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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Identifiable popular "English" folk culture
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Spawn
Shipmate
# 4867
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
... For instance, I would say having churches keep a register of the weddings that occur in them is very much English culture. The Scots do not, the French do not and I suspect many other nationalities do not. ...
Is that really true? If it is, it's weird.
I can see that the French might not as church weddings there have no legal effect. But it must be that in every modern country where church weddings are effective, they are recorded and certificates issued.
Even if it is true it's nothing more than a bureaucratic fact. It is not English folk culture.
Posts: 3447 | From: North Devon | Registered: Aug 2003
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
I'm sat here listening to the Last Night of the Proms - Rule Britannia, Elgar, Jerusalem and - currently - God Save the Queen. Splendid tunes all of them - but imparting to me not a scintilla of the feelings aroused by Black waterside or Carrickfergus or For a' that or Ay waukin o or Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau .
As MacNeice says -
I would say to you, Look;
I would say, This is what you have given me...
A heart that leaps to a fife band:....I cannot be
Anyone else than what this land engendered me:
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Tea. More generally available and ubiquitous. Like coffee is in Canada. When travelling in England, it seems reliable that there is a kettle and tea in your hotel or B&B room. Elsewhere there may be coffee things and if tea things, variably contaminated by coffee. Only when travelling to the UK (and Ireland) has it been safe to not pack my own kettle and tea.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
From a list earlier in the thread, I don't understand how these things are particularly English:
Lace-making, embroidery, needlepoint, tapestry -- all of Europe has a long history of these needlecrafts.
Jam-making -- again, isn't this ubiquitous in Europe?
Going to the seaside -- people do this all over the world!
What am I missing?
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I will say that when my daughter went to England it was the tea she noticed. (She went with fellow US Army cadets to train with British troops, and complained that at every pause they would make tea.)
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
From a list earlier in the thread, I don't understand how these things are particularly English:
Lace-making, embroidery, needlepoint, tapestry -- all of Europe has a long history of these needlecrafts.
Jam-making -- again, isn't this ubiquitous in Europe?
Going to the seaside -- people do this all over the world!
What am I missing?
Well, if you consider things that widely, perhaps they aren't specifically English customs. Many cultures also have people who:
- Dance
- Make music
- Wear clothes
- Celebrate holidays
- Cook
- Brew alcoholic beverages
- Travel to certain places during the year
...so there go most folk customs.
Actually the cultural bit is in the details.
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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
Actually the cultural bit is in the details.
Just so. The point I was making re music - everyone has rousing songs, but it's particular ones that have you dampening the patriotic hanky. And why those ones is an accident of birth and upbringing. And behind that lies a primal instinct to be attached to those first conceptions of Home, Identity, Belonging.
If you have a cultural transfer - the LNOTP also included Auld Lang Syne - it's because one expression happens to latch on to a universal sentiment, rather than anything to do with it's specific characteristic. We sing it for the maudlin nostalgia, not the Scottishness.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
We INVENTED the seaside.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Ruth, I know that others do those things - but one thing I was thinking was that women's culture gets rather overlooked in the culture debates. Also, I didn't want to clutter things up with specific Honiton, Nottingham references, or the specifically English embroidery tradition which was valued across Europe, or the long strings of cars on the A2, the A20, the A13, the A23 and so on as the Londoners poured down to the beaches on Bank Holidays or sunny summer Sundays.
I'm glad Doublethink mentioned the tradition of rebellion against injustice. (Last night I caught up with a programme on Turner in which it was told that the crowds cheered when the roof fell in on the burning Houses of Parliament - it made a nice contrast with the reaction to the dogs' home in the news.)
Has anyone mentioned flower and produce shows, with the intense rivalries, and the habit of growing huge vegetables for competition? How general are allotments?
What about change ringing? I remember a comment I read once on the lines of "Only the English would use bells to explore maths."
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Spawn:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
... For instance, I would say having churches keep a register of the weddings that occur in them is very much English culture. The Scots do not, the French do not and I suspect many other nationalities do not. ...
Is that really true? If it is, it's weird.
I can see that the French might not as church weddings there have no legal effect. But it must be that in every modern country where church weddings are effective, they are recorded and certificates issued.
Even if it is true it's nothing more than a bureaucratic fact. It is not English folk culture.
But bureaucratic facts are exactly what makes a culture distinct! It is the oddities that we do one way and everyone else does another.
Jengie
[ 14. September 2014, 12:22: Message edited by: Jengie Jon ]
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
Just make this thread very uncomfortable, the one external social anthropologist who has looked at English culture (social anthropologists always look at culture) that I have read, got interested in the way "culture" is related to "ethnicity" within English culture.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Just make this thread very uncomfortable, the one external social anthropologist who has looked at English culture (social anthropologists always look at culture) that I have read, got interested in the way "culture" is related to "ethnicity" within English culture.
Jengie
How could it not be? It's about Southall! If multi-culturalism means anything at all, surely that is to be expected (even if not inevitable)?
OK, that's the short point. The longer one is that "culture" is and has been defined in many ways. There's a useful (and readable) summary somewhere which I'll try to look out and link to.
But some of those understandings disagree at some point. A few are incommensurable. The interesting point I took from your linked paper is the apparent unwillingness of those interviewed to sign up to the original anthropologist's understanding of what constitutes culture.
Which raises the interesting point as to who we are to believe. At the moment I have an uneasy feeling about the fact that neither the reviewer, nor (apparently) the original writer are unwilling to address this combination of circumstances.
Why should Southall have a unified culture? It's a fairly random delineation of a local government area. I mean, it might have, but surely that is to be determined?
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Why should Southall have a unified culture? It's a fairly random delineation of a local government area. I mean, it might have, but surely that is to be determined?
Declaration of interest: I grew up in Southall, and in the days when it was its own borough, my grandmother was at one time mayor. Whites were in the minority in my primary school. Looking back I treasure the multicultural experience that gave me.
Southall's unique ethnicity was, as I understand it, originally due to a local employer, Woolf Rubber, who took on large numbers of immigrants from the early 1950s; so there was a geographical factor.
And we too, multicultural as we were, did country dancing at school. Does anyone else remember Gay Gordons?
(Except the Internet tells me this is a Scottish dance ![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif) )
[ETA: Goddesses appears to be English though. Does this stir anyone else's memory? Is there anything the Internet can't find?]
[ 14. September 2014, 20:30: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Apparently, before the Sikhs moved there, Southall had a large Welsh population- migrants from S Wales to the growing light industry of Middlesex in the '30s.
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Arnhem (one of our many, many finest hours):
Corp. Hancock: Sir.[Offers mug of tea]
Maj. Gen. Urquhart: Hancock. I've got lunatics laughing at me from the woods. My original plan has been scuppered now that the jeeps haven't arrived. My communications are completely broken down. Do you really believe any of that can be helped by a cup of tea?
Corp. Hancock: Couldn't hurt, sir.
[Urquhart accepts his mug of tea]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Chocoholic
Shipmate
# 4655
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Posted
I remember the Gay Gordons! Another dance from junior school! Ok, so I remember we did it but wouldn't have a clue how to do it now. It involved some swapping arm positions when changing direction is all I recall.
Some people were talking about barn dances. I went to some church ones years ago but thought they were American?
[ 14. September 2014, 21:04: Message edited by: Chocoholic ]
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
Eutychus wrote: quote:
Goddesses appears to be English though. Does this stir anyone else's memory? Is there anything the Internet can't find?
Well, it was certainly being danced in England in the 17th century - it's in Playford's "Dancing Master". And - ta da! - here it is. Complete with instructions on how to dance it properly. (1651 edition)
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I will say that when my daughter went to England it was the tea she noticed. (She went with fellow US Army cadets to train with British troops, and complained that at every pause they would make tea.)
In, I think, Antony Beevor's book on the D-Day campaign he says that the Americans and Canadians were astonished and irritated to find that the first thing some British troops did, on landing on the beaches, was to find somewhere sheltered to have a brew. Must say that it seems eminently sensible to me- I'd have thought that you'd want a chance to catch your breath and calm down a bit.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
Ruth, I know that others do those things - but one thing I was thinking was that women's culture gets rather overlooked in the culture debates. Also, I didn't want to clutter things up with specific Honiton, Nottingham references, or the specifically English embroidery tradition which was valued across Europe,
Ah, I see. Thanks, now I have something to go on.
quote:
or the long strings of cars on the A2, the A20, the A13, the A23 and so on as the Londoners poured down to the beaches on Bank Holidays or sunny summer Sundays.
Sorry, based on having seen the traffic to the beaches here in SoCal and the traffic from Boston to the beaches in Maine, I don't think this is uniquely English.
quote:
I'm glad Doublethink mentioned the tradition of rebellion against injustice.
I wonder where that comes from. Why does England have that, whereas in places like Russia people just seem to say "what can you do?" and drink more and die younger?
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
I'm 25 and have never done or even seen English country dancing - I'm not quite sure what it would look like, is it like Irish dancing? Certainly never did it in PE (state schools in urban Coventry from 1994-2005). I did skive off an awful lot of PE in secondary school, but I know we only did netball/swimming/tennis/football/athletics etc.
The only English cultural thing I'd really identify with on here is the tea thing - everything else is either for posh people or just in the countryside, nobody I know does anything like that. What about urban English culture - does that not count? Why is it just countryside things when most people live in towns and cities now?
Related to the tea thing, American friends living in the UK have commented on how normal it is for English people for stop for tea and cake/a snack while shopping (though that would apply to most people in the UK generally I think), to the extent that even American chains like Starbucks have a menu which caters for that here. It's sort of in-between US eating out culture (in the UK we eat out far less) and European café culture. Also, apparently we're happy to eat sandwiches at every meal which is strange to them - bacon sandwiches for breakfast for instance.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Galilit
Shipmate
# 16470
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Posted
Kendall Mint Cake.
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She who does Her Son's will in all things can rely on me to do Hers.
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
Getting fighting drunk (really). Not an attractive tradition but undoubtedly there, and of long standing.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
I'm 25 and have never done or even seen English country dancing - I'm not quite sure what it would look like, is it like Irish dancing? Certainly never did it in PE (state schools in urban Coventry from 1994-2005).
It was alive and well in the urban Black Country state primary schools in the late 80s and early 90s so you may have just missed it - or had a headteacher who just didn't do it for whatever reason.
The interesting thing Jade is that this goes back to one of my orginal points. Yes, it's very similar to both Scottish and Irish dancing (albeit not of the Riverdance kind) - which is unsurprising given we all live on a small island.
What I wonder is whether you have seen it in the street or at a fair or whatever, but your brain has processed it as "Irish" or something, just because that's what people now expect it to be, whereas in fact it was English and thus your own heritage. So to the original questions - does that lack of recognition matter, and should it?
Chocoholic:
Barn dances are interesting - they're not really English or American so much as rural ( space for the community to gater for a party). What happened in the 50s in England was they got a bit jazzed up, and turned into a sort of Americana thing, so as to try and make them more popular and shore up attendances. Over time that became the norm, but until then it'd been all the usual stuff viz:
Strip the Willow
Brighton Camp
Speed the Plough
etc, etc.
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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Pomona
Shipmate
# 17175
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by betjemaniac:
quote:
Originally posted by Jade Constable:
I'm 25 and have never done or even seen English country dancing - I'm not quite sure what it would look like, is it like Irish dancing? Certainly never did it in PE (state schools in urban Coventry from 1994-2005).
It was alive and well in the urban Black Country state primary schools in the late 80s and early 90s so you may have just missed it - or had a headteacher who just didn't do it for whatever reason.
The interesting thing Jade is that this goes back to one of my orginal points. Yes, it's very similar to both Scottish and Irish dancing (albeit not of the Riverdance kind) - which is unsurprising given we all live on a small island.
What I wonder is whether you have seen it in the street or at a fair or whatever, but your brain has processed it as "Irish" or something, just because that's what people now expect it to be, whereas in fact it was English and thus your own heritage. So to the original questions - does that lack of recognition matter, and should it?
Chocoholic:
Barn dances are interesting - they're not really English or American so much as rural ( space for the community to gater for a party). What happened in the 50s in England was they got a bit jazzed up, and turned into a sort of Americana thing, so as to try and make them more popular and shore up attendances. Over time that became the norm, but until then it'd been all the usual stuff viz:
Strip the Willow
Brighton Camp
Speed the Plough
etc, etc.
Re my school - my secondary school was a large one so had its own swimming pool (just a small one!), tennis courts etc. It's not a school with a wealthy student body at all (it's just a comprehensive), just big enough to get more than average funding - or at least it was when I was there. So it's probably down to the other options our teachers had, since if they had all that space and equipment they may as well do more sports the school could compete in with other schools.
It's a good point about me seeing English country dancing and mentally processing it as Irish or Scottish dancing, and that's probably been the case at least sometimes.
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Consider the work of God: Who is able to straighten what he has bent? [Ecclesiastes 7:13]
Posts: 5319 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2012
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
Also, some dances are popular on both sides of the border. Strip the Willow is a good example. The Gay Gordons is another. Longways dances are probably originally English (though the French also claim to have invented them) but a lot of people think of them as American because American contra dances are similar. The Waves of Tory (used to be popular at barn dances when I was younger, but not nowadays unless you're at a dance for experienced folk dancers) is really an Irish dance, but the most popular version of it is American. Most people think of square dances as American, but there are English and Scottish square dances too, such as Cumberland Square Eight and the Eightsome Reel.
And let's not forget that the American folk tradition grew out of the English/Scottish/Irish traditions.
[ 15. September 2014, 09:36: Message edited by: Jane R ]
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
Also, some dances are popular on both sides of the border. Strip the Willow is a good example. The Gay Gordons is another. Longways dances are probably originally English (though the French also claim to have invented them) but a lot of people think of them as American because American contra dances are similar. The Waves of Tory (used to be popular at barn dances when I was younger, but not nowadays unless you're at a dance for experienced folk dancers) is really an Irish dance, but the most popular version of it is American. Most people think of square dances as American, but there are English and Scottish square dances too, such as Cumberland Square Eight and the Eightsome Reel.
And let's not forget that the American folk tradition grew out of the English/Scottish/Irish traditions.
The last time I danced the Cumberland Square Eight someone broke a leg! Probably one for earlier in the evening these days I think - the majority can dance the eightsome, 51st or Dashing White Sergeant at 3am after drinking all night, but go for something a bit off-piste where they have to concentrate....
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
<tangent> Good grief, what happened - did the basket collapse?!
My favourite bit of that dance is the galloping across the set - the head couples can go all the way across the room if they set their minds to it. Not so keen on being whirled off my feet in the basket... <\tangent>
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Wood:
The problem is that few of these things, many of which are wonderful, are really "folk" anymore. There are a lot of middle class pursuits here.
Are the middle classes not part of the "folk", then?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Wood
The Milkman of Human Kindness
# 7
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Wood:
The problem is that few of these things, many of which are wonderful, are really "folk" anymore. There are a lot of middle class pursuits here.
Are the middle classes not part of the "folk", then?
By definition, you mean? Uh, not generally.
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Narcissism.
Posts: 7842 | From: Wood Towers | Registered: Apr 2001
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Wood
The Milkman of Human Kindness
# 7
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Posted
OK, I'm going to moderate that statement, which was, even for me, a bit class warrior.
The problem with "folk" stuff as it is now, is that it is so often removed from its context. It's not actually traditional for a lot of people, it's mediated by, well, media and picked up as if it were traditional through consuming TV, radio, recorded music. It becomes an issue of taste and also ceases, paradoxically to change in the way that it did when it wasn't a thing you took out of a packaged box.
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Narcissism.
Posts: 7842 | From: Wood Towers | Registered: Apr 2001
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Wood:
The problem with "folk" stuff as it is now, is that it is so often removed from its context. It's not actually traditional for a lot of people, it's mediated by, well, media and picked up as if it were traditional through consuming TV, radio, recorded music. It becomes an issue of taste and also ceases, paradoxically to change in the way that it did when it wasn't a thing you took out of a packaged box.
Now this I can agree with, both in the UK context and in the context of a great many other countries. All around the world local cultures seem increasingly to be packaged and sold to tourists rather than actively engaged in by the people.
Meanwhile, the real cultures of those places - the ones actively engaged in by the people - are what? I'd say the culture of the modern English "folk" is all about football, video games, chips and lager these days...
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Bob Two-Owls
Shipmate
# 9680
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I'd say the culture of the modern English "folk" is all about football, video games, chips and lager these days...
Yes, if you drop the "chips" and substitute "fast food" you have just about every urban culture in the West and much of Asia as well.
The problem with England is that it isn't culturally homogeneous and never has been. The strongly Saxon influence on the South and East is different to the Celtic influence in the West and the Scandinavian influence in the North Midlands to Northumbria. To me it is justification for Regional Federalism, to split the rUK into six or seven devolved regions of around 7-10 million inhabitants under a strongly federal system. I suspect that this might allow regional identities and culture to re-emerge.
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bob Two-Owls:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I'd say the culture of the modern English "folk" is all about football, video games, chips and lager these days...
Yes, if you drop the "chips" and substitute "fast food" you have just about every urban culture in the West and much of Asia as well.
The whole world, I'd say.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
Wood: quote:
The problem with "folk" stuff as it is now, is that it is so often removed from its context. It's not actually traditional for a lot of people, it's mediated by, well, media and picked up as if it were traditional through consuming TV, radio, recorded music. It becomes an issue of taste and also ceases, paradoxically to change in the way that it did when it wasn't a thing you took out of a packaged box.
That's only true up to a point. English folk music has changed a lot since the 1960s. Personally I think it's a good thing that the tradition of calling folk singers who can't carry a tune 'more authentic' has died out. There is nothing uniquely highbrow about having a decent sense of pitch and judging a musician more leniently because s/he happens to be working class is very condescending.
The invention of sound recording means that you don't HAVE to learn an instrument in order to enjoy music in your own home; you can buy recordings of the world's greatest musicians performing instead. A hundred and fifty years ago only the richest people would have been able to afford to listen to them. So it's not as important now to learn how to play an instrument yourself, because you have other options for entertainment.
And society has changed a lot in other ways. Most of the folk traditions you're talking about are rural traditions which more or less died out as a result of urbanization. They do tend to be revived by middle-class people, perhaps partly because nowadays you have to be fairly rich to live in the country but also because a lot more people belong to the middle classes nowadays.
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jane R:
... And society has changed a lot in other ways. Most of the folk traditions you're talking about are rural traditions which more or less died out as a result of urbanization. They do tend to be revived by middle-class people, perhaps partly because nowadays you have to be fairly rich to live in the country but also because a lot more people belong to the middle classes nowadays.
Quite a lot of them have turned out to be the C17-18 equivalents of pop music.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Quite a lot of them have turned out to be the C17-18 equivalents of pop music.
Well, quite. When they have this conversation in the year 2514 they'll no doubt be thinking wistfully of the music of the Beatles, or the strange folk dance that was known as "the rave".
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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St. Gwladys
Shipmate
# 14504
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Posted
Welsh folk music and dance is alive and well, and promoted particularly in the junior schools.There are competitions for singing and dancing at eisteddfods, and some pretty well known artists have "gone back to their roots" - particularly Cerys Mathews. We go to a monthly tune club where traditional Welsh tunes are taught by a very enthusiastic young lady!
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"I say - are you a matelot?"
"Careful what you say sir, we're on board ship here"
From "New York Girls", Steeleye Span, Commoners Crown (Voiced by Peter Sellers)
Posts: 3333 | From: Rhymney Valley, South Wales | Registered: Jan 2009
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Wood
The Milkman of Human Kindness
# 7
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Posted
The rave scene, as it was before it was effectively killed by the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, was a pretty authentic piece of English folk culture. It had its own arts, handicrafts, everything.
Having never been to a festival in a field outside the UK, I do not know if you could call it part of English culture or something that's part of a more general western alternative culture.
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Narcissism.
Posts: 7842 | From: Wood Towers | Registered: Apr 2001
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
I used to teach English country dancing, but in something of a way subverting what was expected by the "experts" at a course I went on.
I allowed boys to dance together. (It was odd how they said that was absolutely verboten "for obvious reasons" not explained - one of the books made the same point. As the same people were adamant that women should never, ever, dance Morris, and could not see the peculiarity of these two positions, I regarded them as unimportant. I'd rather have everyone joining in, than have a lot of unpaired boys sitting around with nothing to do.)
I did not insist on the couples holding hands in what I can only describe as a poncy twee way with fingers sort of cupped together.
I did not stick to exact versions of named dances, but taught the steps and movements bit by bit. Did do Thady You Gander - I really enjoyed that one.
I did not insist on exact footwork.
I did teach it to Y4 8 and 9 year old children, when the "experts" said it should not be taught before 11, as "it was a social activity".
And they enjoyed it. I still treasure the memory one little boy coming up to me and saying that he had been disappointed not to have a football lesson, and thought he would not like dancing, but he had really liked it and wanted to do it again.
[ 15. September 2014, 18:00: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doublethink:
I know a morris dancer, he's a nurse - I am not sure what class that makes him under what system.
Under class defined by inherited privilege it would depend on his father's occupation which I don't know, he is paid for his labour which I think technically makes him working class if you are a marxist, he is probably earning about 130% of the national average wage which might make him middle class if you are going on income alone.
Mind you, if you are going on income alone, it is no longer a class system.
I had a chat with my morris dancing mate, he considers himself working class. His father was a soldier, and his grandfather a tenant farmer. He says in his Morris side of thirty, there are about two or three middle class professionals the rest being working class.
He reckons the class balance would be more middle class in an urban Morris side.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Damn I can hardly breathe listening to this.
And I repudiate it all now!
[ 15. September 2014, 21:07: Message edited by: Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Jane R
Shipmate
# 331
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Posted
Enoch: quote:
Quite a lot of them have turned out to be the C17-18 equivalents of pop music.
That's what most folk music is, certainly. Nowadays you'd call it popular culture. A lot of classical composers have used folk tunes in their work - eg Dvorak, Smetana, Vaughan Williams.
And you're suggesting that this is a problem because...?
Penny S: quote:
I allowed boys to dance together. (It was odd how they said that was absolutely verboten "for obvious reasons" not explained - one of the books made the same point. As the same people were adamant that women should never, ever, dance Morris, and could not see the peculiarity of these two positions, I regarded them as unimportant. I'd rather have everyone joining in, than have a lot of unpaired boys sitting around with nothing to do.)
Depends how old your books were. Traditionally, if you saw two women dancing together at a social dance you would assume they were just filling in time until a couple of men came along. Two men dancing together, on the other hand, were Obviously Gay. I think it's nonsense too; children (and older people) naturally want to dance with their friends.
Attitudes have changed a lot in the last twenty years or so; when I was a caller I was considered radical for saying that men could dance together if they wanted to. Nowadays it isn't such a big deal.
And Morris teams can even be mixed. Especially if they're Molly dancers.
[ 16. September 2014, 10:04: Message edited by: Jane R ]
Posts: 3958 | From: Jorvik | Registered: May 2001
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Avila
Shipmate
# 15541
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Posted
It is the minority that need to assert identity as fear of loosing themselves. Eg various OT traditions codified when the people were in exile.
And if your folk culture is a bit thin on the ground then make up a back story and create your own - eg Welsh National Eisteddfod and the Gorsedd of Bards, the Welsh steeple hats are more to do with Lady Llanover based nr Abergavenny than any daily wear of regular folk.
Likewise how many tartans have genuine history? And the kilts to just the knees? Scots may have been hardy but not daft in those old clan and fighting days.
The English have not previously needed to define why they are and are not - now that they want to, well there is a range of local diversity and oddities to pick between, or just get creative like everyone else.
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http://aweebleswonderings.blogspot.com/
Posts: 1305 | From: west midlands | Registered: Mar 2010
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L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
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Posted
posted by Avila quote:
And if your folk culture is a bit thin on the ground then make up a back story and create your own - eg Welsh National Eisteddfod and the Gorsedd of Bards, the Welsh steeple hats are more to do with Lady Llanover based nr Abergavenny than any daily wear of regular folk.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif) Its only you English who think of that as Welsh culture or heritage.
Those of us blessed with roots west of the dyke know about our culture thanks very much - if you choose to buy into the tourist version fair enough.
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Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
The books were legacy in the school, may have been pre-war. I preferred to think that the unspoken fear was that the boys would fall into behaviours like that Morris side that performed in black bin liners, safety pins, and enacted kneeing and head butting instead of waving hankies. (While having a strong suspicion that your suggestion is what they were on about.)
Mind you, if I'd had them holding hands in display manner, they would probably have started saying it was gay. In the primary school meaning of the word. The course seemed to have very little connection with barn dances I have been to. (One I recall had a leader whose knowledge of the maths of topology involved was a bit weak. It was upstairs in an oast house. In the middle of the floor was a large cast iron machine for stuffing hops into pockets, and the hole into which the pocket would be dropped. So we started a chain in spirals around the thing, which was fine, until the leader started to cut under the linked arms in the chain on the way to unwinding it. Which, under those circumstances, it could not do.)
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
I think, having been a few times, the National Eisteddfod is a genuine bit of Welsh culture, in the sense that there is keen interest in things like the Chair, Crown and Prose Medal, and in the commissioned art and drama which are often (deliberately?) controversial: and more so in the sense that it's a place for networking and meeting up with people- when you go you expect to run into people that you know. At the same time, people like and respect the Gorsedd ceremonies and so on: but- and this is the crucial thing- no-one is too solemn about them because everyone knows perfectly well that they were dreamt up by Glamorgan Eddie and his mates a couple of hundred years ago and revamped and revised quite often since, notably about 50 years ago- and that doesn't bother anyone at all. Which all seems to me to be a very healthy attitude to your national cultural institutions.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
We INVENTED the seaside.
We invented the seaside holiday for the urban working class.
After we'd invented the transport to get them there - the railways.
After we'd invented the urban working class in the Industrial Revolution.
But that's all after the Act of Union, so the "we" in question is Britain. And all these things were as enthusiastically taken up in Wales and Scotland as in England, so it's hard to claim them as characteristically English.
To be English culture, rather than British culture, seems to me you need something that either
- pre-dates Scotland's capture of the English throne (the crafts, dances, customs etc of rural England), or
- is associated with a particular area that is part of England (cream teas, Robin Hood, King Arthur, Yorkshire pudding), or
- is part of Anglicanism, rather than the culture of kirk or chapel.
I was in England a while back for the memorial service for one of the BP engineers killed in Algeria. He'd been educated at the small private school attached to one of the English cathedrals; the service was in the cathedral, attended by the current pupils and staff, and many Old Boys of the school as well as friends and relatives of the deceased. We sang "The Lord's my Shepherd", and "Abide with Me" and "Jerusalem" and "I vow to thee, my country".
Not "folk" anything, but a very English, very Anglican, cultural event.
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Albertus
Shipmate
# 13356
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Posted
We did indeed invent the seaside for the urban working class, but didn't we invent sea bathing for the upper classes (and royalty- George III at Weymouth) before that?
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My beard is a testament to my masculinity and virility, and demonstrates that I am a real man. Trouble is, bits of quiche sometimes get caught in it.
Posts: 6498 | From: Y Sowth | Registered: Jan 2008
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