How lovely Trishh. Happy May Day to you too. Your new avatar is rather divine <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
Interesting to hear Cotswold & Border Morris dancing happens in Canada. I'm almost in Border country & not so very far from the Cotswolds either. I love to watch Morris dancers & have had the yearning to join in on several occasions...several of my old colleagues danced. It all seems a gloriously powerful mix of the sublimely silly and serious to me.
Hi Lauren- glad you liked the avatar too. It's called Adam and Eve. I couldn't resist.
Yes, Morris dancing is in large part pretty silly and fun, especially the border dancers with tattercoats etc. The Cotswold gangs here in NA often take themselves very seriously... but come on... how serious can you be taken with bells on shins and hankies flapping? It certainly is good cardiac exercise no matter how silly one might appear.
After the initial round of dancing is done, we all join in singing "Hallento, jolly rumble o! We were up long before the day'o, to welcome in the summer, the summer and the May'o, 'cause summer is a comin' in, and winter's gone away'o." The harmonies always send a primitive shiver up and down my spine. That very moment for me is when summer begins.
I was working somewhere in the States a few years back and had a Cornish gentleman in my workshop. I was so excited and blabbed on about Morris dancing. He just looked blank. I started describing the dance tradition, and he granted that maaaaaayyyybeeee he remembered it from his boyhood. I was crushed. I am so glad to hear that you are familiar with Morris folk Lauren, and that the tradition actually does live on in Britain and not just in the imaginations of North American British-wanna-be's.
Trishh
