Rushbearing and Internet Archive

[watervole]

 I've just discovered the Internet Archive - an absolutely wonderful resource for old books.  Project Gutenberg has better quality text because the scanned books are gone over by volunteers to correct all the scanner errors, but if a book isn't on Project Gutenberg, then try the Internet Archive.  There are masses more books there, simply because scanning is so much faster.

Lots of universities are scanning their old books.  I've just discovered that there was an American university tradition of maypole dancing about a century ago and have downloaded several books of dances that I'm looking forward to reading.

I've also found an online copy of Alfred Bruton's Rushbearing.

If, like me, you're interested in rushcarts and rushbearing traditions, then this is the only decent book on the subject.  Originally published in 1891, it was already referring to a tradition that was mostly in the past.  Bruton writes about the rush carts because he wanted to preserve the information before they were gone for ever.  (Luckily, there are still some modern rushcarts - see link above for more details)

Rushcarts are strongly linked to North West morris.

Comments

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

I was planning to write up the Internet Archive as one of my final group of 100 Things... I've found some priceless old books there :)

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

I am excited to read about this rushbearing tradition! There is a plenty of rush here but I have never heard of read about such tradition here. You always offer something interesting:-)

[watervole.livejournal.com]

The rushes were for the floor of the church and were replaced every year. Quite a few places had processions with the fresh rushes. It's a very interesting custom.

I went to see a rush cart a few years ago and had a great time.

[catalenamara.livejournal.com]

I remember doing Maypole dancing in elementary school.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Which dances? I'll bet on barber's pole and plait and the plait going wrong half the time...

[catalenamara.livejournal.com]

That sounds exactly what we did. I don't remember the name of the dance. But the plait was always going wrong.

The interesting thing was, I was living in a town on the Mexican border at the time, which was 95% Hispanic. (My name was Catalena there.) There were only two other white children my age in town, and I didn't much like either one of them. I can't imagine Maypole dancing was part of the culture - do you know if there's any tradition of it in Spain? We did folklorico dances as well; I remember having a fuchsia colored dress with several tiered ruffles. Must have looked weird on elementary school girls...!

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Ah! I often wondered where your LJ name came from.

Yep! Plait is far far harder than people think. It requires total co-ordination between the children or it screws up beyond recovery. I know a cheat way of getting it to work, but this is the first time I've dared try the proper version. The older children can do it, but only if I do it really fast. (I'll explain another day why it has to be fast to work - their teacher was very surprised. She was certain that I'd have to do it slower to get them to cope with it) It's still 50/50 whether they can undo it successfully...