Ever since watching The Wiccaman (great film ) I have been quite fascinated by May 1 and all the Folklore that it entails.
I know it is a very ancient Druid/ Celt and Wiccan Celebration but certain aspects really intrigue me ;
The characters such as The Hobby Horse,Jack-O-the Green and the Pigs Head and of course The Morris.
I am quite fascinated by the Arcane Society of Morris troupes and Squares -the dances,clothes and regional differences and also the fact that most European countries have a similarly dressed equivalent.
Are they just Pipe- Smoking Beardy Weirdies that drink Real Ale with names Like Smeggy Badger Scrotum who wear leather waistcoats and wire-rimmed glasses and whittle wood carvings or are they the keepers of Earthly secrets ?
Comments
For most people, an excuse for a piss up.
Coincidentally, a few doors down from where I live, is a house with a blue plaque commemorating William Kimber, who revived morris dancing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kimber
and he is buried round the corner - in the same church as CS Lewis
it's a tricky one this to track properly. A lot of our rural customs and practices were heavily santitised, especially by moralistic victorian clergy, who held a huge amount of power and influence over rural areas. Coupled with the flight from the countryside of the best and the brightest meant a lot of local traditons were lost or erased. There has been, over the last 20 years or so, a much greater interest in finding out more about these old traditions and resurrecting them. I'm no expert on this, though would like to know more. A name that springs off the top of my head that may be a good place to start is Ronald Hutton.
I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.
I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Twisted Imaginings - A Horror And Gore Themed Blog http://bit.ly/2DF1NYi
So to answer your question...keepers of (science based) earthly secrets
Rift Amplification
Brackley, Northamptonshire
www.riftamps.co.uk
john spiers (of bellowhead, spiers and boden etc) is a well known folky and morris dancer who studied maths at oxford (or was it cambridge, one of them anyways).
I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.
There is a much more Arcane element to Morris Sides tho' ...........sort of Freemasons of the Solstice type thing
I'm going to have a chat with Uncle Google as I'm more into the Pagan side of things but don't know much about Morris Dancing.
Twisted Imaginings - A Horror And Gore Themed Blog http://bit.ly/2DF1NYi
Twisted Imaginings - A Horror And Gore Themed Blog http://bit.ly/2DF1NYi
I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.
When we lived in darkest Shropshire, there were a couple of blokes at work who were in a proper Morris side, all ribbons and bells and hey-nonny-no - they were both weirdy-beardy types...