Roy Dommett and Abingdon

Roy Dommett CBE
10 Attlee Gardens
Church Crookham
Fleet
Hampshire GU13 0PH
 
Tel (01252) 617229
 
30th October 1997

Too many comments are circulating which show little awareness of historical fact.

I danced regularly with Abingdon from September 1960 until 1970/1, at every event until the very late 1960's, the last time I believe being by invitation to an early twin town ceremony, supporting the team through a very difficult period during which they could otherwise have collapsed completely. I was invited and was not looking to join. I first saw the team dance through Frank Purslow, to whom I had been introduced by Reg Hall. I felt close to the old men, I found that my father, Jack Hyde and Arnold Woodley had worked together briefly at Pressed Steel by Oxford recovering scrap near the end of WWII. My family grew up with a background of the Abingdon Morris. Three of my sons, Simon, Michael and Stephen danced with them at various times to help make up a team.

Naturally, I dropped out as soon after the club was viable due to an influx of younger men, as the tradition properly belongs to the truly local people. I still have a letter from Colin Corner thanking me for my part in teaching the dances. The involvement with Abingdon actually started my hobby of filming and recording live morris because of the all too obvious risk at the time that the side would not survive and that no one else was bothering. The cost involved was met at some personal and family sacrifice. There is no lack of recording today as the equipment is readily available. We then bought a car in order to attend practices once the Radley to Abingdon branch line closed down. I was not involved at all with teaching the Abingdon dances to the local schools, Dr Bernardo's or the Town Womens' Guild, because of the transport difficulties, but I did help Jack with the Rover Scouts at Longworth, five of whom later joined the club.

Each year I helped out at canvassing, and sometimes vote counting at Mayor's Day. I was present when it was finally agreed what was to be the form of Maid of the Mill, what was to be the "recovered" version of Constant Billy, and when Jack worked out at a practice what was to become the Duke of Marlborough dance.

The Recording

A team has to be aware of its own history.

Those Abingdon dances then in practice were described by Major Fryer and published within the then small Morris Ring in the late 1930's. The Major wrote regular letters to then Morris Ring officials about the happenings and politics at Abingdon and I assume that this story is accessible out there somewhere. He always kept copies of correspondence. In the early 1960's when interviewing outsiders I saw several sets of notations still existing. At that time with the help of the older Abingdon men I produced a stencilled description for the Morris Ring Advisory Council as one of the documents considered in preparation of a case for publishing the known morris dance material, as an example of something with which they were unfamiliar. Copies of these sheets were later used by Jack Hyde to help newcomers to the Abingdon team. I had separate discussions with Douglas Kennedy, the then Director of the EFDSS, and its policy of not formally publishing traditional material whilst a team was still active, even in an archival journal, was clearly stated and accepted by all concerned. Peter Kennedy had made an audio tape of the Abingdon Morris in the 1950's which I presume is still available commercially from Folktapes, as one of 300 advertised.

All the material that I and Reggie Annets, his man servant, were able to rescue from Major Fryer's papers, which his brother Charles Fryer, set out to burn, were passed or copied to Jack Hyde and I assume exist in the Abingdon team archives and hopefully nowhere else. Jack said, for example, that they answered a number of questions he had had about what happened between Percy and Major Fryer. Unfortunately we were unable to preserve Percy Hemmings', a former bagman, material as he had kept it all in a garden shed for many years and it was so weather spoiled as to be unreadable. We had a meeting with him, involving the then current older dancers, to explore the history of the team through the late 30's and early 40's.

There had been an arrangement with the older men in the early 60's for them to teach the Abingdon dances at a Ring Instructional at Cecil Sharp House which only fell through on the day. It had often been expressed by Jack Hyde and his friends that they would have liked to have seen an Abingdon dance like the Squire's Dance done as a massed display. These men had hosted two Ring Meetings and always attended such meetings that could be reached in those days when several of them did not finish work on Saturdays until noon. These men gave their dances Princess Royal and Maid of the Mill to one of the Oxford teams to dance, for some reason, presumably OUMM as I never remember Oxford City doing them out when not dancing with Abingdon. I also remember seeing about that time another side dancing Abingdon's Jockey to the Fair. Maurice Sutherland, who had also danced with Abingdon before my time, spoke of other teams doing Princess Royal, and the Wargrave Morris Men, like Reggie Annets, knew all the repertoire, and were one source of information about how the dances had been recovered earlier. The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library at Cecil Sharp House has some cine film of Abingdon dances in its archive.

When I assisted in the writing and publishing of Dr Bacon's Handbook, he wrote formally to the Abingdon side about potential publication and accepted without any argument the expressed desire not to have the Abingdon dances published or described any further, and the statements in the Handbook reflect this understanding. It should have noticed from the material that I never attempted to take my writing about the dances any further than they had been in the mid-1960's and the bulk of what I have remains unorganised, and probably quite a bit of relevant information is now forgotten. So what others can have accessed from archives is a poor description that is fragmented. During the 1970's I was too occupied with my job to be involved in folk dance and morris. I have not passed much of the Abingdon material to more recent investigators, such as Keith Chandler, but only that specifically relevant to their research topics. However some of what has been said in recent years by the Abingdon men about the dances and their origins is wrong, although I have never thought that it really mattered enough to comment.

One of the purposes of Dr Bacon's Handbook was to make 385 dances available, even where it involved much reconstruction of limited surviving evidence, instead of the only 80 published before, so that pressure could be taken off the traditions. At various times I have heard both Bampton and Headington Quarry men express their disquiet at the use of their dances by others and wished that their own traditions could be left and not emulated so slavishly nor quarried so quickly by outsiders. This is of course the price of becoming meccas for the morris world, but without the interest the traditions would have probably not survived. None appears to have refused TV appearances or Festival invitations and all have enjoyed the lauding.

I used what influence I may have had in the 1960's and early 70's to persuade outsiders that the Abingdon tradition was authentic and worthwhile, at a time when many Cotswold dancers thought it all rather simple and not worth taking it at all seriously. I still believe that I had something to do with its gradual acceptance as a genuine traditional side with all the respect due to it. I continue to speak well of Abingdon and its traditions. I reflected in good faith what I have been told or experienced, although I know I could have been misinformed or have misunderstood.

I respected the wishes of the Abingdon team not to be filmed in the 1970's and 80's and gave up coming to Mayor's Day, to my great regret, thinking that the club's cohesion was more important than mere personal interests or the justice of the situation. I still have a pair of 400ft spools of 8mm cine film from the period during which I danced, so the prohibition was not that embarrassing.

The club's problem with the Hemmings family was unfortunate for me as most of my surviving friends in the team went to dance with Mr Hemmings Morris, a most proper expression of the tradition. I was drawn into discussions with the media by them. Athough I attempted to calm people down on one side, there was little that I could do except report to the outside morris world officials what appeared to be happening. I have with Mr Hemming's Morris permission filmed them a few times for archival purposes. It was always assumed that their team would have a finite life, but it now looks as if a new generation will be recruited.

Attitudes

We presumably differ in that I believed that genuine morris dancers should have some knowledge of the width of the morris for the sake of the health of morris in general, but not necessarily by public reproduction, and that little was gained by secrecy, or imagining that the public, on which even the tradition depends, attempts to distinguish between the "tradition" and the rest. If this is not true then there is nothing to worry about. Whether we like it or not the acceptance of the morris in any part of the country is determined by the behaviour and attitudes of all the teams. It is probably too much to hope that outsiders would grasp all the significance of tradition, but they can be expected to respect the past, present and future of the morris. My forty years experience shows me that teams with "wrong" attitudes do not last and that their long term impact is minimal.

It is sad that no one from Abingdon or elsewhere has felt it necessary to approach me to discuss any aspect of the past or present as it affects the Abingdon Morris over the last twenty five years. A reasonable record of attempts at direct communication would make the case more plausible. Just a copy of a circular is an insult. I find that discovering views third or fourth hand with all the possible misunderstandings and deliberate distortions involved is hardly the basis for determining my own actions or what I should say to others. I love the Abingdon tradition and care greatly for those that passed it onto us. If I had ever raised my own men's team amongst friends, I would have been very tempted to base it on the Abingdon dances. Frank Purslow had at one time set out down, with agreement, such a route with the proposed plan for a Primrose Hill Morris in Campden Town, London, before he moved to live and work in Bampton.

Some of the comments reported from Abingdon men since I left both belittle and denigrate other morris dancers, implying that such do not or cannot care or have sympathy with tradition. As Keith Chandler regularly points out, today's morris world, including the tradition, has little in common with the past. Yet there are very many around who do care about the morris today, and are proud that teams such as Abingdon continue to exist.

For many years I have held a clear attitude about the traditional morris, and I quote from my occasional lectures, (with recent interpolations in  [ ])

"It is commonly, properly and ethically accepted that certain dances are the "property" of the performers. Some of dances, such as the Great Wishford Faggot dance [,Abotts Bromley Horn dance,] and the Bacup nuts, are so distinctive that even when avoiding the actual movements in the original any exploitation of the form is recognised as a copy, rather as are any attempts at the late Wilson, Keppel and Betty's Egyptian Sand Dance. [Yet the archives mention other nutters in the past.] The existence of most of the older living traditions is precarious, and the use of their material can be life threatening. Often dances have been collected on understandings as that either they are passed on or are kept within a particular group. Such wishes have to be respected. Some dances are recovered or reconstructed only with great difficulty and the collectors have some "rights" in obstructing their further uncontrolled propagation. However also to be avoided is over protection. There is a danger that to guard for example the [simple] Bacup garland dances the exploitation of the quadrille formation for other dances is inhibited. Contact with the tradition is a two way process, it is inspirational to those without their own inherited dances, and it helps to provide the interest that has kept the tradition alive. A caring and sensitive approach is required, although it has to be said that some urban sides do not understand it."

The ephemeral performing arts are in a different category to the fine arts. Rights are attenuated by public performance, by claims of ancientness, and by teaching or otherwise sharing by anyone at any time in the past.

In any case the unilateral statement by the Abingdon Club on the status of the dances is incomplete and needs some extension. I would suggest that something like the following is added:

I must point out that an alternative line was taken by the traditional long sword teams, in a little different situation, over their dances when it was proposed that Ivor Allsop published the known material. He was asked to ignore the more recent changes to the dances made within the tradition. The equivalent here would be publish the Sharp, Neal, Fryer and Kennedy tunes and notations, which are easily accessible by anyone.

I believe that I have acted in good faith, within the acceptable limits given by my direct contacts, particularly with the old dancers, and have caused far less problems for the local tradition than some of the antics of those active in the club or who act as friends. The worst aspect to me is that the manner of the fuss makes the current holders of the tradition appear foolish and it depreciates the gift and heritage that is uniquely theirs. That a concern is expressed must imply that the local tradition is at a low ebb. Externalisation of a threat is a common response to internal difficulties. I wish The Abingdon Ock St Morris well and hope for recovery and a moving on to fresh achievements.