"Oh yes" says the landlord.
"Good" says the man. "I'll have a packet of crisps, and a Morris dancer for my dog".
I have been absent for a while because my professional career suddenly burst into life and I have been mingling with the self-consciously trendy denizens of the world of hi-tech. I will just remark cryptically that in the unlikely event that I ever feel the need to behave like that I shall regard a decent coffee machine as a higher priority than a ping-pong table. Anyway, I can't think of a better way to return than with some Morris dancing.
Otley, the market town of about 15,000 souls a few miles downstream from Ilkley - epicentre of wargaming in lower Wharfedale - in which I have recently pitched my tent, is home to no less than three Morris sides. One of them, I think the lot pictured, is of the Border tradition; there is a female North Western tradition side; and the third lot seem to be of the Jazz/Funk persuasion. You may consider that to be three sides too many for such a small place; I couldn't possibly comment.
Anyway, the Wharfedale Wayzgoose, for it is they, were on what seemed to be a pub crawl round Otley today. Now Otley's pub estate has declined from the days when there were forty six (that's right forty six pubs for fifteen thousand people), but the event boasted of visiting twenty premises. I have long held the theory that warriors, at least in the days of close combat, would only have fought because they were drunk. Obviously the same is true of painting ones face and wearing feathers in one's hat and bells on one's trousers.
Most impressively one of them was performing the pub crawl bit on an invalid scooter from which he would rise to dance at each pub. Now that's the way to do it.
Some of these look like poseurs rather than Morris dancers - why would Morris dancing suddenly become so admirable that all these folk would be doing it? I'm not at all sure about all this. Is Yorkshire really a hotbed of Morris activity? Some years ago, i spent a very very long time in Askrigg one weekend. Apart from my landlord, the population appeared to consist of three women schoolteachers in hiking boots, one very old dog and - that's right - a Morris troupe, which performed outside the church on Sunday morning. They were rubbish, to be honest.
ReplyDeleteI used to think that my life was actually part of a very bad movie starring someone else - I'm not so certain now, but if I was right, that particular scene was well intentioned but destined to be cut from the final version.
In some odd way i can't quite put a finger on, I group Morris dancing with things like ley lines, crop circles, Stonehenge, crap. Phoney tradition, hokum - good for a beer though.
I believe that Morris is a blemish across the whole of England and am not aware that Yorkshire suffers disproportionately. Otley does because, well because it's that sort of place. Ilkley, being bourgeois and staid, doesn't have any whereas Otley, being Bohemian and raffish, has them like a rash. You can't see it in the photos, but I took them outside the Manor pub at the town maypole, about 50 metres from where I now live. During the Otley Folk Festival there's a whole weekend where hordes of the buggers congregate and waggle their beards at each other. I'm not looking forward to it.
ReplyDeleteThe Wharfedale Wayzgoose claim to have something to do with printing - Otley used to produce printing machines back in the day - but are definitely a modern reinvention. At least there was no chap waving a pig's bladder about.
As for your list of phonies and hokum, did you really mean to include Stonehenge? Are you suggesting stone circles were some sort of neolithic spoof that are still fooling us several millennia later?
Nay - Stonehenge is the real deal, I think, as are ley lines and the other things I mentioned. What is definitely not the real deal is the hordes of posturing gits with beards and daft clothes who associate themselves with them on the appointed days.
DeleteOf course, Stonehenge might be a con. I only visited there once, and it did seem to me that some enterprising bod in the Stone Age had spotted a big money-making attraction for the future. I recall (for example) that I invested in the most expensive visit to the toilet there that I can remember - that required a bit of planning, I think.
I had to Wikipedia this one as I am a colonial from across the pond.... Curious tradition and that is 20 minutes I will never get back...:( You Brits are a curious lot!
ReplyDeleteRespectfully,
Gunny or Gummy if you prefer