Morris Dancing FAQs

Carnival Morris Sides

2008-03-13

A listing of carnival morris sides is available as part of the Morris Dancing Wiki.

Fiddle Notes

2007-10-07

Fiddle Notes is aimed at the UK fiddler. It contains information on events; violin sellers, makers and repairers; music shops, book and record dealers; organizations and schools; fiddle links; and mailing lists.

Truculent Rustics: Molly Dancing in East Anglia before 1940

2007-08-07

by Elaine Bradtke
The Folklore Society, 1999, 40 pages, illustrated
ISBN 0-903515-180

What is Molly dancing? Where did it come from? Who performed it and why? What did it look like? And where did the name come from? These are just some of the questions addressed in Truculent Rustics. Although it has undergone a revival in the past twenty years, the history of this little-known English display dance form is not well documented. This publication is intended to fill that gap. A history of this boisterous display dance originating in East Anglia at the Plough Monday celebrations. With illustrations and appendix.

Master Mummers

2007-07-21

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.

Morris Matters

2007-07-19

Morris Matters was published by Windsor Morris from 1978 - 1988, then twice a year (January and July) by Beth Neill from 1990. Subscriptions are £6 for two issues (£8 outside EU countries); cheques/money orders payable to Morris Matters (sterling only please).

Morris Matters attn: Beth Neill
27 Nortoft Road
Chalfont St. Peter
Bucks
SL9 OLA

Phone: 01494 871465

The Watersons and Waterson:Carthy Website

2007-07-09

Originally, the Watersons were siblings Norma, Michael (Mike) and Elaine (Lal) Waterson, with their second cousin John Harrison. They had a wide repertory but their abiding interest was in the songs and customs of their native East Yorkshire. They were renowned for their performances of traditional songs while retaining the freshness in the arrangement of the individual vocal lines. Today, Norma, her husband Martin Carthy, and daughter Eliza continue the tradition, both as solo performers, and together as Waterson:Carthy.

Morris Dancing Discussion List (MDDL). MORRIS@IUPUI.EDU

2007-03-04

The Morris Dancing Discussion List (MDDL) is an unmoderated listserv-based discussion group devoted to discussions, debates, and rants on all things Morris, including: Cotswold, Border, Garland, Northwest, etc.; Sword Dancing, both Long Sword and Short Sword (Rapper); Mumming, Mumming plays and other ritual drama; Molly Dancing, Abbots Bromley, Plough Dancing; winter festivals such as Wassailing, Caroling and Twelfth Night; May Day celebrations, including May Poles and other rural festivities.

New to the list is an RSS feed for monitoring posts.

English Folk Dance & Song Society : EFDSS

2006-12-15

An international membership organization dedicated to preserving English folkdance and song traditions. Based at Cecil Sharp House. Publishes English Dance & Song Magazine, The Folk Music Journal, books and records related to country and ritual dances as well as music. Operates several folk festivals in England including the Sidmouth Festival.

For archival research, EFDSS houses the internationally recognized Vaughan Williams Memorial Library within Cecil Sharp House. Check this page for an excellent list of morris and folk music related publications.

Folk Music Journal

2006-12-15

The Folk Music Journal is unique in the field of cultural studies. In principle, it exists to publish papers devoted to folk music, folk dance, and folk song, which in practice are interpreted in their broadest sense. Contributions come from a variety of subjects and disciplines ranging from ethnomusicology, dance ethnology, and social anthropology, through folkloristics, social and oral history, the history of street literature and ballad studies, to the study of contemporary performance.

The Journal is published annually in December. It is sent free to all members of the Society and may be purchased by others for £7.50 (£6.00 to members for back issues and extra copies) plus £1.50 p&p. Table of contents are available.

English Dance & Song

2006-12-15

English Dance & Song, with a mission to "interest, inform and stimulate the membership of the EFDSS", is the longest-established magazine devoted to folk music, dance and song in the United Kingdom. First published in 1936, it has appeared at least four times a year ever since. Subscription is a benefit of Society membership.

Scottish Folk Music List. scots_music@yahoogroups.com

2006-12-10

Discussion group for those who are interested in Scottish traditional music. Formerly knows as Scots-L and now on Yahoo Groups. Not quite as informative as the Irish list (fewer tunes exchanged, less scholarship among the subscribers), but still a good source of information.

abcusers Listserv. abcusers@yahoogroups.com

2006-12-10

The abcusers listserv discusses aspects of the abc specification itself, software that is used to display, play and manipulate abc files, and occasionally tunes.

Morris Dancing FAQs

2006-11-29

The Morris Dancing FAQs (Frequently Asked/Anticipated Questions) was originally connected with the Morris Dancing Discussion List (MDDL) in the sense that many of the questions were posed there. The present document stands separate from the MDDL even though its author remains one of that list's owners. The title is a bit of a misnomer in that it departs from the usual style of a FAQ sheet and is not framed in a question/answer format. It was easier at the time of the document's creation to set it up as a directory of sources and it's remained in that format ever since.

The FAQ is database-driven, which means that it is browsable by category and maintainer and that titles and annotations are fully searchable. It now offers an RSS feed to allow you to track newly added or updated entries. For a bit more extensibility, try out the Firefox search plugin.

The Copper Family

2006-09-12

The Copper Family of Rottingdean in Sussex has roots in traditional song that are at least two hundred years old. Bob and Ron Copper came to prominence outside their immediate local environment when recordings of the duo were released during the early part of the folk revival in the 1950s and early '60s. Their harmonies, drawn directly from the influence of the English Southern Harmony style of singing, has in turn influenced groups like The Watersons and The Young Tradition, and from there, most of the modern English folk groups. This site lists recordings and Bob Copper's excellent books, and has lyrics to many of their songs.

Folk Music

2006-09-11

The author is an English folk music enthusiast who has put together a massive collection of lyrics, tunes, and photos of modern (circa 1970 when the recent revival began) singing groups such as the Watersons, Martin Carthy, Steeleye Span, Sandy Denny, Ashley Hutchings, and the Kipper Family. There are extensive links to similar webpages.