All this talk of English identity, small Bedfordshire villages and my ongoing penchant for folky acoustic troubadours… he’ll be raving about bloody morris dancing next, you’re probably thinking. Well, a couple of days ago I’d have laughed out loud at the prospect. Where I grew up, morris dancing meant white costumes, tinkly bells and handkerchiefs. It was twee and appalling, this heritage of mine. As a teenager, I found it a huge embarrassment and I hated it.
In fact, being English was rather a disappointment. Why couldn’t we have a decent folk mythology like the Welsh, Scottish and Irish, I used to wonder. I immersed myself in the Mabinogion and Celtic culture in general. This persisted well into my twenties. When I got married in an Irish Catholic church, my status as a pseudo-Celt felt complete. I’m even entitled to an Irish passport now, though I’ve never felt the slightest inclination to apply.
Over the past ten years or so, I’ve become more interested in English traditions and folklore. It turns out that it’s not all as pretty and neutered as I’d youthfully assumed. Nevertheless, I’ve not been able to work up much passion for it. This weekend marked the annual May Day celebrations in many English villages, but even though I now understand the origins and significance of traditions like maypole dancing, I haven’t particularly warmed to them.
Until yesterday, that is, when I went to the Rochester Sweeps Festival. The chimney sweeps held an annual festival there for hundreds of years, either in celebration of the warmer weather – meaning that they would be getting more business as fewer fires were lit – or as a single day off from an oppressive 364-day regime, depending on which history you read. The tradition died out at the end of the nineteenth century, but was revived in 1981 and has continued every year since.
An appealing mixture of beer, food, music and dancing, the Sweeps Festival was – and still is – great fun. I had a feeling I’d enjoy it, but it exceeded my expectations. The first group of dancers who I saw blew me away. With a percussive, insistent, minor-key musical backing and a striking, black-faced, hybrid Dickensian-pagan-Goth appearance, their performance was as far removed from the hankie-waving of my youth as you could imagine.
I assumed that the black faces were specific to this festival, but it turns out that they’re from a much older tradition of disguise in the “border morris” variant of morris dancing. That adds an interesting perspective on the phenomenon; although border morris doesn’t appear to be specifically anti-establishment, nevertheless the element of disguise means that it’s broadly anti-surveillance (to avoid being caught earning extra money).
The two sides that I enjoyed the most were Beltane Morris* and Grimspound Border, both coincidentally from Devon and dancing in the (English-Welsh) border tradition. The latter in particular, as an all-male side, gave a heady performance fulled jointly by beer and testosterone. That’s not to imply that the former were any less powerful: I narrowly avoided getting a matchstick-sized splinter of wood in my eye during one of their energetic dances.
So, who’d have guessed… I’m a morris dancing convert. Would it be fanciful to draw parallels between border morris and other more modern expressions of ramshackle English anti-authoritarianism (Rolling Stones, Sex Pistols, and so on)? The echo of the Sweeps Festival certainly lends an interesting slant to Medway-phile and tabloid jailbird Pete Doherty’s interpretation of the sweeps’ song Chim Chim Cheree at the Royal Festival Hall last year.
However tenuous or solid the philosophical links between border morris and contemporary music, there are numerous tangible similarities: the costumes mirror youth cults like the Goths and metalheads, there’s a sense of fun paired with a mild undercurrent of danger; it’s a hugely communal, celebratory form of entertainment and, in one performance that I watched, there was something that most contemporary gig-goers would probably recognise as moshing.
Far from being an archaic remnant of the past, border morris is vibrant, alive and fascinating. Encountering it at the Sweeps Festival – a broadly urban environment, despite the town’s occasionally shabby prettiness – was the perfect introduction. Now I want to see more. A tradition that involves dressing up in black, drinking copious amounts of beer and making merry – if only I’d come across this as a teenager, my life could have followed a very different path indeed…
Further viewing
* incorrectly credited in the festival’s official booklet as “Belthanc Morris”.
Many thanks for the kind words about our dancing. Glad you enjoyed it. The vid was well taken under difficult circumstances (the kid with a balloon). It is gratifying to hear your conversion to morris dancing as a result of seeing border morris.
Gozzer
Squire of Grimspound Border
Oh fantastic. Fascinating and beautiful. I’ve only ever seen Beltane but maybe it’s a regional variant?
Gozzer – great to hear from you. Yes, the balloon is a shame; not so much because of the two seconds for which it obscures the view, but because its reflective surface confuses the hell out of the camera and makes the entire picture go darker thereafter.
rr – yeah, maybe I’m placing too much faith in Google and the booklet is indeed correct. I do remember seeing that side’s name written on the side of one of their drums, but can’t recall the exact spelling and haven’t captured it in any of my pictures.
This video is wonderful, thanks fr putting it up hg.
Belthanc sounds vaguely Breton?
Hiya, Belthanc is a typo by the organisers of Rochester Frestival, the correct spelling of our side is Beltane. Glad you enjoyed it.
Pica – glad to be of service.
Jackie – thanks for clearing that up, I’ll amend the post to reflect the correct name.
Hmmm, a very nicely written and thoughtful piece about your conversion to morris dancing. However this is one epiphany I have not experienced and my cynical mind is inclined to put it down to the ageing process. Or maybe the beer
Ros – hmm, would that be the same ageing process that makes you a whole 32 days younger than me? Forty’s a dangerous time – you never know when you might encounter a latent interest in traditional dancing lurking around the corner, waiting to pounce…
July 11th 2010. Two years later.
I’ve just seen Grimspound Morris (twice) at Priddy Folk Festival and they’re better than ever – mind you, there were about two hundred of them.