Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2

Subject: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: Sue Allan
Date: 23 Apr 14 - 04:44 PM

Enjoying Ian Hislop's Olden Days on BBC2 . Great to see Vic Gammon expounding on Cecil Sharp on tonight's programme. But who knew about Daisy Dakin, teaching morris to soldiers in France in WW1? I certainly had never heard of her, forty years of involvement with folk dance. Astonishing.

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: Sue Allan
Date: 23 Apr 14 - 04:59 PM

Apologies: that should have been Daisy Daking.

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: Will Fly
Date: 23 Apr 14 - 05:08 PM

Very interesting programme - enjoyed all three parts.

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 23 Apr 14 - 05:15 PM

I liked it very much too.

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: Joe Nicholson
Date: 23 Apr 14 - 07:46 PM

Yes I enjoyed it too. What did suprise me was the film of Cecil Sharpe Morris Dancing with women when I have always been led to believe that prior to the First World War it was confined strictly to men.

Joe Nicholson

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: Will Fly
Date: 24 Apr 14 - 03:00 AM

My guess is, Joe, that the film was of just a private affair in a back garden with a few friends or family members. They were obviously having a bit of fun. A far cry from the formality of the Morris Ring and all that went with it.

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 24 Apr 14 - 03:21 AM

The gym slips reminded me of my own garb as a girl. I do feel that Hislop was rather dismissive of Sharp's folk song collection. He stated that it wasn't possible to trace the origins of the 5000+ songs and many local singers couldn't have known if their efforts were old or fairly recent, derivative or 'pure'. But surely that's the whole point of folk songs - they evolve and merge, like living organisms. Just look at the 'Jones's Ale Was New' thread. There's a possibility that it derives from a really quite ancient ditty, or perhaps not... Hislop's view that all this ruralism was and is a figment of the imagination isn't strictly true either. I can assure him that the picture-box countryside and way of life is alive and well here in deepest Norfolk. Our very small cohesive village hasn't much changed in 500 years. No urbanisation here.

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: Will Fly
Date: 24 Apr 14 - 03:47 AM

I think what probably has changed, Eliza - without in any way disputing the character of your village (and all my Mum's family originated in Norfolk) - is the presence of the "outside world" within the village. The media - newspapers, radio, a TV in every home, computers, iPads, iPhones, etc., are the wires by which even the most rural of villages are connected to the modern world. Why - here you are, as large as life - on the Mudcat Forum.

That's the main difference between then and now and, in that sense, even your rural idyll has been urbanised - internally, if not outwardly. Do your chocolate-box cottages have TV aerials? The ones in my village do!

I don't think - unless I wasn't listening properly, that Hislop said that the ruralism was a figment of the imagination, but that the "imagined village" was a constant, an image that more modern generations hold as a kind of comforting reference point. I remind myself of the misery of the agricultural worker in East Anglia in the early 19th century and either side of that, including my own ancestors - by reading and re-reading Hobsbawm's "Captain Swing", and by reference to letters written by my own family in Norfolk (Edgefield) to relations who'd emigrated to Canada in 1837. These letters were written between 1837 and 1890, and paint a pretty glum picture of rural life - bloody harsh and miserable for much of the time. The rise of the union workhouse and its system - and the attitude of the squierarchy that created it - was hellish.

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 24 Apr 14 - 04:00 AM

'...large as life...' LOL, quite accurate in my case! But you're right of course, Will. There was terrible suffering in rural Norfolk and a visit to Gressenhall (where the workhouse is preserved and the system explained) is a very saddening experience. I ought to modify my post a bit. We don't have street lights and no mobile signal is possible. There are three 'roads' and hardly any traffic. But of course we do have TV aerials and at school time the cars arrive in droves to bring the legless pupils to school. But the air is pure, you can hear the birds sing ("Bloody birds!" as my husband says; he's not a nature lover!) and all around are fields with mostly cattle in. (Our water meadows produce rich grass) Our farmer is known to all and brings the corn sheaf up to the altar at Harvest Festival. The village pub hasn't changed and the church (900 years old) still serves us for worship. IMO it's still a pastoral idyll, albeit little more modern!

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 24 Apr 14 - 05:43 AM

Joe Nicholson:
the films of Sharp dancing have been fairly well publicised on the folk scene over the last 30 years. They were available on video from EFDSS, and included on the BFI film of folk music and customs a couple of years ago. Just google search for Kinora reels (Kinora was a form of flick book - the format of these films).
But the films do not include Sharp dancing morris with women. George Butterworth and (separately) the Karpeles sisters (Maud and Helen) are dancing morris jigs. Sharp, Butterworth and the sisters together danced a country dance.
Prior to the FWW, women and men danced morris - separately - both within the Sharp revival (English Folk dance Society etc) and within the Mary Neal Esperance movement. Both sexes danced in public - indoor displays and occasional outdoor displays, but not outside the pub/village green/town centre.
Gradually after FWW, the men started dancing in these other performance contexts, leading to the foundation of the Morris Ring in 1934.
Derek Schofield

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 24 Apr 14 - 06:57 AM

I found most interesting the railway viaduct bit: the one there are now societies to preserve, tho when it was built a national movement spearheaded by Ruskin denounced the whole effect the railways were having on the rural landscape. I recently got looked at most oddly by a good lady who knocked on my door, soliciting signatures for a petition against a wind farm planned near here. She couldn't believe I was serious when I said I like wind farms, and thought, with those slender skeletal artefacts rhythmically whirring away, they had a beauty of their own; and people will fight to conserve them in 100 years or so when they are threatened with destruction. Likewise lovely gaunt pylons marching across an open stretch of land. Tastes differ; bet I bet I am right about how they will be viewed in the future, when they have become the traditional olden parts of the landscape.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 24 Apr 14 - 09:15 AM

LOL Michael. Can you imagine 100 years from now, a 'Tour of Ye Olde Milton Keynes'? "And just coming up on the right-hand side, ladies and gentlemen, that strange structure with glass doors was known as a 'Tesco's'. The exquisite 'trolley bays' are protected by English Heritage. And before us... a 'Roundabout'..."

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: Joe Nicholson
Date: 24 Apr 14 - 11:45 AM

Thanks Derek that cleared it up for me. Re viaducts I supose you would not be able to build railways now but where i lived in Knaresborough in North Yorkshire there is a particularly good example of viaduct building which is constructed of stone with a castellated top and garaceful arches. Almoost any day of the week in the Summer you ,will see it being painted from many diferent anlgles and should the line become redundant I don't see it ever being pulled down.Oh and by the way I rather like wind farms to

Joe Nicholson.

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 24 Apr 14 - 04:39 PM

Seeing a 'solar farm?' from a train recently - a field full of solar panels, in which grass and weeds were getting a bit out of control - it struck me that the rural and modern worlds could be usefully combined by keeping free range chickens in the field. Chickens are woodland birds in nature so they would enjoy the shelter of the solar panels, and they will pretty well get rid of both grass and weeds.

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: Bob TB
Date: 24 Apr 14 - 06:39 PM

Can anyone tell me who the young lads dancing morris were? Nice to see a side of youngsters. I remember dancing at that age (just).

Bob Hawkes

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST,Troubadour
Date: 24 Apr 14 - 07:09 PM

"LOL Michael. Can you imagine 100 years from now, a 'Tour of Ye Olde Milton Keynes'? "And just coming up on the right-hand side, ladies and gentlemen, that strange structure with glass doors was known as a 'Tesco's'. The exquisite 'trolley bays' are protected by English Heritage. And before us... a 'Roundabout'..."

! and a roundabout, with a number of cows on it, peacefully cropping grass.

No Missus, they won't wander into the road and be killed,........they're CONCRETE!

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: Noreen
Date: 24 Apr 14 - 09:13 PM

Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2 & link to iPlayer

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 25 Apr 14 - 05:30 AM

As an Archers person I appreciated how they fitted into his picture, but the strangest thing for me was about taking morris dancing to war-weary soldiers on the Western Front, and them liking it!
Especially Australians and Scots!
Who would have thought?

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST,Derek Schofield
Date: 25 Apr 14 - 05:34 AM

Topsie - not so sure the solar panels would protect the chickens from foxes :-)
Derek

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Apr 14 - 05:41 AM

Bob the melodeon player was Ollie King and he dances/plays with Fools Gambit Morris

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 25 Apr 14 - 07:45 AM

Derek, at night the chickens would need to be in secure chicken houses/sheds fitted with perches, the same as any other free range chickens, to protect them from foxes. I just meant that the solar panels would provide them with shelter from sun or rain during the day.

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: Joe Nicholson
Date: 25 Apr 14 - 11:20 AM

Topsie would not the deposits left on top of the solar panels by the chickens orevent the suns rays from getting through.

Joe N

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Apr 14 - 02:21 PM

Hiya! Only 3 parts?? Owh!! Had inkling the Merlin legends were made up (expect my collie's looking @ the TV wondering who's calling him) but why did IH have to *tell us that*?? Liked IH's meeting w/ Arthur Pendragon. Might look into joining similar.

A lot of tunes used for Morris are stunning. (esp the Dark version !!) FG Morris did that click-click-CLACK, click-click-CLACK that I so love. Were I not incapacitated I'd join a side myself.

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 25 Apr 14 - 06:02 PM

" ... at school time the cars arrive in droves to bring the legless pupils to school."

That made me smile, Eliza. I live in Manchester but one of my brothers now lives in a village in North Norfolk. The Christmas before last I visited my brother and his family. A couple of days after Christmas I thought to wander into the village centre - about a mile or mile and a half away - to buy a newspaper. In the shop I met one of my brother's neighbours and her 7 or 8 year-old daughter. The child looked at me in amazement and asked, "did you walk?!"

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 26 Apr 14 - 04:13 AM

Ah ... I didn't think of that. Maybe the rain would wash it off?

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 26 Apr 14 - 04:31 AM

If one reads biographies of people who actually lived in The Olden Days
(and not so long ago, either) one gets an idea of grinding poverty and back-breaking work. For instance, 'Child Of The Forest' by Winifred Foley describes her life in the Forest of Dean. Picturesque and idyllic, but nonetheless they went hungry and struggled to get by. And Margaret Powell's accounts of her life as a servant gives an insight into the injustices and unkindness meted out to 'staff' employed by the wealthy. But being old myself, I can honestly remember times past when it really was idyllic, tranquil and stress-free, just after the end of the War. So nostalgia can lead one down the path of looking back with rose-tinted specs. Poverty doesn't always mean unhappiness; the strains of modern life often do.

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Apr 14 - 04:58 AM

Topsie et al - you obviously don't live in the West Country!!
"Solar panels give sheep shade and earn the farmer money "

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 27 Apr 14 - 06:11 AM

You're right GUEST - I haven't lived in the West Country since before the days of solar panels.
There wouldn't be a problem with the sheep droppings, so that's OK, but those panels don't look like potential perches for chickens anyway. They would probably only get as far as the lower edge and wouldn't be able to get a grip on the main panels (I have visions of them trying, and sliding off).

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 27 Apr 14 - 09:02 AM

They might enjoy that Topsie! Queuing up to get on at the top then sliding down one after the other. I can just imagine it!

Subject: RE: Ian Hislop's Olden Days BBC2
From: GUEST,Claire M
Date: 27 Apr 14 - 02:40 PM

Hiya! Growing up in the country, I went to lots of country things; flower shows, jousting, etc. I'm sure there was a Morris dance in there somewhere. I knew everyone in my village – they'd even help care for me as a less able member of the community. I yearned to live somewhere w/ a bit more life, to be able to do more.

Now I can, & do –- but I can cut the atmosphere w/ a knife. People don't seem to talk, here & when they do they bitch & snap. 1 of my flatmates is very ill in hospital but nobody even asks how she's doing.   I've more chance of getting a job juggling snowballs through Hell than getting to any of said events now (due to a # of things) & on a bad day that can bring me to tears.