Book Review of "Under the Rose, Yorkshire's Traditional Seasonal Dances" by Paul D. Davenport.

[watervole]

 If you like to know what traditional dances were recorded in your locality and you live in Yorkshire, then this is a must have.

If you like a good overview of the inter-relationships between different forms of dance and customs like plough stots and rushbearing, then this is also a very useful book.
It's not a book that writes a history for you; what it does it to list village by village all known records of morris/sword dances and related customs. This tends to make it a book to dip and browse rather than read all in one chunk. However, if you do persevere and read it cover to cover, several interesting patterns start to emerge.
For instance - we tend to think of customs as belonging to very specific areas: processional morris (North West morris) is seen as being a Manchester/Lancashire tradition, but there are many recorded instances in Yorkshire as well.
Plough gangs on Plough Monday are not just East Anglian, there were plenty in Yorkshire too.

All kinds of interesting references to all kinds of things: women morris dancers in 1842 in Almondbury; the decoration of rushcarts with silverware; a "Sailor's Plough" (in more than one place) that went out on Plough Monday as well as the more usual farm boys, the term 'rapier' dancing; which might be an origin of the term 'rapper'; the text of a sword play from Gayle that I hadn't seen before; the Grenoside sword dancers wearing clogs; an interesting discussion on what is 'correct' (a traditional dancer from Grenoside complained that Sharp's version wasn't what they actually did); a reference to sword dances as part of a Robin Hood event (Robin Hood events were massive at one time); the style of dance done by the Flag and Bone Gang has its origins here in the village of Roos; some plough gangs called themselves "Vessel Cuppers"; 
On page 101, there is a 1903 use of the word 'raper' (which predates Sharpe's visit to the North East in 1910), which to my mind at least knocks out the theory that Sharpe misunderstood someone referring to a 'wrapper' round a sword handle. (though I admit it is raper rather than rapper here. But add a Geordie accent and you may be there.)

There are one or two points where I disagree with Davenport eg. On page 72 he assumes that changing direction when doing a high clash automatically means a change of hands: I've done dances where that was not the case. 
On page 77 he assumes that a reference to a three man sword dance would be a real struggle and assumes that a party of three would not perform a dance. As a member of a sword dance team that regularly performs three man dances, I politely beg to differ- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENjoYrdS240&t=5s

My only real gripe with the book is that all the pictures are unlabelled and you have to go to the picture reference page to find out who and when the dancers are. In my copy, I've written the details under each picture. (and that he failed to read all of Dommet's notes on Lingdale and thus overlooked the same figures that Allsop missed.)

All in all, it's a good little book with plenty of interesting pictures and a collection of information that must have taken many years to put together. If you enjoy dance history, particularly sword dances or Plough Monday customs, then I definitely recommend it. It's nicely printed on good quality paper. Why not ask for a copy for Christmas?

You can buy it from Hallamshire Traditions and the price is very reasonable -https://www.hallamtrads.co.uk/sales.html

Comments

[ranunculus]

That sounds like a true labor of love.

[watervole]

I think it probably took him decades. Must have hunted every newspaper cutting, photo, written to lots of people, read everything he could find from past researchers. There's a lot of stuff there I haven't seen before.