Cunorix: Maypole dances and other new forms

The Maypole Dances are coming

All the good parties happen in the Forest of Arden. Studley. Anglo Saxon.  The river Arrow towards Spernal Ash

Shakespear country. Poetic and rural. Maypole dancing at Studley Infants school. The scene was strong. The locals comely. The fields, the common, the park dotted with old oak. Plentiful of nature, space and it’s bounty.

The still visible medieval ridge and furrow field system around the Church. The Church now detached from the new Studley location: the village gradually migrating round the Icknield Way (or A435) because of flood and   the Black death.

The late-night gatherings across the fields. Striding out. Dawn adventures. The solstice. Trespass. This forest and fields have connections that knit my cultural fabric. I am a woodland bird. Returning.

“The Maypole Dances” is a celebration. The songs are based on the music and words found in a 1910 guide Maypole Dances by W Shure, Head teacher and competitive maypole dancing guru, who had won several competitions in the genre.  Imagine the excitement of a yearly village celebration of summer, drinking, foraged bounty of nature from the fields last autumn, dancing, meeting young women and men. Frolicking into the night. That moment when in the dawn twilight you are stood looking at a cow and asking “What would you like to do? “

This has been a ritual inspired by, and seeped into, in the land: remnants of the forest of Arden, The Good Earth. Long may it continue.

Be gone dull care. Spring advances! Lets get it on !

Pages from The booklet complied for the album using adapted images from W. Shure's Maypole Dancing Guide

I sent a very early review version of The Maypole dances sections to a few people including Kim from Bliss Aquamarine who said:

"These versions snatch folk out of the hands of antiquarians and return it to the people,

 de-twee-ifying the incredibly quaint Victorian-style lyrics about rustic frolics, May Queens and the like within an original contemporary setting that takes on board elements of punk, hip-hop, and ritualistic experimental music.....This is a real love letter to the Forest of Arden, injecting some much-appreciated musical innovation into the historical folk material. It proves that reverence can be shown to historical music without it having to be treated as set in stone and requiring a faithful reenactment, and indeed that this can happen through the use of seemingly irreverent musical forms like punk."

“The Maypole Dances” is a celebration. The songs are based on the music and words found in a 1910 guide “Maypole Dances “by W.  Shure, Head teacher and competitive maypole dancing guru. I was going to pretend "The maypole Dances" was an undiscovered album by early 60’s British Folk revivalists / Children's Marxist TV series stars “Sam Pig and the Singing Gate”. I had recorded a few "Songs" from the “orginal BBC 1960's children show and invented a whole back story about the band. The children's show about a collective of mice and included songs such as " The wheels on the bus are made by the workers" and "Cats become fat at the expense of mice”. It was cancelled for being too Marxist after only 6 episodes. The band had formed in the early 1950's at a trad folk club "The Bucket 'O coal" in Richmond, Southwest London a well-known lefty hot spot in post war Britain. Unfortunately, I lost the notes for reasons I won't go into here. Or perhaps it is all true.

 The concept took a turn on returning to Studley, in Warwickshire. Literally the Biggest village in the land, and slap bang in the middle of what was once The Forest of Arden! Shakespear country. Where we talk properly in an accent that avoided corruption from Vikings, Normans and only minor prodding by Anglo Saxons. Thought to be very similar sounding to old English. This was where I was born. I can still stand outside the actual house and look at the window of the room in which I entered the world.

100 yards to the right of this Oak Tree I could show you the window of the room I was born in.  The ridges and furrows in the earth are the originals from the Medieval field farming system.

This is the Font that I was christened in. No-one asked me, but its good to come back and know I was here once.

Maypole dancing. Empire day. Studley Infants school 1920s. Image from Warwickshire county archive.

This is a picture of Studley infants’ school from the 1920s. I learnt and danced around the May pole at this infant School. In this same spot 55 years later. It may have been the same pole used by all the children for generations: Their parents, Grandparents..... They may even have used W. Shure’s book as a guide!

The Prickly Bush has been a regular cover for bands including Led Zepplin. To interesting synchronicities: 1. John Bonham used to drink at the Conservative Club in Studley. His roller

was regularly badly parked in the small car park there. 2.  For a while, I lived in Kinver, South Staffordshire where Robert Plant lived. I regularly bumped into him in the Spa mini mart. He was friendly, everybody else was casual “Alright Bob!” I just gaurped and dribbled uncharacteristically starstruck for a man who had once given Nigel Kennedy a Frenchie for holding a toilet door open for me at a gig.   

Bold Reynolds/Renard is a combination of an old one from Hampshire/ Sussex and Yorkshire and my memories of growing up in a Fox hunting Zone in Warwickshire where Toffs old, and nouveau, used "Fox hunting" as an excuse to ride all over the local tenant farms to put the serfs in their place.

 Everybody hated the Hunt and its troll entourage. I had a girlfriend who was a tenant farmer's daughter.  Very occasionally, she was obliged to ride with the Warwickshire hunt as a "follower".  I think the gentry liked "peasant farm girls" being around to letch-over and hassle because they didn't "count". You never really belong in those circles unless you are Gentry of Norman descent, or an Anglo-Saxon collaborator.  She rode to run about on her Horse and to be unattainable to the old posh blokes and their spawn. She hated them too but was a tenant farmer's daughter on the estate. Tug that forelock.

 The song is also informed by an encounter I had with the East Cornwall Hunt on Bodmin moor one early Saturday morning. Supposedly " Drag hunting". Foxes were running about all over the place, including straight past me and my dog in desperation that morning.  The next day found a snared fox dumped over a wall on the moor. Snared foxes are supposed to been "humanely" shot on discovery. This one had been trapped and used as bait, I think. I took a lot of pictures, reported it to the police, and my MP. Both of which responded and acted.

 Fox hunting is as much a class system power play as it is a barbaric, useless way to control foxes. It’s a Norman conquest thing. Don't believe the English countryside line. Its Class war.

Goddess of the green is a melody version of "The wearing of the Green”). The coming of spring is fast and full on the moor. Edward Thomas explores the idea as a metaphor in " The Southern Countries”. Spring always returns and the hope of it keeps us going through the winter.

I spend a lot of time on Bodmin moor and have pondered about the sheep world view. The “Yan-Tan-Tethera" reference is based on a sheep-counting system traditionally used by shepherds in Northern England.

 The words are numbers taken from Brythonic Celtic languages such as Cumbric which had died out in most of Northern England by the sixth century but were commonly used for sheep counting and counting stitches in knitting until the Industrial Revolution, especially in the fells of the Lake District. Most of these number systems fell out of use by the turn of the 20th century. Variations of the system are found all other the British isles and it is also referenced as a means of falling asleep.

"God killed the Devil", a Lemmie Brazil tune. Original words although " When man places himself above plants and beasts. Man is the devil" is a reference to a passage in "The White Peacock" by D.H Lawrence. 

I hope catches the excitement and anticipation of parties in the Forest of Arden.   A certain Alcester mop (second week of October) springs to mind but there were many more.

 To the May Pole High! Us Country Folk Know......

I recorded this within 3 weeks of surgery on my shoulder. I used sheet music from W. Shure's Maypole Dancing Guidebook   to play the orginal melodies via my modular synth set up.  There were gaps in instrumentation. So, for the ephemeral record I played real Autoharp, viol and concertina. They’re not keyboards! This stuff matters to my ego, and some other people. It proved good physio of the shoulder too.

Tracks ***** includes  adapted melodies and lyrics song  from the " A secret stream volume 2" collection of songs from the Gypsy and Traveller community by Nick Dow, Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne and Steve Gardham, "Southern Songster: English folk songs from the Hammond and Gardiner Manuscripts" by Nick Dow, Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne and Steve Gardham, " English Country songs" By Lucy E Broadwood and J A Fuller Maitland and a few originals songs of my own. 

It is worth noting that Adam Geoffrey Cole makes an appearance on Horn, Bells and flutes and if you listen carefully you’ll hear his dog too.  

A physical Album will hopefully be out in 2025. A bit delayed unfortunately. I'm no folkie but this seemed a fitting approach for Cunorix . Please subscribe and get involved. Art for the people!