Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

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The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is a folk dance which takes place each September in the village of Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire, England. It is performed by ten dancers, accompanied by a musician playing an accordion and a youth with a triangle. Six of the dancers carry reindeer horns; the remaining four take the roles of a hobby horse, Maid Marian, a fool, and a youth with a bow and arrow. On Wakes Monday the performers dance around the parish all day, beginning early in the morning at the parish church where the horns are stored.

The origin of the dance is unknown. The earliest written record of a hobby-horse performance at Abbots Bromley dates to 1532, and the first mention of the reindeer horns is from 1686. Radiocarbon dating has shown that at least one of the horns dates to the eleventh century, though it is unknown how or when they came to Staffordshire or became associated with the dance. Many explanations of the meaning of the dance have been proposed, and it is commonly interpreted as a pagan ritual, but there is no evidence for any of them.

History

The earliest written mention of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is in Robert Plot's Natural History of Staffordshire, published in 1686.Template:Sfn Plot does not seem to have seen the dance himself,Template:Sfn but gives a detailed description of the custom.Template:Sfn According to an annotation by Sir Simon Degge in his copy of Plot's book, he had seen the dance being performed before the English Civil War (1642–1651).Template:Sfn An earlier mention of the hobby horse at Abbots Bromley from 1532 describes it as an ancient custom, but does not mention the horns.Template:Sfn In 1976, one of the reindeer horns was radiocarbon dated to 1065 ± 80 years. It is unknown when the horns were brought to Abbots Bromley and when they began to be used in the dance.Template:Sfn Though many sources claim that the dance was first performed at the St Bartholomew's Day fair in 1226, there is no evidence for this supposition.Template:Sfn

Many explanations for the origin of the dance have been proposed, though there is no concrete evidence for any of them.Template:Sfn According to E. C. Cawte, it "differs in so many ways from the other ritual dances in this country that it is difficult to understand how it developed its present form".Template:Sfn It has often been interpreted as the remnant of a pagan ritual.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Violet Alford believed that the dance was originally a winter solstice fertility rite.Template:Sfn Alternatively it has been suggested that it originally was connected to hunting, either as a ritual to encourage or celebrate a successful hunt, or to celebrate the villagers' hunting rights.Template:Sfn Parallels have been drawn to the prehistoric deer skull headdresses from Star Carr in Yorkshire, or the "Sorcerer" cave-painting from Trois-Frères in southern France,Template:Efn as well as references in William Shakespeare's As You Like It to a deer-hunter being awarded the deer's "leather skin and horns to wear", and in Anthony Munday's The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon to Friar Tuck "carrying a stag's head dauncing", both from the end of the sixteenth century.Template:Sfn

In the seventeenth century, the dance was performed in the Christmas periodTemplate:Sfn – according to Robert Plot, "on New Year, and Twelfth-day"Template:Sfn – but it now takes place on the Monday following the first Sunday after September 4.Template:Sfn Plot reports that the dancers collected money for church repairs and to support the parish poor.Template:Sfn In the Tudor period, the use of hobby horses to raise money for the parish at Christmas time seems to have been widespread in the north Midlands. Along with Abbots Bromley, it is attested at Stafford and at Culworth in Northamptonshire; a hobby-horse performance at Holme Pierrepoint in Nottinghamshire also probably took place in the winter.Template:Sfn

The horn dance apparently stopped being performed around the time of the English Civil War, before being re-established in the eighteenth century.Template:Sfn The Staffordshire antiquarian Richard Wilkes described the dance in his history of the county, suggesting that the tradition had been re-established; his information probably came from around 1725, when he married a woman from Abbots Bromley.Template:Sfn By the late-19th century, the date of the dance had moved to September;Template:Sfn Ronald Hutton argues that this change of date probably happened at the time of the re-establishment of the tradition.Template:Sfn According to local tradition, the dance has been led by the same family since the eighteenth century.Template:Sfn

Event

Schedule

The Horn Dance takes place on Wakes Monday, the day following the first Sunday after 4 September.Template:Sfn It previously took place at the beginning of January, on New Year and Twelfth Night.Template:Sfn

The dance starts at 8 a.m. at St Nicholas's Church in Abbots Bromley and travels around the parish before returning to the village at the end of the day.Template:Sfn The first dance is outside the vicarage; the dancers subsequently perform in the marketplace and various houses and farms around the parish. About midday they dance at Blithfield Hall and have lunch there.Template:Sfn Afterwards, the dancers return to the village, with the final dance around 8 p.m.Template:Sfn In the Victorian period, the dancers went out for several days, visiting nearby towns and villages such as Colton and Rugeley.Template:Sfn

Dancers

Twelve people perform in the dance: six dancers carrying reindeer horns, a fool, Maid Marian (played by a man wearing women's clothes),Template:Efn a hobby horse, a child with a bow and arrow, a musician,Template:Efn and a child with a triangle.Template:Sfn Of these, the two musicians do not dance; their role is only to accompany the dancers.Template:Sfn The dancers use the hobby horse's jaw and the bow and arrow as percussion instruments to keep time with the music.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn The Maid Marian carries a ladle used to collect money; the fool has a bladder on a stick.Template:Sfn

Plot's account of the dance suggests there may have been only eight or nine performers in his day.Template:Sfn He does not mention either the fool or the Maid Marian.Template:Sfn The triangle player is a relatively recent addition to the side, only having been introduced at the beginning of the twentieth century;Template:Sfn the remainder of the team seems not to have changed significantly at least since the beginning of the nineteenth century.Template:Sfn According to Plot's account, in his day the dancer with the hobby horse also held the bow and arrow; Violet Alford doubts that it was possible for one person to do both.Template:Sfn Wilkes mentions a sword in his description of the dance; though no other source records a sword at Abbots Bromley other morris teams included a sword in their regalia in the nineteenth century.Template:Sfn

Costume

Until the 1880s, dancers wore their ordinary clothes decorated with ribbons.Template:Sfn At that time, the vicar's wife designed costumes for the dancers in a mock-medieval style, originally made from old curtains and perhaps inspired by the sixteenth-century painted Betley window,Template:Sfn or by illustrations in an edition of Shakespeare's plays;Template:Sfn these costumes were replaced in 1904 and again in 1951.Template:Sfn

The original costumes for the horn-carriers were green tunics and blue trousers, both with brown spots or flowers;Template:Sfn Template:Sfn the dancers now wear either green or red jackets, with green breeches with an oak leaf pattern.Template:Efn Template:Sfn In the 1880s the fool wore a furry cap;Template:Sfn the 1904 version of the costume introduced jester's motley.Template:Sfn The hobby horse is of the tourney style, in which a horse's head and tail are fixed to the performer's body by a frame, which is then covered by a cloth, giving the appearance of a person riding a horse.Template:Sfn Plot's description of the horse, as being made of thin boards carried between the dancer's legs, is more like a stick horse; he does not seem to have actually seen the performance and this is probably an error.Template:Sfn

Antlers

The antlers used in the dance are from reindeer,Template:Sfn and date to the 11th century.Template:Sfn As there were no reindeer in Britain at this point, they must have been imported, most likely from Scandinavia.Template:Sfn The largest measures Template:Cvt across and weighs Template:Cvt; the smallest measures Template:Cvt across and the lightest weighs Template:Cvt.Template:Sfn Three of the sets of antlers are painted white with brown tips and three are painted brown with gold tips;Template:Sfn historically the brown antlers have instead been painted blue and red at different times.Template:Sfn In the 17th century they had the coats of arms of important local families painted on them, but these are no longer visible.Template:Sfn The antlers are set into wooden heads, thought to date from the 16th century, which are mounted on wooden poles.Template:Sfn The heads are painted brown with features drawn on in red and black.Template:Sfn

Historical accounts of the Abbots Bromley dance are inconsistent in their descriptions of the horns. Plot says that the horns were from reindeer; Wilkes says that they were elk. Wilkes says that they weighed Template:Cvt; Cecil Sharp says that the heaviest was Template:Cvt. Wilkes claimed that the horns were brought to Abbots Bromley by William Paget, the ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. However, Paget's return from Turkey postdates the accounts of Plot and Degge which mention the horns.Template:Sfn Possibly Paget brought a set of horns back to Abbots Bromley when he returned from Turkey because horns were already used in the dance, and these later fell out of use as less practical than the original ones.Template:Sfn

Wilkes also reports that the antlers were stored in Abbots Bromley town hall. In 1820 Thomas Harwood was the first to report that they were stored in the church. In the late nineteenth century they were kept in the church tower; in 1927 they were moved and subsequently have been stored in the Hurst Chapel.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

According to tradition, the horns must not leave the parish.Template:Sfn A different set of horns, acquired in the 1950s, is used for performances outside Abbots Bromley.Template:Sfn One set of horns was apparently lost early in the 19th century; Marcia Rice reports a story that the Abbots Bromley dancers were bribed to bring the horns to Burton-upon-Trent, got drunk, and had the horns stolen.Template:Sfn

Dance

In 1911, Cecil Sharp described the dance as being made up of two main figures. In the first, the dancers process around in a circle before turning and circling back. In the second, the dancers face off in two rows, dancing together and apart before crossing over, turning around, and repeating the process to return to their original place.Template:Sfn It is performed without any special footwork: Alford describes the dance as a "steady rhythmical plod".Template:Sfn

There is no specific tune associated with the dance.Template:Sfn In 1893, the vicar of Abbots Bromley recalled that there had previously been a special tune for the dance but that it had been lost.Template:Sfn In 1912, Sharp published a tune sent to him by a J. Buckley which Buckley said he had collected in the 1850s from a fiddler from Abbots Bromley.Template:Sfn According to Andrew Bullen, "this is the tune most often associated with the horn dance and it is probably the oldest";Template:Sfn however, there is some dispute as to whether the tune did in fact accompany the dance.Template:Sfn E. C. Cawte questions its authenticity, partly on stylistic grounds – "it is not in the character of tunes for other traditional dances" – and partly because the reputed source of the tune had never been the musician for the dance.Template:Sfn

Other tunes associated with the dance have been collected from William Adey, a dancer who in 1924 recalled a tune which he remembered being used in the 1870s and 1880s, and Edie Sammons, whose brother played for the dance.Template:Sfn When Sharp collected the dance, "any country-dance air" was used; he saw it performed to Yankee Doodle.Template:Sfn More recently modern tunes have also been played.Template:Sfn

In culture

Shortly after Sharp recorded the Abbots Bromley horn dance in Sword Dances of Northern England, versions of it began to be performed outside of the village by members of the English Folk Dance Society (now the English Folk Dance and Song Society).Template:Sfn Since 1947, a version of the dance has been performed by Thaxted Morris Men at the Thaxted meetings of the Morris Ring. In 1951 they also performed the dance to celebrate the Festival of Britain.Template:Sfn Ivon Hitchens' Mural, in the Kennedy Hall of Cecil Sharp House, the headquarters of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, depicts English folk-dances and traditions. The horn dancers shown on the right of the mural are probably based on those at Abbots Bromley.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> A series of pencil drawings by Dave Pearson, In the Seven Woods, also depict the Abbots Bromley dance.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2019, Royal Mail issued a set of stamps depicting unusual British customs and festivals which included the Abbots Bromley horn dance.<ref name="stamp1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The dance was one of three traditional dances which inspired Hanna Tuulikki's "Deer Dancer".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The dance has been featured in exhibitions including Mummers, Maypoles, and Milkmaids: A Journey Through the English Ritual Year at the Horniman Museum in 2012,<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and Making Michief: Folk Costume in Britain at Compton Verney Art Gallery in 2023.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Notes

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References

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Works cited

External links

Template:Ritual Animal Disguise in the British Isles Template:English folk music

Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

Contents

History