Summary: Vol. 32 Issue 1

Published: January 2013

Table of contents

• THE JOHN KNILL CEREMONY, ST IVES, CORNWALL by George Frampton
• OBITUARY OF IVOR ALLSOP – SWORD DANCER by Sally Wearing and Sue Swift
• THE ART OF CLOWNING by Roy Dommett
• ROY DOMMETT WORKSHOP: OCTOBER 2012 by Beth Neill
• ONE DAY AT THE SAGE… by Sally Wearing
• BOOK AND DVD LAUNCH – RAPPER HEAVEN!
  • DVD review: Rapper – History of the Miners’ Sword Dance of North-East England by Sally Wearing
  • Book Review: Rapper: The Miners’ Sword Dance of North-East England by George Frampton
• A LIMERICK OR TWO from Jonathan Hooton
• BACKGROUND TO BRACKLEY AREA MORRIS by Roy Dommett
• FROM THE ARCHIVES: “MORRIS ON THE SOMME” review by Beth Neill
• STAVE DANCING – AN OVERVIEW by Roy Dommett
• THE TURNING OF THE YEAR

Editorial

The problem with going to a workshop is all the ideas it generates – in my case it isn’t so much the dancing as the research and documentation of aforesaid dancing. After the last Roy Dommett weekend at Exeter hosted by Great Western, I came away with many action points linked to Roy’s writings and Morris Matters.

One idea Roy suggested to me some time ago and which I will try to get produced very soon is a “Best of Morris Matters” whereby a select few editors can dig out what they consider to be among the finest articles in the last 30-plus years. Partly with this in mind [and also as part of a concerted effort on the part of John Lewis, Mike Boston, Barry Honeysett, Jerry West, and various others to ensure all Roy’s output over the past 50 years of teaching, filming, talking and writing about morris is captured somewhere!] I have been going back through all the old issues and checking that my rudimentary index is correct, expanding it a little and I need to ask for help. I have a copy of every MM issued – some are my original copies and some those I inherited when I took it over after Volume 9; alas, I have lost a few of my own early copies. The only text I have of Volume 5, Number 1 [the image on the front is a Rubik’s cube] is that kindly sent to me by Chris Metherell as a photocopy of his own copy. Does anyone out there in their team archive have an original copy they do not want to keep? I know I have had offers of back issues before so it’s a long shot that might just find success.

Looking back over the early issues, I see how many of them were extensively padded out by copies of posters – prompted by a comment from Richard Ashe at the time about how dull some morris posters were. It set me wondering, are posters vastly improved now we have so much computer technology or are many still hand-produced? Or do so few people dance at pubs now that even morris posters are a dying breed? 

I hope you enjoy the broad range of topics in this issue – those teams who have, or aspire to have, a fool character in the team should find much food for thought in the article about clowning.