Morris Dancing FAQs

Banbury Hobby Horse Festival: The Hobby Horse Festival is an annual three day festival celebrating some of Britain's most interesting "Beast" traditions. Horses are generally well represented, with Hooden Horses from Kent, Mari Lwyd from Llantrisant, and skull horses and wooing horses from Yorkshire. Other beasts often make an appearance and the event usually includes a Barbadian "Mum and Tuk" play and appearances by morris teams. The event usually takes place over the first weekend of July.; There is a bit of confusion about the "official" homepage for this. The original was created by Sandy Glover for the first four festivals, 2000-2003. However, during the 2003 festival, the new festival chairperson independently created a new webpage for it and the 2004 festival. The two sites will probably remain in place until planning details for the 2005 festival are resolved.; • New Homepage: <http://www.hobbyhorsefestival.co.uk/>; • Original Homepage: <http://hobbyhorsefest.has.it/>; • Maintainer: Sandy Glover <sandyglover@writeme.com>; • Categories: Characters : Events

FAQ Entry Updated: 2004-12-17

DERT : Dancing England Rapper Tournament: The Dancing England Rapper Tournament is a continuation of the most significant Short Sword or Rapper dance competitions that were held in Newcastle upon Tyne, the epicentre of the coalfields where the dance originated. The modern annual weekend event held at different venues in the UK, brings together teams and dancers from around the country and occasionally abroad. The essential idea behind the tournament was then and is now that teams have to practise well and develop their skills, giving their performance a polish and their audiences a treat.; • Homepage: <http://pages.zoom.co.uk/dert/main.html>; • 2004 Event: <http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/dert2004/>; • Maintainer: DERT [Contact Form]; • Categories: Events : Sword Dancing

FAQ Entry Updated: 2003-06-11

Master Mummers

The creator of this useful site notes that the "Master Mummers is not in competition with the TDRG's www.folkplay.info website. Rather, Master Mummers complements it with new interactive resources. In fact you could call it the 'colour supplement' to the Folk Play Research website." The Master Mummers website currently holds:

A worldwide Directory of Folk Play Groups - details of over 250 groups, compiled from publicly available information. Mummers, guisers, and other folk play groups are encouraged to add or correct their entry in the listing
A Folk Play Scripts Explorer - that lets you search the scripts database by keyword, examine variants of the lines found, plot distribution maps for them, and so forth.
The beginnings of a 'Frequently Asked Questions' section - currently mainly performance advice.
A general mapping utility - letting you plot your own simple British & Irish distribution maps, using lists of OS & OSI Grid References.

The Directory of Folk Play Groups has been enhanced with a maps mashup where provided latitude and longitude coordinates displays the location in an embedded Google Map. For the UK, Grid References link to Ordnance Survey maps. At its simplest, you can display a map and/or satellite image of a group's home town. Alternatively, you can view a distribution map for a set of search results, and click on the markers for more information.

• Home: <http://www.mastermummers.org/>

• Directory of Folk Play Groups [Map Mashup]: <http://www.mastermummers.org/groupslist.php?format=googlemap&otCode=G>

• Maintainer: Peter Millington <peter.millington1@virgin.net>

• Categories: Directories : Events : History : Mumming/Ritual Drama

FAQ Entry Updated: 2007-07-21

Sidmouth International Festival: Sidmouth, sponsored by the Engish Folk Dance and Song Society, occurs every year during the first week of August. Besides being an outstanding festival of folk music and dance, it hosts the nearest thing to a morris competition. Tickets are discounted if purchased before April. On-site camping fills up quickly. The festival has an email listserv for posting schedule changes and announcements. Sidmouth lies between Exmouth and Lyme Regis on the East Devon coast.; • Home: <http://www.sidmouthfestival.com/>; • Morris: <http://www.sidmouthfestival.com/morris1.html>; • Categories: Events

FAQ Entry Updated: 2003-01-24

Tradmis and Folkscape: Tradmis (TRAditional Dance And Music In Schools) is an English organization working in association with the English Folk Dance and Song Society and local agencies to provide teaching resources on traditional English music and dance to schools. Folkscape is a pilot project of Tradmis (initially covering Berkshire and Cornwall) with information, pictures, books and maps on British folklore, customs and landscape. They are building a calendar of traditional customs that looks very useful.; • Tradmis: <http://www.tradamis.co.uk/>; • Folkscape: <http://www.tradamis.co.uk/rtindex.htm>; • Categories: Events

FAQ Entry Updated: 2005-02-20