Summary: Vol. 30 Issue 1
Editor: Jeff Lawson
Published: February 2023

Table of contents

• Boxing Day in Flamborough 
• GOATHLAND PLOUGH STOTS– 100 YEARS 1923- 2023
• The Morris Federation to Host Rattle Up My Boys archive
• DERT 2023 Rochdale 11 March 2023
• Editorial
• Correspondence
• Speurtocht- 12 ‘t zweertdanserke 25- July/August 1981
• Speurtocht- 13 ‘t zweertdanserke 30- January 1982
• Midwinter Dancing

Editorial

I am pleased to have received lots of reports and photographs of Midwinter Dances. If there are a few more photographs than usual in this issue, it is because I had such a lot of good ones to choose from. I like to see that lots of teams got media coverage for their Midwinter Dancing and better still it has all been very good and very positive.
If there is one area where the recovery from the pandemic and lockdowns has been lagging it is in restarting the many excellent school teams that were out there. This makes it especially pleasing to include Rob Traves article on Flamborough’s Boxing Day with a junior side along. All the work by Richard and Rob Traves with the school has been well worth it.
I remember Keith Thompson telling me that Goathland Plough Stots could trace their history back to the Vikings. His article is more restrained than that, not claiming written records before the 1750s. What is certain, is that the dancers who reformed the team in 1922 first danced out in January 1923 making this the Plough Stots centenary year.

DERT will be happening in Rochdale on 11 March, I know it’s not longsword but do get along and watch some top-quality sword dancing if you have the chance. On the subject of ‘it’s not longsword’, it was good to see a print edition of The NUT back after a hiatus during the pandemic; for those who don’t know it is a magazine for rapper dancers. If you fancy getting both sword dance magazines you can buy a subscription on the website https://www.thenutmag.co.uk/shop/

At the prompting of The Morris Federation I have at long last done something about making back issues of Rattle Up available online, details are on page 7.

Back in July, 2020 (Series 27 Issue 3) the first translation, by Andrew Kennedy, of Renaat van Craenenbroeck’s Speurtocht was published in Rattle Up. Speurtocht is a series of articles about the early records of sword dance in Belgium. Renaat’s work is important and even if some is a little heavy going I am pleased to be able to publish the translations, the aim is to publish all of them over time. That said Speurtocht 12 is included for completeness, it doesn’t add much to what we know, even with Andrew’s correction of Renaat’s mistranslation. Speurtocht 13 is much more interesting, an itinerant group performing for 10 litres of wine