Dancing with Sabine Baring-Gould
2015; Volume: 10; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2056-6166
Autores Tópico(s)Diversity and Impact of Dance
ResumoIn the grounds of Lew House in Devon, former home of the folk song collector Sabine Baring-Gould, there are some semi-derelict buildings, one of which is known as the Old Theatre. This was fitted out by Baring-Gould for his children to act out their fantasies on rainy days. It was also the place where the village came, at the invitation of their squire, for feasts and for entertainments, and it remained in use until the late 1940s, apart from a break when it was used to house American soldiers preparing for D-Day. (1) In 1949, the Paynter family took over the lease of the house and opened it to paying guests as the Lewtrenchard Manor Hotel. When Alan Paynter retired in 1976, Jack Spiers, who was working for the estate's management company, Ward and. Chowen, was involved, along with his sister-in-law Mary Martin, in an audit of the property in preparation for taking on new tenants. As they poked about among the thirty years' worth of dust and jumble that had accumulated in the Old Theatre they discovered a brown paper parcel containing two linen smocks and a pair of bell-pads--clearly a morris dancer's kit (Figure 1). With permission, Mary took them home for safe keeping. Mary recently rediscovered the clothing when clearing out her former bedroom in the family home. jack is now a morris dancer himself, with Wreckers Border Morris, based in south-east Cornwall. He became curious about the history of these nearly forgotten items and contacted Merriol Almond, Baring-Gould's great-granddaughter, with a view to returning them to the family. By coincidence, I heard about the discovery from Merriol just a few days after I had found two small articles about the Lew Trenchard Morris team while searching newspaper archives. I was more than ready to start digging further into the story that lay behind the equipment. Sabine Baring-Gould was enthusiastic about dancing, particularly the old country dances, and this enthusiasm, coupled with the need to marry off nine daughters, led him to build the ballroom at Lew House. This is one of his most impressive pieces of interior decoration, with a magnificent fireplace constructed using reclaimed carvings from a Belgian altarpiece, a plasterwork ceiling created by local craftsmen, and family portraits lining the walls. There were many grand balls held there for family and friends, and there would have been plenty of the old-style dances at those events. His enthusiasm for dance was not unbounded, however. In an article he wrote in 1888 for the Combill Magazine he extolled the virtues of the country dance over the 'intrusive waltz', saying that 'The dance is not properly the spinning around of two persons of opposite sex hugging each other and imitating the motion of a teetotum. The dance is an assemblage of graceful movements and figures performed by a set number of persons.' (2) In 1889, Baring-Gould launched a series of concerts under the title 'Songs of the West' which were designed to bring the songs he was collecting to a wider audience. These concerts involved costumed performers who took part in a series of tableaux. As well as songs suitable to the scene, country dances were performed between some of the songs. These shows continued, as a professional venture, until at least 1910. [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] I have described in a previous article in Folk Music journal how Cecil Sharp was introduced to William Ford at Lew Trenchard in April 1907. (3) Ford, then sixty-two years old, worked as an odd-job man for Priscilla Wyatt-Edgell, the song collector from Cowley, near Exeter, who had given songs to Baring-Gould. She had visited Lew House previously and was a friend of Baring-Gould's daughters. At Baring-Gould's request, she brought Ford, who was a dancer and concertina player, to Lew Trenchard to teach his dances to some of the villagers. Sharp, who had been staying with Wyatt-Edgell, joined the party and over the three days of the visit he noted five dances from Ford, which he later published in his Country Dance Book. …
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