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.

Star Spangled ...Pint??

One of the coolest tunes is The Star-Spangled Banner, and yes, I know, it's the American national anthem (or one of them), but it's such a stirring tune, in the same vein as La Marseillaise or Flower of Scotland, and it does have beautiful words... I'm a sucker for a good tune whatever its origins (though I make exception to Take That's new pop songs, how dare they write proper catchy tunes?? Argh! Boy-band tripe!) so it was with massive surprise I discovered the origins of this very American tune...

It came from ...

An ENGLISH DRINKING SONG!!!

Although the words were written by American Francis Scott Key in the 19th Century, he borrowed the tune from The Anacreontic Song, a song celebrating Bacchinalian exploits which was such in the gentleman's club of the same name which existed in London during the 1700s.

Anacreon was a Greek poet who sounds a bit like yer standard pub singer who wrote and sang the usual 'wine, women and song' stuff in the tavernas of the 6th Century BC. Here's the chorus:

And besides I'll instruct you,
Like me, to intwine
The Myrtle of Venus
With Bacchus' Vine

It was often used as a sobriety test (in the days before Lion Alcometers! ;-)), if you could sing the whole verse in tune, then you were sober enough to order another round! A mite more difficult than '99 Bottles o' Beer'! The tongue-twisting tune was fiendishly difficult for a teetotaller, so you can imagine what it was like for a bunch o' bleezin Georgians!

Key's song and tune were adopted by the nation in 1931 as the national anthem, even though it had been used by the US Navy since 1889.


AND funnily enough, the previous anthem, 'My Country, Tis Of Thee' had been derived from God Save the Queen!

So, perhaps the best tunes belong to the old country! Still, I love it, it's fabulously patriotic and I defy most people not to want to belt out the last couplet! Keep on flying, star-spangled banner!

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Peterhead Remembered

A new forum has been set up to discuss memories of Peterhead, the Blue Toon -

Peterhead Remembered

If you are interested in joining up - please go to the forum and register.

The Blue Mogganer story is going to appear on the Storyquine Blog in a wee while.

Forum gone...

I've deleted the Folklore Forum cos no-one was using it... busy myself with dissertation. Anyone who wants to share what they are doing can comment on the posts or email me to have things featured on this blog. Ta.

Fa Hingit the Monkey? no.4

Ahem - it wasnae me!!!

I have been accused of 'stealing' Hartlepool's monkey legend! :-)

It was all Patrick's fault - he of the comms office. He decided to tell the world about my little paper on the Boddam Monkey song, and our blessed P&J started the rumpus - well, maybe it didn't, but it didna help with the sub-header: How Boddam monkey incident may have been usurped by Hartlepool! You can read the story here

Radio Scotland was tickled by the story and I got to blether to the Newsdrive's Mhairi Stewart about it. Of course, the folk in Glasgow don't know about the Boddam monkey and they probably forgot about The Fisherman and the Monkey, the broadside ballad published in the 1870s after Ned Corvan's version of the song became famous!

All hell broke loose over the Border!! The Poolie fans climbed out of their bunker to have a go back and poor Mark Payne, journalist for the Hartlepool Mail was tasked with hitting back - he claims not to be responsible for the headline: Scots Try To Steal Monkey Legend complete with my fizzog on the page!! (That's the pic above folks, which the Peenj photographer took on the 12 January.) And then I got a phone call from BBC Tees! They wanted to interview me as well! So, I had to get up early to speak to them on the radio, and was stifling the laughter as the reporter seemed so genuinely upset that 'we' north of the border were trying to 'steal' something that he considered 'part of Hartlepool's identity'. It was so sweet! I told him the Boddamers don't want to be known as Monkey Hangers, so they are welcome to rejoice in the handle! I had to laugh at the Scottish Daily Express's editorial the day after the press release, who questioned the wisdom of associating oneself with simian hangings!!

And the Internet is on fire with this - I am now even quoted on Wikipedia as the alternative source of reference!! What a great honour! I just have to hope someone doesn't edit it out! Bloggers, forum peeps from the Poolie Bunker to Mudcat (even more amazing) are debating the story again.

AND then, I found that poor Stuart Drummond, Lord Mayor of Hartlepool has been dragged into the ring - he phoned up the Peenj and defended the Hartlepudlians' ownership of the monkey legend:

“Boddam may well try and claim the legend as their own and I believe there is a village in Devon which also claims an association, but I firmly believe Hartlepool is the original place of the hanging of the monkey and Hartlepudlians take a lot of pride in identifying ourselves as monkey hangers.”

Hee hee hee - could this get any more surreal???

I've said and done all I wanted to about the Monkey - I never had any desire to prove where it came from - I was comparing two versions of a song and the multifarious influences on it, like any good folklorist does. Surely Poolies do not believe in polygenesis, the springing up of a story/legend in many different places independently. We know that's entirely possible. The Boddam/Hartlepool Hanged Monkey is an urban legend, an early one, but certainly something that has no discernable origin - the song has its published versions in Hartlepool (1864) and in Aberdeenshire's Greig-Duncan Folksong Collection (1907) - the story was certainly known before those dates. Those who are sticklers for written sources fail to understand folklore or oral transmission, because they perhaps refuse to accept the validity of stories and oral tradition, which is a shame, they are missing out on so much! Wandering minstrels of the medieval era didn't write down their songs! 'Murdani Mast' aka Murdo Kennedy, a bard from Marbhig on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides composed all his ballads and songs orally, and he is still living!

Anyway... I'm past caring, but I did not, I reiterate, set out to claim that the Boddam version came first, what I said in the paper was if the date of 1772 could be substantiated... for the wreck of the Annie which is mentioned in one version of the song. David Ferguson who mentions that date in his work on shipwrecks in NE Scotland couldn't substantiate it either and admitted that! It's folklore, it's meant to be fun! I think the people quoted in the papers and the BBC have taken it the right way, with tongues firmly in cheeks, but some folk out in Internet land have gone a bit too far, so can you just... like the man said to the fighting snowflakes... settle!!

;->

anyway - you and I know it was the Peelichers that were responsible!! Just ask Eric Whyte!

But ye winna wyte the Peelichers
for the Peelichers hae nae shame
The Peelichers hung the monkey,
and the Boddamers got the blame, the blame,
the Boddamers got the blame!

And fellow blogger, who is descended from a Boddamer, Pauline Cordiner spoke about this aaaaages ago on her blog and naebody turned a hair...