Summary: Series 29 Issue 1

Published: February 2022

Editor: Jeff Lawson

Citation: Rattle Up My Boys, 29 (1), Feb 2022

In this issue

• At last some Midwinter Dancing
• Roy Waite
• The Road to Goathland? 
  Thoughts on the Plough Gatherings and Sword Dances in the Snettisham Churchwardens’ Accounts, 1541-43 (Part two)
• Sword Dancing in Handsworth and Woodhouse
  The history of Handsworth Traditional Sword Dancers by Boz and Helen Davison
• Editorial

Editorial

In this issue, we have the second part of Tom Pettitt’s fascinating article The Road to Goathland? He looks at how a sword dance may have been a part of the Snettisham parish plough gathering and that as the ecclesiastical connections of the plough gathering became problematic the dancing took an increasingly prominent part. Then looking at the sword dances, mumming plays and plough trailing of nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Whitby area he traces back to show that the customs seen at Snettisham could over time have developed into those see in Goathland. 

The mention of sword dancing at Snettisham is 62 years earlier than the passing reference in John Marston’s play The Malcontent. Whilst neither really tells us anything about sword dance in sixteenth-century England, we can’t even be sure it relates to a hilt and point dance, the Snettisham mention does add to the impression of a widespread custom. As Pettitt says “at Snettisham sword-dancers may from some point have accompanied the parish’s plough-gathering — invisibly in the records until circumstances arose in which it was briefly deemed prudent to emphasize the sword dance”.

It has been great to see lots of dancing happening over the Midwinter period and J am pleased to give brief details of what has been happening and include some photographs of people dancing.

Amongst the teams dancing this year one of the most prominent has been Handsworth so it is appropriate to be able to carry a review of Boz and Helen Davison’s excellent booklet Sword Dancing in Handsworth and Woodhouse. Given Tom Pettitt’s article about Plough Monday traditions, it is interesting to note that “from the 1890s… the team was active with Christmas tours of the big houses…. [and] at other times of the year, they were involved in local summer fetes and parades.” It was only in 1963 that “the team decided to fix a traditional day of dance and Boxing Day was chosen”

Another of the teams dancing was Highside, who have been busy with three church services in addition to dancing nae Day. The dance at St. Andrew’s, Kirkby Malzeard has given rise to a first in Rattle Up, an Archbishop being beheaded. In order to do these dances, Highside had to recruit and train two new dancers at very short notice, following the untimely death of founder member Roy Waites and I’m pleased to be able to include Ted Dodsworth’s lovely obituary.