"There is more than one history of the world..."
John Crowley
“The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.”
Harry S. Truman
"Since the First World War Americans have been leading a double life, and our history has moved on two rivers, one visible, the other underground; there has been the history of politics which is concrete, factual, practical and unbelievably dull; and there is a subterranean river of untapped, ferocious, lonely and romantic desires, that concentration of ecstasy and violence which is the dream life of the nation."
Norman Mailer
"The whole work of healing Tellus depends on nursing that little spark, on incarnating that ghost, which is still alive in every people, and different in each. When Logres really dominates Britain, when the goddess Reason, the divine clearness, is really enthroned in France, when the order of Heaven is really followed in China--why then it will be spring."
"This new history of yours," said McPhee, "is a wee bit lacking in documents."
C.S. Lewis
Synchronicities this week
June 24 Midsummer/St. John’s Day
June 24, 1947 The first flying saucers are sighted over Mount Rainier by pilot Ken Arnold.
June 24, 1542 St. John of the Cross, Spanish Carmelite mystic and poet, is born.
June 24, 1938 500 ton meteorite lands near Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.
June 24, 1717 First Free Masons' grand lodge founded in London.
June 24, 1374 A sudden outbreak of St. John's Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion.
June 24, 1314 Battle of Bannockburn; Scotland regains independence from England.
June 24, 843 Vikings destroy Nantes.
June 23 Midsummer’s Eve
June 23, 1972 Nixon & Haldeman agree to use CIA to cover up Watergate.
June 23, 1942 Germany's latest fighter, a Focke-Wulf FW190 is captured intact when it mistakenly lands at RAF Pembrey in Wales.
June 23, 1888 Frederick Douglass is 1st African-American nominated for president.
June 23, 1848 Workers’ insurrection in Paris.
June 23, 1713 The French residents of Acadia are given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave Nova Scotia, Canada. They choose the latter, migrate to Louisiana, and become Cajuns.
June 21 Summer Solstice (11:28 a.m.).
June 21, 1964 Three civil rights workers-Michael H. Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James E. Chaney-are kidnapped and murdered by the Klan in Mississippi .
June 21, 1948 The 33 1/3 RPM LP record is introduced by Columbia Records.
June 21, 1944 Ray Davies of the Kinks born in London.
June 21, 1916 Mexican troops beat US expeditionary force under Gen Pershing.
June 21, 1877 The Molly Maguires, ten Irish immigrant labor activists, are hanged in Pennsylvania prisons.
June 20, 1947 Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, gangster, the “man who invented Las Vegas,” shot dead in Beverly Hills, Cal.
June 20, 1909 Errol Flynn, greatest of the swashbucklers, born in Hobart, Tasmania.
June 20, 1944 Congress charters Central Intelligence Agency.
June 20, 1943 Detroit race riot kills 35.
June 20, 1893 - Lizzie Borden acquitted in murder of parents in New Bedford Mass.
June 20, 1871 Ku Klux Klan trials began in federal court in Oxford Miss.
June 20, 1837 Queen Victoria at 18 ascends British throne ; rules for 63 years ending in 1901.
June 20, 1756 146 British soldiers imprisoned in the "Black Hole of Calcutta." Most die.
June 20, 1631 The Irish village of Baltimore is attacked by Algerian pirates.
June 20, 1214 The University of Oxford receives its charter.
June 20, 451 Germans & Romans beat Attila the Hun at Catalarinische Fields.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
This Week in the Secret History: Do the Horn Dance
The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is generally accepted as the oldest continuously performed folk ritual in Britain, and one of the oldest in all of Europe. Six dancers in Elizabethan dress each carry on their shoulders an enormous set of reindeer antlers. Three of the sets are painted white; three are painted brown. They are accompanied by the Hobby Horse (a man with a small effigy of a horse resting around his waist, so he seems to be galloping); Maid Marian, a young man in women's clothing, and a traditional Fool. Musicians generally bring up the rear, in recent years being an accordion player and a young boy chiming in on the triangle. The dance involves the hornsmen weaving in and out of each other in a figure eight pattern. They then split into two opposing lines --white vs brown-- and do mock battle with each other.
There is documentary evidence that the Horn Dance goes back to the 16th Century--it was observed by contemporary diarists. But Abbot's Bromley locals have always said it was older than that. They were right. Chemical dating in the 1980's put the horns firmly on the heads of domesticated reindeer that lived in the 11th Century. So that the 21st Century marks at least the one thousandth birthday of the Horn Dance. (To make things more mysterious, reindeer were extinct in England at that time.) But there's some indication that these were not the original set of Horns used in the rite. Which, if the "old horns" were in use anything like as long as the "new" ones, sends us spinning back into the days of the Roman Invasion of Britain.
Or, as Nigel Tufnel put it, "The Druids...who were they...and...what did they do?"
The Horn Dance takes place on Wakes Monday, the day following Wakes Sunday, which is the first Sunday after September 4. In practice, this means that it is the Monday between between September 6 and September 12. It was originally a ritual of the Christmas season, but the date was shifted to autumn in the 18th Century.
Without further ado, England's longest running performance...
The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is generally accepted as the oldest continuously performed folk ritual in Britain, and one of the oldest in all of Europe. Six dancers in Elizabethan dress each carry on their shoulders an enormous set of reindeer antlers. Three of the sets are painted white; three are painted brown. They are accompanied by the Hobby Horse (a man with a small effigy of a horse resting around his waist, so he seems to be galloping); Maid Marian, a young man in women's clothing, and a traditional Fool. Musicians generally bring up the rear, in recent years being an accordion player and a young boy chiming in on the triangle. The dance involves the hornsmen weaving in and out of each other in a figure eight pattern. They then split into two opposing lines --white vs brown-- and do mock battle with each other. 
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment