A book review of some very dark morris

For someone who has divided their life between Scotland and the US, I spend an inexplicably large amount of time thinking about Morris dancing. I can't explain this. It just is -- and I don't even know when it started. I especially like the way Border morris has exploded in the past decade or so. It's vibrant, dark, edgy and sometimes overtly Pagan. I was pretty excited, then, to discover that someone who's been on the inside of Border morris, even in at the beginning of its revival, had written a book about it. Turns out the book is pretty good. Rob Elliott is a witty writer, and he strikes a good balance here between serious thoughts and funny stories about morris dancers drinking too much. I like the way he acknowledges the scholarly work done by others, and knows the historical references, but isn't limited by them. He's willing to talk about what feels right, and what feels true, and that's important when working within a tradition that is also a living thing.

They had lost the essence of dance and moved into something labelled 'traditional folk dance display', an embodiment of nostalgia recreating a perceived aspect of life long ago, diminishing these displays to little more than mobile museum pieces. By contrast, Silurian acknowledged the roots and history of morris dancing but were creating something original - a new version of an old principle. We needed to be relevant, to have power over the hearts of the crowd, to bewitch them. If we didn't cast a spell over them, we saw ourselves as having failed. We didn't want to project the two dimensional quality of a film.

We gave them White Ladies Aston stick dance, which was implemented with such energy that the dancers were blurred by a kind of snowstorm flurry of wood chips as the sticks began to split, feather and disintegrate. This was morris with attitude and woodsmoke and the crowd couldn't get enough. They'd never seen anything like it. We had the audience in our spell, a spell we hadn't knowingly expected to weave.

We began to think about what it must have been like to dance a fertility dance all those millennia ago. Highly speculative of course, because we had no real way of knowing but we just pictured ourselves as twentieth-century torchbearers for something very ancient. After this performance, it was certainly easy to imagine that dancers in pre-Christian communities might have put themselves on a higher plane, and out of reach of ordinary mortals, by clothing themselves in a particular way, introducing a de-humanising disguise and creating some wild dance routines. We understood in that moment how an enigmatic appearance might create mystery, how mystery touches people and moves energy and how energy might conjure magic.

Since we had 'gone Border', which carried the same implications as 'gone native' or 'gone feral', we of course blacked up every time we made an appearance. The blacking was not simply part of the kit, it was the essential means by which we exchanged our human form for something altogether more intangible. There was an unspoken acknowledgement amongst us that to make an appearance in kit but without the blacking would be inconceivable.

It was difficult to recognise us individually with our matt black bearded faces, now crowned with black bowler hats. Most people really had no idea what we were all about. It seemed we captivated them and frightened them in equal measure, which helped to create the mystique. We became strongly unified, an effect no one could have predicted.

Only  with a performance immanent, would we dress up and black our faces. We would all stick together during this 'ceremony' until the last man was ready and then, completely attired -- bells, hats and all -- we would go...

Honouring Manannán at Midsummer

...and the rent is due

I would bring him bundles of rushes from the waters edge.
Carry them by hand to the high place, stony Barrule, overlooking the sea.
For Midsummer Eve has come and Manannán awaits his payment.

Only, I am far from those shores.
Arid winds bend prairie grass like waves on an earthen sea,
I am stranded here, landlocked — and the rent is due.

Standing on the very brink of thundering wave and stone,
I have opened my arms, buoyed by winds sweeping from far Emain Ablach.
Lifted a moment, from the rocky cliff, like the Heron King taking flight.

I cling to memories of a rugged coast,
As I choke on the fumes of engines going nowhere.
I am stranded here, landlocked — and the rent is due.

As the rising tide sends plumes of white foam into the air,
The sea god’s wife approaches, her soothing kiss, lingering upon my cheek.
They call her Fand, which means “teardrop”, and she tastes like the sea.

We carry the ocean, like a memory, flowing within us.
Weeping, we give it back again, carried home on the Summer breeze.
I am stranded here, landlocked — and the rent is due.

                  - Shaun Paul

For me, cattle are a symbol of sacred stewardship.

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