Molly Dancing

We have many traditions in these Great British Isles of ours 'Molly Dancing',is one of the querkier (my opinion)ones,but great fun ,and some talent,that has been revised ,maybe it never went away!!

Yesterday after I had posted my entry ,Debbie IM d me saying ''I see from your journal ,you are going shopping ,can we join you ? ''of course I agreed ,so off we set up to the town ,shopping done, we sat on a bench near the market in the sun for a while ,and a lady gave us a flyer announcing Molly Dancers who would be in the town centre at 4 pm ,so we decided we would like to have a look ,so back home we went ,to put away our shopping ,then back up to town we went, Debbie, Jason her son and Kizzie and I

Well we loved it ...colourful dancing ,story tellers ,Fen tales spooky and factual  they did a variety of different dances depicting ,the plight of the poor Fen ploughmen ,,and the head Molly dancer and story teller had to be a man ? hence the name Molly !  See the man in the red cardigan ,in the piture ,a big crowd had gathered,and after a few dances they invited ,cajoled some of the crowd to partcipate ,I use the word cojole here because they wanted us to join in,Jason Kizzie and I declined ,but Debbie thought one of us ought to accept the kind offer ,so good sport that she is she joined in ,and very good she was too .........

Why do the women wear masks and the men have black faces?

The custom of disguising yourself stems from many many years ago, dancers used to paint their faces with coal or burnt ashes from the fire so that they wouldn’t be recognized. In the case of Molly dancing, done by Plough Teams in the Fens when they weren’t in work, the dancers black up but also remain expressionless throughout their performances, again to remain unrecognised as a smile can instantly reveal a person’s identity. This meant that when the hat was passed around, nobody knew who they were and so they couldn’t be prosecuted, as begging was illegal. It’s also been attributed to the times when dancing was frowned upon by the Puritans so, again, nobody knew who you were. The tradition can also be traced back to the 17th Century when, during the Christmas period, the Lord of Misrule took to the streets, generally partying, entertaining people with singing and dancing and creating chaos in the process – a pastime that Henry VIII was known to enjoy on occasion. If suitable payment or refreshments were not received by the Lord of Misrule and his attendants, pranks would be paid on the audience. If the pranksters weren’t known, there could be no retaliation. I’d been impressed by a Border team I’d seen at a festival. They wore full facemasks with tatters on them and long tatter coats, and it was totally impossible to tell whether they were male or female. We also saw the masks used by the baddies in Lord of the Dance, which hid the identity of the people wearing them and made the dancing appear more mysterious. The men in Pretty Grim decided they wanted to be blacked up mainly so that nobody from work would recognise them and give them grief. The women started off by painting their faces with intricate patterns but as this was somewhat time-consuming they opted for masks to hide their identity. It’s also easier to get changed afterwards – there’s nothing worse that being stuck with the Ozzy Ozborne look for the next 3 days!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSirQF_KCKY  

Ifound a peice of dancing on you tube of our dancers ,though not in out town ,for you to watch ,so click and enjoy .....

Have Blessed Sunday everyone ,with love from