Stave Dancing At Shrawley

I've heard it suggested of Stave Dancing that Roy Dommett "made it all up", or was at least arguing from insufficient evidence when he published and taught the traditional notations from Somerset which he reconstructed from various sources. Even in the absence of other evidence, I would find this unlikely: as I said in my workshop, staves are a major part of the Friendly Society walk. Dancing is also a regular feature and it would, for me, be strange if in all the places where both occurred, there was no occasion when they were combined. There are people, however, who take a more conservative viewpoint with regard to tradition and thus do not find that argument sufficiently compelling.

For those people, and anyone else who might find it interesting, I present the following from HELM/A1/XVI, p251 recto and verso. (Helm collection, University College London]. Albeit anecdotal, it is a clear reference to dancing with staves as opposed to dancing and carrying staves.

Dear Mr Holland,

I regret that your letter arrived while I was away on holiday and so I am delayed in answering it. My grandfather died two years ago and with him went a great deal of knowledge of what used to happen in Shrawley on Whit-Monday and Midsummer's Day.

I do not know when the dancing, the mummers or the "Club Walk" died out. He took part in all these until he joined the army as a lad of 17 which would be around 1878-1880 (for he was 94 when he died). The dancing seems to have been processional in character, headed by the local dignitaries, starting and finishing at the "Rose & Crown" (?) and perambulating the bounds of the parish. They carried long poles topped by "crowns" (he called them) which seem to have been bunches of flowers. The poles were painted "like a barber's pole". The walk took place at Whit & Midsummer.

The Mummers went out at Christmas "a bit before & a bit after". He remembered nothing of the play except a mock fight with "soldiers' uniforms".

His remarks when he found I was dancing in a team were unprintable. He said he "grew out of it long before he was twenty"|

Music meant nothing to the old boy, one tune was like another, but he was certain all the music was supplied by (a) mouth-organ, (b) singing & (c) "The bones".

I hope this is of some use to you, it's all I can remember of it now.

This formed part of the material which eventually became the Ritual Dance Index, where it is included as "details insufficient for classification". For someone who has seen Roy's stave material, this is at least as good a description of the tradition as many upon which the observations of "Border Morris" were based. So why did it get missed? Possibly because Roy's material was not available for comparison and Shrawley (OS Grid SO8064) is in Worcestershire, where they were expecting to find dances like the Vale of Evesham traditions. Nonetheless, if there is one non-Roy Dommett reference from outside Somerset, I'd suggest that it's likely there are more.

The good news for follow-up is that, when we visited, the Rose and Crown did wonderful food. The bad news is that no-one in the area seemed to know anything about the traditions: truly, it appears that "with him went a great deal of knowledge of what used to happen in Shrawley". The record office and Friendly Society records are presumably the next place to go, but it's way out of my normal stamping ground, so if anyone living closer can lend a hand, why not mail me? Parts of the perambulation of the boundary are so constricted that the procession must have been single file at times.

For anyone really interested, gifs of very bad copies of the front (51 k) and back (21 k) of the letter are available. If anyone has a copy of Mr Holland's original missive I'd be overjoyed to see it.