![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Rush Bearing
This is unlikely to be of interest to anyone except those interested in North West morris dancing or English traditions.
I'm reading up on rush-bearing traditions at present.
In the days of earth or stone church floors, they used to cover the floor in rushes for insulation and to provide a softer surface to kneel on. Castles and houses likewise used rushes. (You'll find plenty of references in Shakespeare to strewing fresh rushes for guests)
In areas like Lancashire, the annual renewal of the rushes became a big, festive event and processions would bring the rushcart to the church - accompanied by morris dancers and many others.
Here's a bit more about the tradition.
This is Saddleworth rushcart - a recreated tradition, but the rush cart (going by a rather rare book that I own) is pretty accurate. The cart can easily weight a couple of tons. Note the ropes leading to a bar held by more men in front (I've seen pictures of carts with over a hundred men pulling them with long bars with ten or twenty men to each bar). Now, look at the men behind, there's plenty of those too. They're the brakes! Very necessary if the cart has to go down a hill...
Also note the classical North West morris costume. The hats decorated with flowers are typical of many Nothern sides (especially men's sides). The knee britches are often seen as well. Bells on the shoes go without saying (it's possible that it is the bells that gave morris its name, but more on that another day) They're wearing clogs. Not all traditional side would have worn clogs; normal shoes would actually have been more common. Modern North West sides like clogs as they give a link to the past, they also emphasise the footwork and make a distinctive sound.
Bluffers guide to morris dancing. If a morris dancer is wearing clogs, then they're dancing North West morris (unless they're the Dorset Button rapper dancers who wear clogs becasue they double up as the band for the Dorset Buttons North West morris team). However, absence of clogs does not prove that they are not North West dancers.
An interesting outlier in rush traditions (in that it's not in the north west and isn't connected to morris) is an annual rush day service that still takes place in Bristol every year at St Mary, Redcliffe.
I'm reading up on rush-bearing traditions at present.
In the days of earth or stone church floors, they used to cover the floor in rushes for insulation and to provide a softer surface to kneel on. Castles and houses likewise used rushes. (You'll find plenty of references in Shakespeare to strewing fresh rushes for guests)
In areas like Lancashire, the annual renewal of the rushes became a big, festive event and processions would bring the rushcart to the church - accompanied by morris dancers and many others.
Here's a bit more about the tradition.
This is Saddleworth rushcart - a recreated tradition, but the rush cart (going by a rather rare book that I own) is pretty accurate. The cart can easily weight a couple of tons. Note the ropes leading to a bar held by more men in front (I've seen pictures of carts with over a hundred men pulling them with long bars with ten or twenty men to each bar). Now, look at the men behind, there's plenty of those too. They're the brakes! Very necessary if the cart has to go down a hill...
Also note the classical North West morris costume. The hats decorated with flowers are typical of many Nothern sides (especially men's sides). The knee britches are often seen as well. Bells on the shoes go without saying (it's possible that it is the bells that gave morris its name, but more on that another day) They're wearing clogs. Not all traditional side would have worn clogs; normal shoes would actually have been more common. Modern North West sides like clogs as they give a link to the past, they also emphasise the footwork and make a distinctive sound.
Bluffers guide to morris dancing. If a morris dancer is wearing clogs, then they're dancing North West morris (unless they're the Dorset Button rapper dancers who wear clogs becasue they double up as the band for the Dorset Buttons North West morris team). However, absence of clogs does not prove that they are not North West dancers.
An interesting outlier in rush traditions (in that it's not in the north west and isn't connected to morris) is an annual rush day service that still takes place in Bristol every year at St Mary, Redcliffe.
no subject
no subject
eg. It's easy to find condemnations of morris dancing as pagan. Unfortunately these come from a period when almost everything that involved having fun was condemned as pagam/unglodly/immoral. If you look at the actual quotes, it's pretty clear people were just having a good rant. If you go a hundred years earlier, the church was actively supporting the morris and using it as a fund-raiser.
But if you just mean folk history in general, then I agree - it's fascinating.
no subject
no subject
What was the mediaeval church like? It certainly appears to have had a strong social function from what I'm reading about church ales, but I'm only really reading about the morris connections at present. (and I've picked up something about our old, lost, traditions of mystery plays, etc)
no subject
The mediaeval church was much more open and human-scale, locally controlled, than the Church of England that replaced it—more a part of society itself than part of a system of social control. Duffy's very passionate about the subject, and has to be taken with a bit of salt, but there's a great deal of interesting stuff in it. On a glance through the index, it doesn't cover folk connections; there's certainly no entries for morris or church ales or even mystery plays.
no subject
no subject
This is interesting, I haven´t known rushes, of course I can´t read Shakespeare in original.
This tradition is very nice and as always, thank you for your comment!
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Or to Gorton in September... http://esd.mmu.ac.uk/gmm/