The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #13916   Message #118028
Posted By: dwo
27-Sep-99 - 03:53 AM
Thread Name: Help me undestand Morris Dancing
Subject: RE: Help me undestand Morris Dancing
'Tis my understanding that the horns used in the Abbotts Bromley dance are "Working copies" of a Master Set kept in the village church. Round about 1960 someone managed to get permission to carbon-date the Master Set. Result was 1060 AD +/- 30 years. Don't know if that figure is corrected to the tree ring dating. Point is, they is *OLD*!

'Tother note about Abbott's Bromley is the music. The tune almost always used in North America was sent to Sharp in the '20's by a clergyman who said it had been sent to him many years before. Lovely slow haunting melody quite unlike anything else in English Folk Music. Peter Kennedy, who danced under Sharp at the time, spearheaded the creation of a dance to that music using the figures collected from Abbott's Bromley. But when someone finally went back to Abbott's Bromley and played the lovely haunting tune for the musicians there, they'd never heard it before. They always played something lively, like Yankee Doodle.