Drag queens, kings to strut their stuff with Mummers

AS A KID growing up on 2nd Street in South Philly, Ian Morrison enjoyed the spectacle of the wild post-New Year's Day Parade celebrations that unfurled in his tight-knit neighborhood.

"We'd steal everything the brigades threw out, the makeup and the costumes," laughed Morrison, 39, dressed from head to toe yesterday as his makeup-heavy drag-queen alter ego, Brittany Lynn.

Morrison, City Councilmen Jim Kenney and Mark Squilla, and several members of the LGBT "Miss Fancy" Brigade gathered at the Mummers Museum, at 2nd Street and Washington Avenue, to announce that the troupe of female impersonators would march in the parade for the second year in a row.

FWIW. I have watched the Mummers Parade on television up Canada way and was extremely interested because of the origin. It is known that in the middle ages in England it was performed, but no records exist in writing.

In Henry VIII reign during the 1500's groups of mummers would descend on houses. They got very boisterous and demanded strong ale and victuals - or else. Bluff King Hal banned it for a time. In the novel by Thomas Hardy - The Return of the Native", which covered the Victorian period of the mid 1840s or so, we find the mummers.

Two main characters were St George of England and his opponent, the Saracen Knight. Groups of young men and women also joined in as part of the scene. The Saracen was a Turkish Muslim and I note that in parts of England this figure is called the " Slasher".

Attempts are being made to revive these traditions. Perhaps the slaying of ye Saracen Knight might draw the usual yells of racism. I don't know that though.

The gays, as they are called seemed to be everywhere. In Victorian England they would have got seven years hard labour(if caught), so I guess they are lucky.

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