May Day,May Day May Day............Morris Men etc

Dominic

Ever since watching The Wiccaman  (great film ) I have been quite fascinated by May 1 and all the Folklore that it entails.
I know it is a very ancient Druid/ Celt and Wiccan Celebration but certain aspects really intrigue me ;
The characters such as The Hobby Horse,Jack-O-the Green and the Pigs Head and of course The Morris.
  I am quite fascinated by the Arcane Society of Morris troupes and Squares -the dances,clothes and regional differences and also the fact that most European countries have a similarly dressed equivalent.
 Are they just Pipe- Smoking Beardy Weirdies that drink Real Ale with names Like Smeggy Badger Scrotum who wear leather waistcoats and wire-rimmed glasses and whittle wood carvings or are they the keepers of Earthly secrets ?

Sambostar

If you fall asleep in the woods at night you might wake up to find bio-luminescent pieces of wood that glow brighter than a glowstick.

Dominic

Why ? Are you suggesting that they are Morris Man turds ?

Sambostar

No, glowing algae and mushrooms, it's all part and parcel of our folklore, like Psilocybin in September.  There must be a few druids on here I'm sure.

Dominic

Was only joking about turds but what is the legend /mystery .....is it some faery type thing ?

Sambostar

No idea, we used to do the Maypole thing as kids though, I think it died out with Jimmy Saville, but there are still some around here.

Dominic

Why, was Jimmy a Morris Man too ?

richh

I'm just back from the centre of Oxford where there is a tradition of May Day morning, going back (I think) hundreds of years.  Everybody gathers round on Magdalen Bridge, and at 6am the choir start the day off with their dawn chorus thing.  Then a lot of coffee shops and pubs are open early of possibly have been open all night and it is a bit like 'The Wicker Man' with morris men, bagpipes & highland dancing, etc.

For most people, an excuse for a piss up.

Coincidentally, a few doors down from where I live, is a house with a blue plaque commemorating William Kimber, who revived morris dancing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kimber

and he is buried round the corner - in the same church as CS Lewis

VimFuego

it's a tricky one this to track properly. A lot of our rural customs and practices were heavily santitised, especially by moralistic victorian clergy, who held a huge amount of power and influence over rural areas. Coupled with the flight from the countryside of the best and the brightest meant a lot of local traditons were lost or erased. There has been, over the last 20 years or so, a much greater interest in finding out more about these old traditions and resurrecting them. I'm no expert on this, though would like to know more. A name that springs off the top of my head that may be a good place to start is Ronald Hutton.

VimFuego

be careful though, it's an easy trip to make from wanting to find out a bit more about these thigns to becoming a full blown folky. it's what happened to me, there's no going back when you're on this road.

ICBM

Sambostar

TheBlueWolf

So not only is she Prime minister she gets her own bank holiday 

RiftAmps

Why would you assume all Morris sides are full of hippies? The Particle Physics dept. at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Abingdon has their own side, dancing not in trad. outfits, but their white lab coats!

So to answer your question...keepers of (science based) earthly secrets

VimFuego

RiftAmps said:

Why would you assume all Morris sides are full of hippies? The Particle Physics dept. at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Abingdon has their own side, dancing not in trad. outfits, but their white lab coats!

So to answer your question...keepers of (science based) earthly secrets

john spiers (of bellowhead, spiers and boden etc) is a well known folky and morris dancer who studied maths at oxford (or was it cambridge, one of them anyways).

Dominic

Certainly not suggesting they are hippies .......more intellectual folky and country -craft types although the lab coats are a surprise.
  There is a much more Arcane element to Morris Sides tho' ...........sort of Freemasons of the Solstice type thing

TheBlueWolf

Beardy weirdly science types

I'm going to have a chat with Uncle Google as I'm more into the Pagan side of things but don't know much about Morris Dancing.

Dominic

There is a profound connection and it's very ancient

TheBlueWolf

@Dominic have a wiz for being right. Apparently I've learnt something this morning

VimFuego

Dominic said:

There is a profound connection and it's very ancient

absolutely, may day celebrations were much more earthy, lots of fertility things going on, and a fair bit of fertlising by the young folk. As I said, these continued well into the victorian era, when they tried to clean it up.

Nitefly

Around these parts (Wigan - Leigh area of Lancashire) what nowadays gets called "Morris Dancing" is troupes of little girls doing what seem to be cheer-leading dance routines set to pop songs.

When we lived in darkest Shropshire, there were a couple of blokes at work who were in a proper Morris side, all ribbons and bells and hey-nonny-no - they were both weirdy-beardy types...