The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #9038 Message #3121641
Posted By: GUEST
25-Mar-11 - 07:58 PM
Thread Name: Dancers of Stanton Drew/Wedding at Stanton Mews
Subject: RE: Dancers of Stanton Drew/Wedding at Stanton Mew
Dating- the legend has to be post reformation- dancing on Sunday would have been ordinary then. They even danced in churchyards.
Post reformation- well most things would have stayed the same, unless forbidden by some local zealot, up till the Civil War period.
Then dancing anytime would have been as bad.
Afterwards the problem was not Sunday but attendance. There are places near here where villages were relocated by the landlord so he could count the tenants as they came along the road to church. Defaulters could be evicted. This looks promising for an origin.
In the 18th/19th centuries the peasants (Sweeney's men) revolted against the Church- but only to fetter themselves in the stronger irons of the Methodists. Sabbatarianism didn't really relax in most of rural UK till the 1920s thereafter.
So the legend is most likely to be 18th century if it's not a 1950s holograph.