Yesterday, being a nice sunny day I decided to go down to the Harbour for a little walk round fallowed by a long sit down. As I got into Fleet Street I noticed a bus coming, a 32T, it goes to Teignmouth, a small sleepy town a few miles north of Torquay. Why not thinks I? So a bit later I end up in Teignmouth (pronounced Tin mouth) and discover it's Teignmouth Festival. First thing I notice is the Folk band playing folk music and children dancing. After getting slightly bored slightly quickly I wandered off and found the Morris Dancers.
Now I have never seen Morris Dancing before, not for real anyway. Just a few seconds on the TV. Men dancing around with bells tied to their legs and hitting each other with sticks. In this case BIG sticks. This dance was introduced as The Bear Dance, a throw back to the bad old days where MPs amused themselves by fiddled their expense claims and the plebs amused themselves by baited bears, hitting them with sticks and setting dogs on them. Doing that to bears is now illegal so the Morris Dancers have to call for a volunteer to play the part of the bear in this dance. No MPs have volunteered so far.
Click here to watch.
1 comment:
I've seen plenty of Morris dancers before, but never in black. Gotta love the contradiction of grown men wacking each other with sticks, then skipping.
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