Ancient Dances

A soft knock on the door as it started to get dark at 9.30 or so.   It was Jennie from the pub, gently apologetic, talking softly because of people asleep upstairs.  There were Morris dancers in the bar, preparing for a performance.  

This was an astonishing spectacle.  Away from its folk festival setting and out on a hillside in the dusk - even near modern buildings and cars - the Dances seemed ancient, Pagan, magical; a blur of dark legs and white shirts, the soft sharp susurration of leg-bells, the hard thuds of boots or clogs on the ground and sticks banged in wooden rhythm.   The bearded dancers looked like Victorian working men on a night off or on their way home, in tall black hats, black trousers, white shirts and braces.  The hats were crowned with wreaths of wild plants which filled the pub with the smells of the hedge-flowers, 'like a florist's', as Jennie said.   Out here it seemed appropriate, fitting, a survival of ancient practice, yet one Dance was called Bastille, so surely must have been written to commemorate the French Revolution of 1789.  

On my way to bed, as the pub closed, I heard the dancers walking home, the bells jingling softly in the gloom, hats of drooping flowers in their hands. Where were they walking to?  No cars, no bus until Tuesday; the idea that they would curl up under the hedge and become part of the greenery again was irresistible.