Folk dancing, English; Folk music -- England -- History and criticism; Folk songs, English -- England -- History and criticism
The School organised by the Espérance Guild was taken back to
Littlehampton, and is held there every Easter.
A belated conference was held two years later, with no practical
results.
It is hoped that in future some National Centre will be formed which
will bring together all those interested in the collection and
perpetuation of our English folk-dances, so that nothing of this
National treasure be lost to future generations.
X. CONCLUSIONS
In the foregoing pages we have seen how in primitive times dancing
was inextricably interwoven with all religious ceremonial, even when
that religion took the earlier form of magic and the dancing was part
of a ceremonial to induce the growth of crops or the rising of the
morning sun. We have seen, too, how later the more advanced teaching of
the Greek and Christian religion was partly expressed and symbolised
in dance and rhythmic gesture. We have seen these same dances as
part of the popular festivities of the folk, gathered around May-day
festivals, rude drama, wakes, lamb ales and rush-bearing, and attached
still to the Church as part of the festivals of Christmas, Easter, and
Whitsuntide.
And finally we have recorded the existence of these dances in villages
and country towns in different parts of England at the present day,
their recent revival, and the success which has attended their
reintroduction to the present generation.
It is of the utmost importance that the nature of these dances should
be clearly kept in mind by those who are responsible for their
continuance. Until six years ago they were unrecorded in manuscript
or print, they were only in the memory of the remaining Morris men,
most of them old and quite unlettered, and there was no language in
which to express the steps and evolutions but that invented by these
peasant men. Neither could these cryptic sayings, such as “foot up,”
“half hands,” “hey sides up,” “gipsies,” “half rounds,” etc., etc.,
be interpreted except by a patient watching of the dancers on the few
occasions when they could be got together to give a demonstration.
The following account of an old dancer will give the atmosphere of the
folk-dance and an idea of the way in which the Espérance Guild teachers
have themselves learned the dances. I was speaking in a village at a
“sing song” one evening when a man asked me if I had ever heard of
certain dances and offered to give me the names of the then surviving
dancers. I said “No,” and he gave me the names.
I wrote to one of two brothers who still had the traditional dances and
received the following reply:—
“Honourable and respected Miss,—
“I am the party what has got those dances, I shall be proud to show
them to you, yours to command.”
Eventually I went to see him, spent an afternoon in the bar parlour of
a jolly little inn, and invited him and his brother up to London.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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