The Fair's In Town!

The little town of Baldock has been organising fairs in its main street for over 800 years, so they know how to do it properly. Of course things change a bit over the years, though some of the people there would not have looked out of place several centuries ago.

The members of Medieval Combat Society were crashing into each other with reckless intensity. Others were of a more peaceable disposition....

There were many stalls representing community groups or selling local produce. The stall selling bread looked really tempting....

….and some jam to go with it perhaps....

Or maybe you'd prefer to catch a duck (?)….

The medieval knights were not the only ones involved in violent confrontation.....

Yes, Mr Punch is still bashing all-comers about the head with little regard for political correctness.

Running alongside the Historic Street Fair and bringing a lot of colour to the scene was a Day of Dance, organised by Baldock Midnight Morris Dancers.

The Midnight Morris was originally formed to dance at events in Baldock when the organisers had been unable to book a side from elsewhere. Now many local dancers come to dance in Baldock at this event.

Above are "Riseley Roughshod" from Bedfordshire who dance in the northern clog morris tradition. They step to the rhythm of the tunes using special "clogs" decorated with bells.

The strange people dressed in green and purple are Wicket Brood Border Morris. I'd often wondered about the significance of the name Wicket Brood, but the explanation is simple - they come from the village of Brickett Wood, nothing like a good Spoonerism!

There were rapper sword dancers doing their complicated routine too.....

….and even Appalachian dancers appropriately called "Tappalachian", also from the local area. Who knew that the Appalachians stretched as far as Hertfordshire?

But perhaps the most colourful and exotic of all the dancers present were the Morena Dance Company who performed their dances from Slovakia. According to their website they are officially called Folklórny súbor Morena Londýn.

Two of their number also played and sang a song. Of course I couldn't understand a word of it but they gave such an expressive performance that I was rivetted throughout.

And they danced wonderfully!


Take care.

Good Golly, It's Molly!

(You will see that some of the dancers depicted in the post have blacked-up faces. This was done historically as a form of disguise so that people would not know who it was begging for money. There was never any real attempt to imitate black people; the ears, neck and hands are never blacked-up. Many modern dance sides are aware of possible misunderstanding and have changed their facial make-up, to bright colours, strange designs or just a few smears to make them look more like Victorian chimney-sweeps. One or two sides are determined to stick to the traditional black faces. 

I hope this explanation will be accepted, but also apologise to anyone who may be upset by the inclusion of these pictures here).

They were at it again at the weekend!

In the city of Ely as the good citizens were going about their shopping, when the boat club were out rowing on the river, while dogs were being walked in the park and tourists posed for photos in front of the cathedral, they gathered in front of the Cutter Inn and began dancing.

A car driver rounded the corner from Victoria Street and was confronted by.....

…..men dressed as women, women dressed as men, people in tweed or technicolour, men carrying brooms, someone pushing a pink plough, grunting and wheezing squeezeboxes, fiendish fiddles and devilish drums, knees lifted high and hands held higher, swinging and stamping and swaying and stepping.

Yes, it's those Molly Dancers again.

This is the traditional dance of the plough men of the Fens and parts of Eastern England. I've photographed it and written about it in various posts and if you want to know something of its history then I wrote about it back in 2014, in this post. But there are also other ways of looking at it.

Everything they are doing - dressing outlandishly, disguising themselves, dancing in the street, playing jaunty tunes and generally making a noise, behaving foolishly, sending up their superiors, drinking beer and having a good time - is guaranteed to annoy those in authority but, and here's the crux of the matter, not actually breaking any laws.

It's a very English form of expression, a gentle but meaningful thumbing of the nose at those in power and all that is staid and conventional. You can trace it from court jesters, mummers plays, through folk tales and songs, music hall and pantomime, the Goons, British pop and psychedelic music of the 1960s, Monty Python, street buskers and steam punks. And you can find elements of most of these incorporated into what passes as Molly dancing today.

Like all traditions Molly is constantly evolving - you need to put in a lot more effort to be outrageous in these permissive times (!) - but there is still respect for the history of the dances, or at least those few that have survived.

The purpose of all this tomfoolery was probably a very necessary safety valve for a discontented populace. And for centuries here in the Fens the poorer classes had much to be discontented about. 

Nowadays our problems are of a different kind, though a homeless man selling The Big Issue magazine reminded us that poverty is still with us.

Take care.

The following dance sides were in attendance: 

Seven Champions

Ouse Washes Molly Dancers

Black Annis
Good Easter Molly Gang
The Norwich Kitwitches
Mepal Molly
Misfit Molly
Oxblood Molly Dancers
Rhubarb Tarts

Molly Goes To Ely

(You will see that some of the dancers depicted in the post have blacked-up faces. This was done historically as a form of disguise so that people would not know who it was begging for money. There was never any real attempt to imitate black people; the ears, neck and hands are never blacked-up. Many modern dance sides are aware of possible misunderstanding and have changed their facial make-up, to bright colours, strange designs or just a few smears to make them look more like Victorian chimney-sweeps. One or two sides are determined to stick to the traditional black faces. 

I hope this explanation will be accepted, but also apologise to anyone who may be upset by the inclusion of these pictures here).

And I went to Ely too. Here's what I went to see...

Ouse Washes Molly Dancers 

The Ouse Washes were the hosts yesterday to the Mark Jones Day of Dance in and around Ely. It's held every year in memory of one of their past members and is attended by many Molly dancing sides, the traditional dance of Cambridgeshire and the fen country. I caught up with them outside the Cutter Inn in the morning, they then went on to other pubs in the area - and I went home to get warmed up! Here are the host side kicking off the day...

Good Easter Molly Gang

Good Easter look a lot more like the farm workers who traditionally performed these dances in winter. At least one of these dancers would dress as a woman while another would be referred to as the Lord and might wear a top hat. Maybe they were mimicking the local aristocracy, if so that might explain the blacked up faces which would help to disguise them. The Good Easter Gang don't take themselves too seriously - the man with the splendid beard in the bottom photo is wearing a badge on his hat which reads, "For maximum attention nothing beats a good mistake!" 

Gog Magog Molly

These were the first Molly dancers I ever saw and they're probably still my favourites. Their style is joyful, playful and definitely colourful! Their dances are lively and quite complex...

Old Glory

At first glance these menacing, unsmiling men are about as far removed from the Gogs as you can get. They stomp about in hobnailed boots - the footwear of choice for farm workers until the arrival of rubber Wellington boots. (The Gog Magog dancers wear brightly coloured Doc Martens and that's all you need to know about the differences in their dancing styles! Incidentally I've tried DMs for farm work - absolutely useless!) Although the Old Glory dancers are all men - though one is a highly unconvincing female - their musicians are women. Their dances are slyly entertaining and humorous....

The Norwich Kitwitches

There's something of the Pantomime dame about the Kitwitches - over-the-top, outrageous and larger than life. Maybe that's what traditional dancers were like too; the inventors of the Panto must have got the idea from somewhere....

Seven Champions

The Champions - and yes there are a lot more than seven of them these days - are something different again. They often perform to a single musician or unaccompanied singing with their precise stepping adding the rhythm. Yesterday I saw them dance to an accapella version of "Fever" - yes, the old Peggy Lee song - and then a traditional English song, but one from Northumberland....it didn't ought to work but it does....

Misfit Molly

Back to the exaggerated absurdity and crazy dress-sense of Misfit Molly...

Mepal Molly

Based in the little village of Mepal, just a few miles from Ely, they always seem to me to be closer to what traditional dancers must have been like - but of course I may be wrong....

Oxblood Molly Dancers

Last and by no means the least colourful are Oxblood Molly Dancers who come from Suffolk. As you can see there's no shortage of originality and variety in the wild world of Molly dancing.....

Take care.

I didn't take any videos but you can find most if not all of the people above if you look on YouTube.