Folklore of Essex

by Sylvia Kent

  Bringing May blossom into the house brings bad luck.

  Let someone else pick up your dropped glove.

  Never put new shoes on a table.

  Throw a pinch of salt over your left shoulder to counteract bad luck.

  Avoid breaking a mirror – seven years of bad luck will follow.

  If a purse is given as a gift, make sure to pop a silver coin within.

  Never fail to pick up a pin – see a pin and pick it up and all day long you’ll have good luck.

  Do not kill a spider – if you wish to live and thrive, let the spider run alive.

  Be mindful of giving scissors or knives as gifts – this could mean a friendship would be cut.

  Friday the thirteenth is unlucky.

  If the cat washes its face, rain is on the way.

  Red sky at night, shepherds’ delight, red sky at morning, shepherds’ warning.

  Whistling on board a boat could ‘whistle up’ a gale.

  A black cat walking across your path is unlucky (conversely, lucky in some parts of Essex).

  If bees stay close to their hives, rain is on the way.

  For those who know weather lore, frost and snow in the winter months are not unwelcome at this time – farmers and gardeners need the cold weather to ‘kill off the bugs and to break down the soil in readiness for spring harrowing’. Mild weather in any of the winter months – especially January – was once thought to be a very bad omen: ‘Summer in winter, and a summer’s flood, never boded England good’ or ‘A January spring is good for nothing!’

  TEN

  MUSIC AND MOVEMENT

  Since singing is so good a thing, I wish all men would learn to sing.

  William Byrd (1543-1623)

  Folk Song

  As the county dialect began to disappear, so too did the familiar songs and sayings of the region. Fortunately, at the beginning of the twentieth century, two special people came to the rescue. One was Dr Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), whose first visit to Essex was to influence his own compositions for the rest of his long life, and the other was Cecil Sharp (1859-1924). Both of them saved from extinction many of England’s loveliest folk songs. The newly invented phonograph was available to record songs and music, some of which can be heard at the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

  Vaughan Williams first came to Brentwood in 1903 at the invitation of Kate Bryan, the headmistress of the Montpelier School in Queens Road. She had organised a set of Oxford University-based lectures on folk song in which the thirty-one-year-old Vaughan Williams had recently become interested.

  One of the students, forty-year-old Georgiana Heatley, known as Locksie, daughter of the rector of Ingrave, had also started collecting local songs from her father’s parishioners. At the end of the fourth lecture given by Vaughan Williams in December 1903, she handed him a scrap of paper on which she had written a fragment of a song remembered from the time when she was a small child and it was sung to her by an old woman in Stambourne, deep in the Essex countryside. The song was ‘Cold Blow the Wind’. She invited the lecturer to a tea party for the old people of the village at her father’s rectory at Ingrave, as she felt that some of them might be able to recall and sing songs of the past.

  Ralph Vaughan Williams as a young man, when he came to Ingrave.

  ‘This action started a “chain of destiny” for Vaughan Williams,’ commented the late Frank Dineen, who wrote The Ingrave Secret – Ralph’s People in 1998:

  Next day, the composer walked the three miles to Reverend Heatley’s Rectory deep in the Brentwood countryside. There he was introduced to a 74-year-old shepherd, Charles Potiphar, whom Locksie and her sisters had heard sing lustily at previous Harvest Suppers. However, none of the old people, including Potiphar, could be persuaded to sing at this tea party.

  This may have been because those present were mindful of the past tragedies that the eighty-three-year-old rector had suffered. The death of his wife Marian thirty-three years earlier, following the birth of their ninth child, and then the death of this baby and an older girl had far-reaching repercussions for him and his family. Parishioners believed that he had responded to these bereavements by making his children promise never to marry and they were all sensitive to the effects this sacrifice had on them. Potiphar was only too conscious that the best of the old songs he knew were about young love and sex, taboo subjects in the oppressive Victorian atmosphere of the rectory. Maybe seeing the disappointment on Vaughan Williams’ face, Potiphar offered to sing to him next day at his home a quarter of a mile away in Rectory Lane.

  Heatley’s Rectory at Ingrave.

  On Friday 4 December 1903, Vaughan Williams visited the old man’s cottage in the alley that led south from Rectory Lane to St Nicholas’s church, Ingrave. As he walked up the path, he found the old man, smiling and at ease in his smock, leaning against the timber doorframe of his cottage. Straight away, Potiphar launched into his favourite song, ‘Bushes and Briars’, a poignant country love song. ‘The composer was entranced,’ said Dineen:

  That single song had a tremendous impact on him. He was overwhelmed by the beauty of the words and melody and, as he wrote in his autobiography, this time at Ingrave influenced his subsequent style of composition. The thought that such songs could be lost forever turned him instantly into an enthusiastic collector.

  Following that first meeting in Brentwood, Vaughan Williams returned again to Ingrave in January and February 1904. Over the next few months, he spent weeks cycling around Ingrave, Little Burstead, East Horndon and Billericay, and deeper into Essex, collecting songs. From the South East as a whole, he collected more than 800 songs and variations. In 1906, he revised the English Hymnal and used thirty-five to forty of the tunes he had found on his travels.

  Throughout his long life, during which he composed much of our loveliest music for orchestra and film, Vaughan Williams often mentioned his fondness for Ingrave. In 1955, just a few years before his death, the great composer – now at the height of his fame – returned to Brentwood and recalled for his audience that first visit half a century earlier which had had such a profound influence on his life.

  Essex Man

  The centenary of the English Folk Dance and Song Society was celebrated at Cecil Sharp House in 1998. That year, Chingford’s Tony Kendall was asked to publish his research in the book Vaughan Williams: In Perspective. Kendall, a prolific author, poet and composer, has written more than 1,000 songs, stories and poems with an Essex flavour and also plays fiddle for the Chingford Morris, as well as supporting the Good Easter Molly Gang.

  During the 1970s, folklorists, scholars and county history enthusiasts realised that it was essential to make a determined effort to record the old Essex accents, telling the stories of long ago and singing the familiar songs before they and the older generation disappeared forever. So began the huge interest in preserving the remnants of our true Essex dialect by recording the voices of those Essex people. Although they are now just a memory, we can still hear them on tape and, in some rare cases, wax cylinder, at the Essex Record Office’s Oral History Department in Chelmsford.

  Let’s Dance

  Essex folk singers and dancers are grateful to Cecil Sharp, a contemporary of Vaughan Williams who was born in London in 1859. He was music master at Ludgrove School and his life’s work of collecting folk material began in middle age. On Boxing Day 1899, Sharp saw the Headington Morris Dancers perform and noted down the tunes played on the concertina by William Kimber.

  The centenary of Vaughan Williams’ first visit to Essex. David Occomore, Tony Kendall and Sue Cubbin ERO.

  At this time, Sharp did little more than arrange the tunes for piano. On a visit to Hambridge, Somerset in 1903, he overheard a gardener – John England – sing ‘The Seeds of Love’ and, like Vaughan Williams, became committed to a lifetime of collecting folk music.

  At this time, at the beginning of the twentieth century, both men felt similarly that English music was being overshadowed by European
styles. In 1908 Sharp wrote:

  In the village of today the polka, waltz and quadrille are steadily displacing the oldtime country dances and jigs, just as the tawdry ballads and strident street-songs of the towns are no less surely exterminating the folk-songs.

  In December 1911, Cecil Sharp founded the English Folk Dance Society at a public meeting. He continued collecting through the First World War, up until his death in 1924. The Society continued until 1932, when it amalgamated with the Folk Song Society (founded in 1898) to form the English Folk Dance and Song Society, whose headquarters are at Cecil Sharp House in London’s Regent’s Park Road.

  On with the Dance

  ‘On with the dance – let joy be unconfined’ wrote Lord Byron, a regular visitor to South Weald in the early nineteenth century. Dancing in all its variations really does express joy and must always have had an uplifting effect on the spirit of Essex folk, from the simple jigs and step dancing practised by villagers to the more stately dances that were popular during the time of the Tudor court.

  When entertaining Queen Elizabeth and her court during her frequent Progresses around Essex, her nobles were expected to provide music, masques and dancing. Woe betide the host if Elizabeth’s favourite dances of the moment were not on the programme. Elizabeth is reported to have enjoyed the masques which were one of the earliest forms of theatre, developed from the ancient mumming and dance revels. These had been enjoyed by earlier monarchs and their court officials, who had extensive leisure time compared with the peasant classes that often worked themselves into early graves. The ancient masques grew in splendour during the early Stuart period, when nobles and rich commoners staged their own performances. The costumes, music and scenery became steadily more flamboyant over the years. Great merriment and excitement were created and the Wild Man, Neptune and other allegorical characters would give star performances.

  A century later, Samuel Pepys, who was elected MP for Harwich in 1685, enjoyed the Essex countryside, but evidently not the dreadful state of the Essex Great Road. He often visited friends at Brentwood, Saffron Walden and, much further afield, Audley End. He seemed to enjoy his first visit to this beautiful house, which had been built in 1603, and upon arrival he recorded in his diary that ‘this was exceedingly worth seeing’ and that his host ‘took us into the cellar, where we drank most admirable drink, a health to the king. Here I played on my flageolet, there being an excellent echo’.

  The beautiful Audley End.

  A few years later, he recorded a ball in the presence of King Charles and Queen Catherine on 31 December 1662, mentioning a bransle and a courante, two fashionable dances of the day:

  very noble it was and a great pleasure to see the King leading the first which he called for: which was, says he, ‘Cuckolds all a Row’, the old dance of England.

  Morris

  The morris dance would have been familiar to Tudor monarchs, as it was the most widely-known ceremonial dance form in England. Its name is believed to derive from the Spanish morisca – a Moorish play or dance. Some historians believe it to derive from a much older ceremony. Common features were that the dancers were male, wore special costume and danced for display on special occasions.

  The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore suggests there are a brief number of references in fifteenth-century sources, the first known being in 1458. By 1494, at least, morris dancers were performing at the King’s court:

  2 January 1494: Privy purse expenses of Henry VII: For playing of the Mourice daunce £2 [and another on 4 February 1502].

  In 1583, Philip Stubbes, that Puritan critic of ‘Tudor fripperies’, complained about the dancers ‘bedecking themselves with scarfs, ribbons and laces, wearing bells on their legs, waving handkerchiefs over their heads and accompanied by hobby horses.’

  By the end of the 1500s, morris dancing seems to have been popular entertainment and many writers of the time mentioned the dance. Shakespeare mentions a ‘Whitsun morris-dance’ in Henry V and Thomas Dekker created the play The Shoemaker’s Holiday, in which the morris is performed by the shoemakers when entertaining the Lord Mayor.

  In 1599, Will Kemp, a comedy actor and associate of William Shakespeare and ‘a man of infinite jest’, undertook to ‘dance the Morrice’ from London to Norwich – 127 miles away – where some of his family lived. He appears to have been a shrewd man and, with a period of unemployment looming (all theatres in London where closed by the Puritans for the Lenten forty days), he took up the wager to dance from London to Norwich.

  This was a superb publicity stunt and an excellent way of earning money. At seven o’clock on Ash Wednesday, William Kemp set off from the Lord Mayor of London’s house, accompanied by his friend Thomas Slye, a musician who played a pipe with one hand and beat a tabor (small drum)with the other. His servant, William Bee, and overseer, George Sprat, were also in the party. A huge crowd of people was there to see them off.

  Kemp and a group of followers crossed over the old Bow Bridge into Essex and took their first rest. Luckily for historians, he kept a diary of his journey:

  Forward I went with my hey-de-gaies to Ilford where I again rested and was met by the people of the town and country thereabout very well welcomed, being offered carouses in the great spoon, one whole draught being able at that time to have drawn my little wit dry: but being afraid of the old proverb (he had need of a long spoon that eats with the devil), I soberly gave my boon companions the slip.

  After dancing his way through Ilford, Kemp continued to Chadwell Heath, where, because it was getting dark, he ceased for that day. He was then given a lift on horseback into Romford, where he spent the night, probably at the Golden Lion, and rested the next day. Upon resuming, he was brought back to the spot in Chadwell Heath and made his way next to Brentwood, probably staying at the White Hart in the High Street. He arrived on market day at Brentwood on 14 February. Huge crowds had gathered at the marketplace in anticipation and, as Tom Slye played his pipe and tabor, Kemp danced for them all until he was exhausted. He then fought his way through the crowds to rest at the inn. Kemp wrote in his diary:

  In this town two cutpurses were taken, that with other two of their companions followed me from London as many better disposed people did. But these two dy-doppers gave out, when they were apprehended that they had laid wagers and betted about my journey. Whereupon, the officers bringing them to my inn, I justly denied their acquaintance, saying that I remembered one of them to be a noted cutpurse, such a one as we tie to a post on our stage, for all people to wonder at when at a play, they are taking pilfering. This fellow and his half-brother being found with the deed, were sent to gaol; their two consorts had the charity of the town and after a dance at Trenchmore (a boisterous sort of dance to a lively tune in triple time) at the whipping cross, were sent back to London. Having rested well at Burnt Wood, the moon shining clearly and the weather being calm in the evening, I trippt it to Ingerstone.

  Will Kemp dancing his way from London to Norwich in 1600.

  When Kemp eventually reached Norwich – still dancing – a civic reception awaited him and he was presented with the sum of £5 and awarded an annual pension of 40s for life, a considerable sum at the time.

  The following year, Kemp wrote a detailed account of his journey, which he described in his book Nine Daies Wonder. From the title, it has long been thought that the journey was accomplished in nine days but in fact it took twenty-seven because at various stages he took days off for resting – a total of eighteen in all. It was the actual dancing that took nine days. Nevertheless, it was a unique and remarkable performance.

  To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Kemp’s ‘nine daies wonder’, a re-enactment took place from 15-23 April 2000, involving many Essex morris sides and this challenging event was spectacularly successful.

  Tony Motley as Will Kemp and Mike Oxenham as Thomas Slye, during the re-enactment of Kemp’s ‘nine daies wonder’ in April 2000.

  The Thaxted Morris Ring

  The Thaxted Morri
s Men are Essex’s oldest morris side, having been formed in 1911 by the wife of Thaxted’s vicar, Conrad Noel. However, traditional morris dancing is thought to have been performed in the town in earlier years. On 2 June 1934, the famous Thaxted Morris Ring was founded. The Cambridge Morris Men invited five other sides, Letchworth, Thaxted, Oxford, East Surrey and Greensleeves, who met in Thaxted for the first Ring meeting. From that original group, there are now more than 250 sides throughout England, plus an Open Morris and Morris Federation, the latter two having women members.

  The high point of the morris year is the annual gathering at Thaxted of morris men from all over England on the first weekend following the late May bank holiday. The ancient Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is performed late in the evening. This ancient hunting dance came to Thaxted many years ago. Some of the dancers carry horns. The simple tune, played by a lone fiddler, was collected in 1857 but the Abbots Bromley tradition could possibly date from the twelfth century. In 1960, Douglas Kennedy, the director of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, wrote in his book England’s Dances:

  The Horn Dance ... casts its spell over the onlooker, not merely by the uncanny animal-like behaviour of the horn bearers. The slow jog-trot rhythm of the ten dancers, who wind in Indian file with measured and unhurried step, has its own hypnotic power. These animal-men trot in a manner that is dictated by the burden of the antlers pressing on their shoulders.

  The Horn Dance at Thaxted, June 1960.

  At the conclusion of their fascinating performance, the dancers in this picture (above) melted into single file and moved away in serpentine fashion and, shrouded in the outer darkness, slowly disappeared up Stony Lane while the haunting melody of the lovely old tune faded away with unearthly beauty on the night air.

  Each morris side has its own distinctive style of dance and kit. Many Essex sides dance the Cotswold Morris, with its characteristic white handkerchiefs, sticks and bells. The Thaxted Morris Men wear red and white striped waistcoats, white trousers and decorated Panama hats. The Rumford Morris Men use the old spelling of Romford and its members have performed all over Essex since 1960. They dance mainly Cotswold Morris, with side members wearing blue and yellow baldricks with a bull’s head logo and black breeches. Straw hats are worn and bell-pads are decorated with blue and yellow trim. They also perform Rapper Sword Dances from the north-east of England.