Summary: Vol. 21 Issue 1

Published: January 2002

Table of contents

• Royal Preston Morris Dancers : A Brief History by Chas Marshall
• Notice Board
• The Molly Dance Revival by George Frampton
• Pub Morris
• Silver Ants – An extremely personal reminiscence of the ups and downs in the life of Redbornstoke Morris by Brian Mander

Editorial

It’s team profiles in this issue with a centre spread of both colour and black and white pictures. Many thanks to Chas Marshall, George Frampton and Brian Mander for supplying the prints this time. There is a good mix of modern and “early revival” traditions represented here – Cotswold, North West and Molly. I haven’t seen the Royal Preston Morris Dancers profiled by Chas but I do hope I get to see them soon. And I confess that I never did see some of the early Molly teams mentioned by George in his article.

Some of the items I had hoped to include this time around will have to wait for the next issue, but a spin-off of one idea has been the development of a Bath City WEB site. I was amazed to see how much had been included in such a short time. Even if you weren’t at Bath, the odds are you know at least 3 people who were in Bath City Morris ( even if they won’t own up to it!) … have a look at it! It’s on www.ukppg.org.uk/bathcitymorris.html

Following a note from Keith Chandler in the last issue, I hear that Musical Traditions will soon be issuing on CD ROM, “Morris Dancing in the English South Midlands 1660 – 1900”, being a combination of Keith’s two Folklore Society volumes (updated gazatteer plus masses of material uncovered since 1993), also some previously published but revised articles and a never published major work on the Forest of Dean Morris, along the lines of the South Midlands Gazatteer.

Rod Stradling runs the site Musical Traditions – have a look at it; it’s on www.mustrad.org.uk. I found two excellent articles about Bampton written by Keith. Lots to discover, musicians and their instruments, collectors …..

Lastly – see the noticeboard page for a revived effort at the Guinness Book of records … I hope it gets off the ground ( so to speak) this time round.

By now there is nothing new I can add to all that has been said and written about the New York event – but it did bring home how the sense of community runs through the morris world … e-mails flew round. Let’s hope we all have a fine,
peaceful dancing year ahead.

Beth