We are back dancing .... modestly .... with children around the Maypole

 The Maypole dance is a Celtic Beltaine tradition. Covid blocked us on May 1st, so we raised the Maypole for France's National Day July 14th. Here is Claudine, beautifully dressed and surrounded by happy children holding ribbons. We used recorded Morris Music from Essex to provide a suitably plodding beat as we all marched our ribbons around the Maypole, or Maibaum, or Mât enrubanné. The bored adolescent on her smartphone illustrates the age differences. Old and Young had fun; but 300 years ago, she would have been holding a ribbon with the best of them, with us watching!

 We shall dance again !!!!  Nous allons danser! On Sunday June 13th in Josselin, in the centre of Brittany, the Scottish Dancers of the RSCDS Breton Branch will be dancing out of doors, in open-air safety with masks for some and clean hands for all. Here is our core group of RSCDS demonstration dancers at the Cours Josselin de Rohan in 2019. We last danced on 19th  Jan 2020. Sigh!

 

We will start dancing Sunday at 11am on the medieval tilting yard, now called La Promenade but traditionally known as the Cours de Josselin de Rohan, where the Dukes of Rohan organized their jousting from the 1100s until the late 1500s. This illustration is from de arte athletica in the 1540s:

                                Renaissance era illumination from Paulus Hector Mair (Wiki)

We are ATHLETICA people ourselves, for dancing is real sport: although I doubt if our muscles will function very precisely after 18 months without any jig, reel or strathspey. The fact that we will be dancing on hard earth, and not on a ballroom floor, will not matter much. I shall wear gym shoes, not dance ghillies, through which my feet would feel every pebble. Come and join us if you are near!

We hope everyone will soon be dancing again. Dancing in the open air has a long and happy tradition.

We will be dancing clothed. I will shake out my kilts and loosen my belt to allow space to accommodate my "Covid Bonus" of five or six pounds (I no longer trust my scales to tell me the truth), and drive over to the beautiful medieval city of #Josselin to renew my love of Scottish dance. Here is the castle.

 

 

May 2021 Elections in a dis-United Kingdom. Scottish Independence now more likely?

 

May 2021 Elections in UK have been curious and - in a strange way - a call for stability. The voters in London, Manchester, Liverpool, North-West England, Wales and Scotland have all voted to keep the people who are managing the pandemic, to "build back better" (as the Americans say). Journalists are calling these the "Thank You" elections. The SNP held Scotland, Labour held Wales, most elected mayors (London, Manchester, etc) were re-elected .... and when journalists like Andrew Marr (this Sunday morning) obsess about the likelihood of a second Scottish referendum on Independence, they join the SNP obsession. Yet that was NOT the main subject of this election. Andrew Marr succeeded in making the appalling Conservative Michael Gove sound quite reasonable.

                                         New Statesman photo of Scottish support for the EU

Brexit Gove (from Aberdeen) pointed out that the total number of votes cast across Scotland for parties NOT pushing a referendum (Conservative, Labour, Liberal) was larger than the number of votes cast for SNP and Greens who support a second referendum. Even though the Scottish National Party won a large mandate. 'First Past the Post' is not the best form of democracy.  Meanwhile Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's Chief Minister, has decreed that the EU flag will continue to fly in Scotland. Good decision!

Nicola Sturgeon is Britain's most impressive politician: but my admiration for her does not mean that I  agree with her on all decisions. Scotland's (and Britain's) experience with referendums was not happy. Referendums are so divisive, they are bad. Independence may or may not be a good idea for Scotland; but a referendum would be terrible!  Families were bitterly divided last time, friendships became strained, husbands and wives were unable to talk over breakfast because the binary Yes-No choice overwhelmed so many vast complications involved in the idea of separating the Union. "Yes...but" or "No, but..." discussions were eliminated.  And yet .... I would be Scottish and European .....

I would rather be dancing than voting. Maybe we shall dance before the end of May.... 

..... dancing out of doors, but I plan to wear the kilt.

 

Beltaine is a Celtic Festival of Fire and Maypole dancing for the Merry Month of May.

 And so we celebrated Beltaine 2021 on the Friday night of April 30th, which was considered the Night of Beltaine when our ancestors considered that a day began at dusk. Of course, we our celebration was Covid-restricted: only 6 people allowed to meet, and no travel allowed after 7pm. So our friends Mikael Morice and Sylvie Le Moel welcomed us to their home, where they built a maypole for six ribbons, and fire to warm six people: who drank Beltaine champagne and ate Beltaine oysters. Yummy. 

I wore the kilt, but our dancing was limited to skipping around the Maypole and wrapping it in coloured ribbons. When pandemic restrictions ease, we hope to use it for children's entertainment and education.

Beltaine is one of the great Celtic events - taken over by the Catholic Church in Germany as Sankt Walpurgisnacht:  the nun St Walpurga was born in Devon, and she carried her English version of the gospel to convert Germanic heathens. No one in England has ever heard of her!  In France, the cleansing fires of Beltaine became the Feast of St Jean (John) on June 24th. We can still celebrate the Start of the Season of Light, the end of the 40 days of Nauruz (the Persian New Year that our Indo-European ancestors celebrated, starting with the Spring Equinox on March 21st). And so we did. 

We danced, we read poetry, we heard music (notably Gounod's "Faust") and we ate good food, washed down with a magnum of rosé wine. We would have wanted this to be a celebration for the Jumelage, the Town Twinning between Pordic, our Breton village, and the Cornish town of Hayle which we cannot visit because of the pandemic..... and we could not celebrate with the 40-odd French members of the Pordic-Hayle Jumelage. We celebrated with the president, our friend Claudine Mizzon, vice-president (my wife Michelle) and with our hosts who are also Jumelage Board Members. With their talented 15-year-old son Pierre. So I wish everyone a very joyful Merry Month of May. And next year maybe we can celebrate Beltaine like this, with 100 people.

 

Here are Breton Druids celebrating BENTAINE and the Season of Light 

deep in the Forêt de Brocéliande, a place that is filled with Arthurian legends
 

Remembering HRH Prince Philip and thinking of our RSCDS Patron Her Majesty The Queen

 Prince Philip died on April 9^th 2021. The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince and First Gentleman of the United Kingdom (the title that placed him hierarchically above the Prince of Wales) was an outstanding British personality, a great servant to the United Kingdom and to the Commonwealth. A remarkable innovator of British engineering and of charitable activities, he liked to say “a good business makes money, and a good charity needs money.” He was talking mainly about youth activities he launched including the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme; the Playing Fields Association and many others. We share everyone’s sorrow.

In a very early letter shared with author Betty Shew, the then Princess Elizabeth wrote “we both loved dancing.”  I have visited the ballroom at Balmoral Palace (and many other palaces) and imagined how wonderful it would be to dance there. But videos of balls suggest that aristocrats are mostly ‘reelers’ rather than RSCDS dancers. If some of us in the RSCDS are a wee bit snobbish about our dancing, there is only sincerity in our admiration and affection for the Royal Family.

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN !

 

Imagine dancing on grass in June 2021 - let's do it!

The best way to start dancing again, as soon as most people have been vaccinated, will be to dance outside in the Summer sunshine. Risks of passing a virus are reduced twenty-fold in the open air. 

 People dance outside all the time, often on grass. Grass is not great for perfect foot positions, but who is going to have perfect feet after a year of watching videos?  Above is a photo my dear late father watching Highland Dance on grass at the Chichester Festival. Thousands of dancers participate in such festivals each year. The painting below shows that our ancestors gaily danced in the open air.  In June 2021, dancing on grass is the way to restart the health and happiness of dancing....  so talk to your friends and tell them to get ready for dancing on the lawn !
 

Dancing is precious: we shall dance in 2021 !

 

 Happy New Year  -  Bonne Année 2021 - aw sanbé sanbé  -  Frohes neues Jahr  - Bloavez Mad! 

Would you believe that?  My New Year gift (actually Xmas) is a TREADMILL. In British and American history, the treadmill's miserable history illustrates the awfulness of English values.

In 1817, millwright/engineer William Cubitt saw prisoners sitting idle. Instead of training or useful work,  he invented the tread-mill to “reform offenders by teaching them habits of industry.” 19th-century penal treadmills were wide wheels fitted with steps. Prisoners sentenced to “hard labour” would climb the steps repeatedly, causing the entire wheel to rotate. The penal treadmill was “the perfect punishment” by Victorian standards: useless but exhausting task that fitted with Victorian ideals about atonement achieved through hard work. Merciless hard work. The "Workhouses" used them as well, creating "work" for the "idle poor" ..... never wondering whether the wealthy were responsible for their poverty, the misery of rickets, the brutality of child labor. Some treadmills were used to grind corn. Others were simply a waking, walking hell. I once tried it in a museum. It was horrible.

Oscar Wilde walked a treadmill in Pentonville Prison as part of his 1895 hard labour sentence and it almost killed him. He left prison in 1897 and died just two years later, aged 46. The Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline called them a “preventative punishment” .... the priggish rich thought that no-one who experienced the treadmill would ever want to commit another crime. If they did - like stealing a loaf of bread to feed starving infants - then they were transported to Georgia or to Australia.

The ghastly penal treadmills were abolished in Britain in 1902. 

 And now I have bought a treadmill.  I prefer to call it a "skiing machine" but "a rose by any other name doth smell as sweet" write Shakespeare.

My wife thinks walking a treadmill will "serve me right" .... and if I a am able to lose some of my 'Covid Bonus' of 10 pounds, then she will be proved correct!  My kilt will tell me, whenever I am able to dance. SO LET US PRAY: for dancing and for losing some of those pounds.