“Noah and the Flood” was a good dramatic story with exciting stage effects, and it was also an image of God saving some of the world from sin, pointing to Christ, so it was a core part of the Mystery Cycle. In York, it was split into two parts: the Building of the Ark, and the Flood. The Ship-Builders Guild, of course, built the Ark, while the Fishers and Mariners put on the play, as cooperative separate guilds. The Fishers appear to have had the main franchise, with the Mariners choosing whether to just chip in money, or to be personally involved. I have to wonder if the Ship-Builders cooperated with these two guilds so that the “ship” they had assembled in the previous play might be used as the stage in this one. But that might be too much to ask, since the stage for the Flood play needed things that might have been too hard to build and take down 17 times for each performance.
The actors in the Flood were Noah and his three sons, one daughter, and his wife. One scholar notes that women had a large share in the craft of fishing, wondering if this was a reason why Noah’s Wife was given such a large role. The wife was probably played by a man, but her portrayal in York’s production was fuller, and more human, and might have been suggested by a woman.
The play’s subject matter was solemn, but any possibility for profane comedy was exploitable too. In this case, it was a prime moment for sitcom quarreling. Noah tells his son to go fetch his mother. It’s time to embark, for the water is rising. But the Wife isn’t ready to go. Apparently, this quarrel had become a popular folk feature of the Bible story, mentioned also in Chaucer’s “Miller’s Tale.” At first, the Wife tells her son she’s not going anywhere, but she comes along just to find out what all this means. Noah welcomes her, but she isn’t ready to stay. She wants to go back and pack up her household gear, then she wants to go find her friends and cousins. Noah won’t let her, saying it’s too late. When she scolds and even slaps him for not telling her sooner that it was the final day, he points out that he’s been building this ship for about a hundred years. Noah and his wife are playing Punch and Judy; some versions may have had her carried bodily onto the boat by her sons.
I wonder if the action began on the street, with Noah looking down from the pageant wagon’s platform. The Wife may have been pushed and shoved up a ladder onto the “ship,” then a gate closed behind her. This play opens a lot of questions about special staging effects. With later Renaissance-era stages that weren’t on wagons, they used water tanks. The ship’s prow may have stood in a tub of water in those cases. With a wagon-stage, that doesn’t seem likely, but the backstage area of the wagon might have been equipped with some buckets of water to drop as rain, splashing anyone standing nearby. In some productions, the animals may have been painted onto the sides of the “ship,” or they may have been represented by large pictures—or just assumed, since they were below decks. In this version, the animals are not mentioned by name, so it’s likely they were just assumed.
The time on board goes by quickly, with some lines about taking care of the animals. The sons and daughter have a few lines stating how sick of the ship they have become, with time passing. How was the time shown? Did the sons and daughter come and go with buckets, acting out daily tasks? Did the stage have the means to suggest changes in weather, or day and night? Or did the lines themselves suffice to mark the time?
Finally it’s time to send out a bird, and Noah duly sends first a raven, then a dove. And here is an interesting twist, apparently a medieval legend explaining why the raven is black. Noah’s raven is white, but he’s both cunning and mean (“crabbed”). He understands his task, but when he finds some drowned animals that he, a carrion-bird, can eat, he stays away. What good would a lot of drowned animals do Noah and his family? None. Since the raven did not care, the legend says that he became black. The dove, though, is faithful to bring back to Noah evidence of plants growing on dry land.
We have to wonder if real birds were used, but it seems unlikely since the play had to be performed up to 17 times in the day. It’s more likely that bird models swung offstage on a rope that hung from one high crane arm. And one more effect was needed: the rainbow. A painted rainbow must have appeared, hung in the “sky,” which again suggests a crane.
Noah’s Flood is a good exemplar of the way the mystery plays preserved medieval Yorkshire dialect for us. York is just south of Scotland, and their Anglo-Saxon dialect developed in some similar ways. It’s also part of the Danelaw, the land created by an 886 treaty between King Alfred of Wessex and Guthrum, leader of the invading Vikings. We see a lot of unusual words in the play, words that aren’t in use in modern English. Some were generally medieval and some suggest a Danish-speaking layer. Most of them overlap with Scots dialect.
When Noah’s family understands something, they “witte” it, with past tense “watte.” when they know it, they “kenne” it. Something done with joy is done with “wynne.” And when someone doesn’t make sense, they’re asked, “art thou wood?” Wood meant crazy, and it seems to have been general in medieval English.
Noah intends to “flitte,” that is, to flee, to depart from here on the Ark, in order not to “spille,” that is, to be killed. He won’t go alone, that is, “sen.” He wants his wife to come, but “sho” does not agree. I don’t know if “sen” and the pronunciation “sho” rather than “she” were just Northern Scots-like words, but I am guessing they were. “Sen” is still used in Yorkshire, with “thissen” for “thyself.”
Noah and his family answer “Ya” for “yes,” which suggests Danish influence. So does the spelling for the parents, “fadir” and “modir.” As in Norwegian, their children are “barnes,” but this is also common in Scots today. When Noah’s son tells his mother that she must come, he says she “bus wende.” The Northern dialects used words similar to “be,” such as “bain’t” for “isn’t,” so I assume this “bus” is some form of “must.” Of course, we see also the present tense “wend,” a word that we use only in its past, “went,” having adopted “go” instead of “wend.”
I was particularly interested in two words I hadn’t seen before. Noah says his father Lamech is worth mentioning, or “likes to neven.” Neven was a northern variant of the Anglo-Saxon verb nemnian, which became in southern dialects our word “name.” And he tells us that Lamech prayed “with stabill steven,” meaning with a trustworthy (stable) word or promise, “steven.” In modern Scots, steven seems to mean a loud cry, or perhaps also a promise.
Finally, I was charmed to see that “Armenia” comes out in York’s Middle English as “Hermony.” Noah says, “I se here certaynely the hillis of Hermony.” Since “harmony” means peace, I hadn’t ever considered that Harmony, Pennsylvania could be named for Armenia.