal.

Throughout, a persuasive case is made for regarding rhyming as crossing social classes and ethnic and religious groupings, as well as national boundaries. Its varying fortunes are mapped against the political history of the twentieth century - the inclusion of an application to the Royal Ulster Constabulary for a permit is a reminder of the context within which mumming was regarded as a potential threat to social order.

And there is a strong underlying sense that revivals may yet provide agency in cultural accommodation and in expressing and strengthening local affiliations, its very liminality constituting a locale for reconciliation and innovation in relationships.'

337 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

I'm an anthropologist, employed until recently at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra, Co Down in Northern Ireland. My interests include the Catholic-Protestant divide, ethnicity, religion, Freemasonry, the Orange Order, friendly societies and latterly sport. My doctoral thesis, a study of the traditional medicine and religion of the Yoruba people of Nigeria, became a prizewinning book. I am still writing, and have an honorary research fellowship in Anthropology at the Queen's University of Belfast. I am an atheist but my life proves I am obsessed with religion.