NEWS & OTHER INFORMATION FROM THE MOULTON MORRIS MEN
Minnesota Morris Visit Moulton
We were delighted to host a visit from the Minnesota Morris Men this summer . After the day's dancing, we had a storming music session
Lost Morris Man Found!
During the King John's Morris Men's day of dance on 26th April 2008, we stumbled upon a long lost Moulton Morris Man outside a pub in the charming little village of East Meon. Nigel hasn't danced the morris for over 20 years, but was immediately press ganged into action, a Moulton hat put on his head and he was back in the side, to dance the infamous "Knuckles Akimbo" . Some sort of mysterious survival instinct must have kicked in because he survived with knuckles intact - and the photo below proves it!
Mummers at Covent Garden
Moulton Morris were performing at Covent Garden Market in April 2008, for the St Georges Day celebrations. The Mummers Play of St George and the Turkish knight can be seen by clicking on the window below:
Lost Dances Found
The Moulton Morris Men have added two "lost" dances from a Northamptonshire village to their repertoire.
From old correspondence of the Reverend Watkins-Pitchford,Rector of Lamport in the early part of the 20th century, concerning the Nene Valley Morris Men, a very early "revival" side active in that village, Barry Care noted references to the men learning dances from old dancers from the Badby and Ravensthorpe sides. Badby is a well documented tradition, but Ravensthorpe ( a village about 8 miles northwest of Northampton) seems to have passed on un-noticed. It would seem that the village side died out towards the end of the 19th century.
Further enquiries unearthed the movements for two dances from Ravensthorpe: "Shepherds Hey" and "Shoot It". It appeared from Revd W-P's correspondence with Percy Grainger that Ravensthorpe also had its own unique version of the tune for "Shepherds Hey". After much further searching , the score for this tune was found, noted down within a letter, in correspondence stored in the Percy Grainger Museum in Melbourne Australia.
Nene Valley Morris Men, with Revd Watkins-Pitchford as fiddler
Both Ravensthorpe dances feature a "sticks on shoulders" motif and a "jaunty" style. Having now the tunes and the movements, Moulton set about rehearsing the dances and the Ravensthorpe "Shepherds Hey" was danced again, to its own tune, for the first time in about 80 years, at Covent Garden, London,in the spring of 2005.
To see it danced , click on the video. If your computer's security settings prevent this running, you can use the link below it.
