Papa Stour Sword Dance

As performed at the Shetland Museum & Archives, Lerwick, May 2007.



George Peterson, former teacher from Brae High School, Shetland, introduced the dance. He had taught it to some of his pupils a few decades back which they very much enjoyed. The dance he suggested could have been influenced by servants of the earls from Northumbria who would have been familiar with sword dances. The figures are very much like the 'Rapper' dances of NE England, especially the end figure where the swords are put together to make a 'shield' which is much more like a star - Star of David perhaps?

Anyway, though not so energetic as the rapper dances I've seen, this one features another medieval tradition - the Seven Champions of Christendom the seven 'saints', George of England, Andrew of Scotland, David of Wales, James of Spain, Denis of France, Patrick of Ireland and Anthony of Italy. St. George - wearing the red sash - is the dance master and recites all the poetic material between each feature at the beginning. I find it quite a hoot to hear 'St George' speaking in a broad Shetlandic twang! Mind you, if the 'real' George was an Anglo-Saxon, he'd have Viking blood anyway!

Ok, so Sir Walter Scott (he of the nice slippers), famous usually for the 'Tartanisation' of Scottish culture, records the text of the dance in his 1822 novel The Pirate, which he claimed had come from an 'ancient text' dated 1788. At the Shetland 'Out of the Box' conference there was a great ballyhoo about this text and the editing thereof between Paul Smith and Michael Preston (Colorado) and others. It was great fun, but very little other than George Peterson's suggestions as to where it came from.

Guess that's another debate waiting to happen. It seemed a bit too much of 'the text' (literally) is the thing! But fascinating that, like the Mari Lwyd last summer, here's another traditional 'play' which has re-emerged into modern day to be performed. Terry Gunnell also presented a great paper about guising, which also informs the folk play discussion (He was even asking the wifie in the shop at Tangwick Haa about it!).

So if anyone wants to tell us any more - do email me and I'll add it.

I've actually submitted this to Shetlopedia as well, since they don't have an up-to-date film!

Shetland - land of sea... and well, sea!

I utterly LOVED my trip to Shetland on the ferry to take part in the Taking Shetland Out of the Box Island Identities Conference. My first trip in 2007 was by plane, but the boat is the way to go! This is the first in a series of mini-movies I'll be posting about my trip - mainly scenery accompanied by fantastic Shetland music - courtesy of www.shetland-music.com, who I big up as I'm less likely to get into trouble for using music downloaded from their site otherwise!!

As you can see from the film, the weather's much better when leaving! Huh! But I love Shetland's weather, it's insane. Shetlanders I know say 'if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes', cos it does change that fast. We had rain, wind, sun, sleet, sun. It was magic!

So - Journey to Shetland - featuring the Cullivoe Fiddlers from Yell

Another Folkie Blog

Just launched in the last few days, http://humphreywithhisflail.blogspot.com/ by fellow folklorist, Paul Cowdell. Paul's current researching ghost belief in contemporary England, much to my delight! So far he has a couple of witty limericks and a May Day observation. Paul's a graduate of Sheffield University, and now doing his PhD at Hertfordshire. He is also a committee member of the Folklore Society in England.

I met Paul at the Third Postgraduate Ethnology Students' Conference when we hosted it at Elphinstone. He and the Sheffield contingent really inspired the foundation of this blog, and you'll probably see his photo amongst the others at the beginning of the blog. We're all now communing on Facebook, which is a much better alternative than a forum! Anyway, do visit Humphrey with His Flail (no, I don't know what that means either, you'll have to go look!!!) and support a fellow folklorist!!

And, as this is May Day, here's a link to Dale Jarvis, folkorist and storyteller in St John's, Newfoundland, who is looking for May Bushes!

Dale is also planning a storytelling conference in NF next July. Details to follow.