ABSTRACT
At the time of the Whitsun Play and Midsummer Show, the existence of an occupational link between glaziers and stilts may seem somewhat tentative, but that between shepherds and stilts is fairly conclusive. The tradition of shepherds wearing stilts to keep marshy ground, cross streams, avoid briars, and to extend the distance at which they could see their sheep, particularly on flat ground, is best known in south-west France. Peter Meredith has done much to identify the Chester stilt-walkers and speculate on their possible roles in the Painters’ pageant. Even he concedes that, in spite of the named stilt-walkers all being glaziers, ‘their occupation has nothing to do with the plays’ and, by extension, that ‘stilt-walking may have nothing to do with the plays’. In England, the utilitarian value of stilts is recorded in literature from the beginning of the seventeenth century, mainly in the context of the fen-lands of East Anglia.
