Allison Thompson Writer

Writing on English folk dance, Elsie J. Oxenham, Jane Austen, May Day and maypole dancing, Elsie J. Oxenham and more!

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London Lavender, Edward Verrall Lucas, and Cecil J. Sharp

November 22, 2021 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

Here in the autumn of 2021, we are having discussions about how we should address issues of inclusion and discrimination and, in particular, how we should present the image and heritage of Cecil J. Sharp. When I first heard of him, when at the age of twenty-one I attended the Berea College Christmas School run by May Gadd, Sharp’s disciple and Elsie J. Oxenham’s “Little Robin,” we were taught to revere Sharp: why, he single-handedly saved English folk song and dance! Since then more information about his collecting practices has come to light and the academy has   found him wanting in many regards: he was domineering, autocratic and inflexible; he was highly selective about his sources, in particular ignoring any Black singers in his collecting trips in Appalachia; he bowdlerized the words of songs, standardized their tunes to his taste; he was mistaken about many of his assertions as the origins and development of various dance forms and ignored those (like clog morris or step-dancing in general) that he felt were “degenerate” or “modern,” and so on. Yet he was amazingly hard-working and incredibly influential and successful in getting English folk song and dance into the school curriculum and therefore more generally into English and, to a lesser extent, American middle-class culture. It’s complicated!

It’s complicated and also I’m burying the lead. You might wonder why the image at the top of the page is not of Sharp or of Lucas but of Gustav Klimt’s famous painting The Kiss. It will all make sense—at least I hope it will!—by the time you reach the end of this essay. [Read more…]

Filed Under: English Folk Dance, Uncategorized Tagged With: A.E. Housman, Cecil Sharp, E.V. Lucas, Elsie J. Oxenham, English folk dance, Esperance Society, George Butterworth, Mary Neal, Morris Dance, Perceval Lucas, Ralph Vaughan Williams

Angela Thirkell: High Rising, 1933

September 4, 2021 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

High Rising appeared in 1933 and I consider it a tour de force, springing like Athena fully armed from the forehead of Zeus. While Angela Thirkell had written many articles, short stories, and one previous novel—all written because she needed the money as her principal character and avatar Laura Morland does—this is the first of what would be a long series of inter-connected works. The tone is assured and confident, witty and observant. She does not yet name her imaginary county or connect any characters to Trollope’s; it is just a slice of idealized, upper-middle class English life.

If this is your first Angela Thirkell novel and if you are not into romanticized English county life, you might be tempted to say OK, it’s funny, it’s “nice,” but what’s the big deal? If you are that kind of reader the big deal comes a few novels hence, when we move into the War years, with each novel being written in the time it is set in. Here’s where we get the splendid, page-long sentences, the social commentary, and the details of life in War and the more dreadful Peace. If you are not that kind of reader, and are enjoying High Rising for the comic-romance that it is, then you will enjoy the rest of the series. As one anonymous reviewer on Amazon commented, “if you like this kind of book, this is the kind of book you will like,” a pungent summation indeed! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Angela Thirkell, Uncategorized Tagged With: Angela Thirkell, Cecil Sharp, English folk dance, High Rising

Where is this blog going?

July 4, 2021 By allisonmthompson 4 Comments

Gentle Readers, I apologize for the sound of crickets for the last couple of weeks—there are several reasons for my radio silence.

The first is, frankly, job stress—during the lockdown, my employer offered an early retirement plan that many people enthusiastically accepted and, of course, they did not rehire. Now that the job market is heating up, others are leaving in droves, and those of us left behind are struggling to fill the void. After working two people’s jobs all day, I am disinclined to move the couple of inches from my work computer on my dining room table to my home computer on my sofa and produce deathly deathless prose. But I guess I’m going to have to get over this, because the situation is only going to get worse, not better, and I don’t want to stop writing.

The second reason is that, as many of you aficionados know, there is only one more volume in the Abbey Girl series to go, and I have been dragging this out deliberately. I hate to leave the Abbey World! I have greatly enjoyed my Abbey Girls project, writing about each book in reading order and foWherecusing on the elements of the folk-dance world that Oxenham describes so well. I have been immersed in this world for a long time, first reading and puzzling over the books for many years and then drafting the essays for some time before I even started blogging. I liked the discipline of the sequenced reading and writing, and Oxenham’s world gave me great pleasure and comfort during a trying time.

Well, I don’t think I’ll ever be quite done with EJO—after all there are another fifty books in her oeuvre, some of which have loose connections to the Abbey World, and I haven’t read them all yet.  Many of these other books also have folk dancing references, which was the main thing that brought me to EJO in the first place, though I have stayed with her for additional reasons. So I’m sure I’ll have occasional EJO posts in the future.

I have several new projects in mind that some of you Gentle Readers may find interesting—and some will not, and will bid me farewell! Alas and adieu and thanks for your company.

The first project is that I have been translating back into English the first French translation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility: Raison et Sensibilité; ou, les deux manières d’aimer (Reason and Feeling, or, the two ways of loving). Produced in 1815 by Swiss-French Isabelle de Montolieu (1751-1832) and without Austen’s knowledge, it is, as de Montolieu calls it, a “free” translation—meaning that she changed up quite a lot, especially the ending. She may thus have the honor of being the first person to write fan fiction! It is an important book not because it is a good translation—it’s not good and, in particular, it’s not funny—but it is still used today without attribution which explains why Austen has not been popular with Francophone readers.

There are 52 chapters in this book, which would theoretically, if both you and I have the stamina, take us through a year of weekly posts. I have to conquer some WordPress formatting issues before this project can begin, however. Also some fear. Zut! It is a big project.

Where I am likely to turn more immediately is another reading challenge that might appeal to EJO fans—the Barsetshire novels of  An almost exact contemporary of Oxenham, Thirkell (1890-1961) wrote romantic and satirical books about English country and county life in the fictional county of Barsetshire originally created by Anthony Trollope. She published 28 books in this series—slacker! only 28!—and her stories take her from pre-war England through the war to the challenges of post-war life. I came to these books when I was quite young—my mother collected them—and they formed my first source of information about life in England pre- and post-World War II. Thirkell is funny, clever—and a terrific snob. Further, unlike Oxenham, who rarely let the real world impinge on her characters, Thirkell expresses the confusion and sometimes despair of the upper class coming to terms with significant social change. She is quite the social historian, albeit from one point of view. It will be interesting to visit Barsetshire with her, although again I am a little anxious—will the novels hold up? It’s been about thirty years since I’ve read them. (Dear Reader, since I penned that last sentence, I have been galloping through the novels and I will say that they are just as enjoyable if not more snobbish than I thought. We’ll have some fun!)

There is nothing in these two projects for my folk dance-oriented readers, I’m afraid, though I have some projects in mind for you further down the road, God willin’ and the crick don’t rise. So if you don’t stay for this part of the journey, check back farther along the road!

Next week I promise to discuss the last book in the Abbey series, Two Queens at the Abbey. Soon thereafter, I’ll start with Angela Thirkell’s first Barsetshire novel, High Rising (1933). We’ll meet Mrs. Morland, Thirkell’s avatar, who, to support herself and her four sons, writes the successful mystery series about a fashionable dress designer, Madame Koska. We’ll also meet another character said to be modeled after the humorist and writer E.V. (Edward Verrall) Lucas, the brother of Perceval Lucas, who was one of the four young men on Cecil Sharp’s demonstration morris team who were killed in the First War.

So, like playing the Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon game, it really all does come back to folk dancing!

Filed Under: Abbey Girls Blog Tagged With: Abbey Girls, Angela Thirkell, Cecil Sharp, Elsie J. Oxenham

Elsie J. Oxenham and A37_The Song of the Abbey

May 30, 2021 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

Published in 1954, The Song of the Abbey takes place from March of 1937, Abbey Time, to May of 1938. It is the next to the last of the Abbey Girls series, I am sad to say. Oxenham would publish only three more books before her death in early 1960. There is a little dancing in this installment, but it is not described in detail.

(Left:  Lady Rosalind Atalanta, with her hair “up” showing that she is a grownup, is playing in and about the Abbey. To her right are, I think, Michael the good Abbot, Ambrose the lay-brother in brown, and his Lady Jehane in the pointy hat, with a cat (Rory) and more monks n the background.) [Read more…]

Filed Under: Abbey Girls Tagged With: Abbey Girls, Cecil Sharp, Elsie J. Oxenham

Elsie J. Oxenham and A33_A Fiddler for the Abbey

April 11, 2021 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

Published in 1948 by Muller, this tale continues the story of Lady Rosalind Atalanta Kane (Nanta Rose), Littlejan (young Joan Fraser; also known as the Marigold Queen) and nearly thirteen-year-old Jansy (young Janice Raymond). It takes place in the reign of Queen Jean, the Rosemary Queen, from September of 1934 to May of 1935, “Abbey Time.”

There is quite a bit of material here for folk dancers—not the repertoire so much, which remains a mix of the Playford set dances and the newer, simpler traditional dances like the Durham Reel or the late-eighteenth century dances from the Apted collection, but the style and details of teaching which, as I have commented before, is not a “do whatever you feel like” style. Oxenham showcases three set dances from the early editions of Playford’s The Dancing Master:  The Old Mole and Picking Up Sticks, both for three couples, and Althea, for two couples. Sticks is still in my group’s repertoire, but I’ve never danced Althea and danced Old Mole only for a performance many decades ago. Complicated set dances are not as much in favor in the U.S. as they used to be. The amount of detail provided about these dances shows that EJO really knew what she was talking about—it is not just a recitation of the figures but practical and accurate advice as to how to dance them well.

There is also a touching little nod to Oxenham’s own dancing: Jen and Mary Dorothy Devine, EJO’s writing and counseling avatar, are dancing the easy longways dance The First of April. Mary says she finds it “rather hard work,” refers to its “wild rings” (slipping circles), and begs Jen to take it easy. She says that she is not as young as Jen is. The internal evidence of the books and Ruth Allen’s invaluable timeline show that in 1935 Abbey Time, Jen is 32 and Mary is only 44. In 1935 EJO herself was 55 and in 1948, when this installment was published, was 68—much more plausible ages to find slipping circles a bit exhausting! We don’t know when Oxenham stopped dancing.

The cover illustration shows Nanta Rose (plaits) and Littlejan leaning over the battlements at Kentisbury Castle to watch the dancing on the lawn from above.

Plot Synopsis (Contains Spoilers)

A Fiddler for the Abbey starts on the same night as the last installment ended with the Hamlet Club dance in the tithe barn celebrating the marriage of the Robins.

Jen shows Joan her two new twin babies: Christopher and Bernard. She is now up to 5 boys and two girls—still one boy short of a morris side. Rosamund, the Countess of Kentisbury, announces that there will be a dance party at the Castle in October and everyone can then meet the youngest set of her twins. Queen Jean, the Rosemary Queen, says that she would love to become a child’s nurse—this is a default career aspiration for many Hamlet Club Queens and may not reflect EJO’s perception of reality so much as her novelist’s need to keep former Queens near the school and handy for the coronations. Margia Lane, the fiddler and artist, tells Rosemary that she isn’t well and must go to a hospital for observation. This leaves the school’s Hamlet Club without a musician.

A day or two later, Rosamund asks Maidlin, Joan, and Mary-Dorothy Devine for advice about the youngest of her “American” cousins, Lady Rosalind Atalanta, who is 16. Nanta Rose, as she is known, is shy and dreamy and filled with music. Her eldest sister is to be married soon and the husband wants Nanta Rose and his own sister Annamaria, who is known as Mya but would prefer to be known by the swankier moniker Anne-Marie, which tells you a bit about her character, to live with them. Rosamund thinks this is a bad idea, as Mya is a stronger character and will bully Nanta Rose into withdrawing into a dream world. They hope that Littlejan, Queen Marigold, can help.

Littlejan, Mary-Dorothy, and Jansy go to the Castle for the Hamlet Club party. Girls are dancing on the lawn in front of it. The music is a fiddle, amplified (this is the first and, I think, only mention of amplification of live music in Oxenham’s oeuvre), and the fiddler is Lady Rosalind (Nanta Rose). The M.C. is her sister, Lady Virginia. Rosamund brings out her children, in the care of the nurses who are Queens as well (they will get a chance to dance, I am relieved to report). Jen Marchwood brings her new baby boys and her pipe. The Hamlet Club President, Cecily Everett, also attends, and is surprised to overhear little Roderick, Rosamund’s half-brother, address her as “Mother.” Rosamund explains to Cecily that they are doing this until he is old enough to understand why little Geoff-Hugh, the heir, is Lord Verriton and the little girls are all Capital-L Ladies and he isn’t anything. She will explain that he belongs to them three times: as her brother, as her adopted child, and as the Earl’s cousin. Rosamund and the Earl plan to send Roddy to a naval academy and thence to his future career in the Navy. Why the Navy and not the Army or a profession? Does this reflect EJO’s fascination with the sea and sailors or an early-twentieth century perception that the Navy conferred higher social status? I do not know. Perhaps a Gentle Reader will comment.

The dancing begins again and Littlejan and Nanta Rose bond while watching the dancing from high on the battlements. Later, Littlejan suggests to the Jansy and Queen Jean and Nanta Rose that they run a dance weekend to really work on dances that the younger members don’t know.

The girls can’t have their usual teachers for the weekend school:  Mrs. Thistle (Tazy Kingston Thistleton) has had another baby, Tazy Rose, and Maribel Marchwood, who usually fiddles, can’t attend because she just had another baby, Marilyn Rose—EJO is at this point going practically berserk with babies, but they do make a good excuse to remove the adults from the scene of action. Virginia, an experienced teacher and fiddler, would like to help out, but Rosamund says no—she wants Nanta Rose to find her feet with the girls. Littlejan feels competent to teach and asks Nanta Rose to play. All agree that this is a marvelous idea.

The school’s dance weekend is to take place in November, with Littlejan as teacher. They have a successful Friday evening session, but return to the Hall to hear bad news: Littljan’s young brother Alan, at school “up North” with his brother Alistair and the two Marchwood boys, has appendicitis and must be operated upon. Joan Raymond (his guardian) and Littlejan race to his bed side. Queen Jean worries about the weekend—she’ll now have to take over the teaching and she does not feel competent to do so. She receives a middle of the night phone call and is whisked away. Will the weekend have to be cancelled? No, on Saturday the girls ask young Jansy to take over, and she is a great success. Tessa and Phyl, who will have stories of their own in later installments, are both amused and impressed by her. Some older girls wonder if she’ll swank and put on side about it, but of course she doesn’t. Her talent, pluckiness, and humility signal that she is an excellent candidate for a May Queen.

As Christmas approaches, everyone expects Lady Joy and Sir Ivor Quellyn with the nearly twelve-year-old Marchwood twins and the two baby Quellyn boys but there is bad news:  one of the children’s nurses, Queen Bee (Beatrice, the Striped Queen), has contracted typhoid.  (As Waring and Ray observe, it sometimes seems that EJO will go to any length to keep Joy off-stage!) Joy will not leave Bee, but hopes to arrive in March for An Important but Unspecified Reason—of course you can guess what it is. Rosamund, Jen and Joan are worried—she shouldn’t travel after the holiday. (Oxenham seems to have had an exaggerated feeling that expectant mothers should be kept wrapped in cotton wool, and that crossing the ocean in stormy seas should be avoided.) Rosamund contrives to send Gracie Gray, the Garden Queen, to New York, to join Joy (the Green Queen), Queen Stripes, Queen Wild Rose (Barbara “Babs” Honor—the has her B.A. and is tutoring the twins), and the Strawberry Queen, Marguerite Verity, who has a husband and family there.

After the holidays, Queen Marigold calls for a mid-term dance of the Hamlet Club and invites the older Queens to attend. Much to her own surprise, Jansy is elected Queen—she will be the Lobelia Queen, with a dark blue train. Jansy’s mother, Joan, the Violet Queen, is very proud.

Joy misses participating in Jansy’s coronation in May; she has just had baby Madeline Rose. Nanta Rose decides to attend school beginning in the summer term, taking the Cookery course, which lasts about two years. Jansy asks Nanta Rose to be her maid-of-honor, and suggests that perhaps Nanta Rose will be the next Queen; the latter says that if elected she would be the Lavender Queen in pale purple.

For Folk Dancers

This installment provides an excellent overview of how to teach dances well, as shown by both Littlejan and the very young Jansy who is modeling herself after her mother Joan, who had always been something special, as Jen observes, in the way of teaching. It also makes mention of a prodigious number of dances that the teenaged girls not only know but are competent to teach.

Complicated set dances from various editions of Playford:  Chelsea Reach, Althea, The Old Mole, Picking Up Sticks, Epping Forest, Sellenger’s Round, Parson’s Farewell, The Boatman, Newcastle, Merry, Merry Milkmaids, Hey Boys Up Go We, Goddesses, Maid’s Morris.

More accessible longways dances mostly from the Apted Collection:  The First of April, The Dressed Ship, The Spaniard, Childgrove, The Way to Norwich, Pleasures of the Town.

Traditional (i.e., recently-collected) dances: The Circassian Circle, Speed the Plough, Durham Reel, Haste to the Wedding, Meeting Six, Gloucestershire Three Meet, Yorkshire Square Eight.

I may have missed some, but I make that 26 dances, many of them quite complex. It is quite a good weekend program.

Oxenham provides us with a number of style points, starting with the timing of “lead down the middle and back.” She actually stresses this twice: first when we see Jen’s daughter Rosemary, who is seven years old, dancing at the Castle party. Queen Jean notes that she is a jolly dancer and always “on the beat.” Littlejan says:

“I noticed that. If it’s five steps down the middle, Rosemary takes five steps; if it’s eight slips in a ring, she slips eight. People aren’t all so particular.”

The second reference to this figure is much more explicit and callers today should heed EJO’s advice. Inexperienced callers often say “lead down the center for eight steps and come on back”—this is wrong. Pay attention! Littlejan (Queen Marigold) is teaching the longways dance Haste to the Wedding and the girls aren’t listening to the music.

—Here I’ll interrupt to say that there are many versions of Haste to the Wedding—it was and is an easy and popular tune to play and the dance figures are easy to adapt to the needs of the audience. Sharp himself published two versions in the first Country Dance Book of 1909. In some versions the 1s lead down the middle of the set and return to places after which they and the 2s dance a once-and-a-half swing-and-change (dance around) to progress; in others, the 1s lead down and then come up the set (usually with a slipping (galop) step) and cast off to second place, followed by a partner swing. Here Littlejan is calling the second version, which requires good timing on the lead down and back figure. She asks Nanta to play the tune and put an accent on a certain beat (which Nanta does without being told which one (it is the first beat of the second phrase of the B music).

Littlejan gave a loud stamp [on that beat]. “There! Did you hear that? Rosalind [Nanta Rose] played it too, she knew what was wrong. You must start to skip back on that beat. None of you do it; you’re still turning the woman under your arm [at the end of the lead down]. It’s a strong beat, the first of a phrase. You mark it by starting your return journey on it. You’re late, and so you don’t get round the corner [she means the cast off] and you’re fearfully late in beginning your swing. You meet your partner about the third beat, instead of on the first. And the way to put the whole thing right and keep it all up to time is to go only five, or at most six, steps down the middle. You go right on and on for eight, and then you start to turn, and you can’t possibly get back in time. Now start again; the music will help you, if you’ll only listen. Five down the middle—it’s quite far enough. A nice easy turn, in three beats, and up the middle on the new first eat. Then round the corner, and meet your partner for the swing as the music stars again.”
. . . . “I say, Marigold, that’s much jollier!” Tessa cried, at the end.
“It fits the music now,” Phyl added. [These are both older and musical girls.]

Littlejan then instructs them in some fine points about Meeting Six, a set dance from Buckden published in Six Dances from the Yorkshire Dales. It has two lines, a man in the center of each with a woman on either side. After some initial forward and backing, the men turn the woman on their right by the right arm, then the one on the left by the left, and then repeat. Here’s Littlejan’s helpful suggestion and she is quite correct:

“If the women came to meet their man in the arming, instead of waiting for him to come and drag them in, you’d find it much easier. You make it an awful rush for the man. And the woman who has been armed needn’t stand still and go to sleep, and have to be wakened up by the man, when he comes back to her in four beats. Keep moving; keep on your curve, women. . . . “
[Tessa again says that it is better and asks if everything Marigold will teach them will be easier?]
“I should think so. The right way’s sure to be easier, because they’re folk dances, and they’ve been altered and polished by people for centuries, until the easiest way was found.”
“I see,” Tessa said, with interest. “Anything hard or awkward would be altered.”

Um, well, sort of, yes. Let’s carry on with the teaching for a minute more and then come back to this thought.

Jansy teaches the two-couple dance Althea, which has a distinctive setting step not seen in any other dance:  spring on the right and swing the left foot, spring on the left and swing the right, then three little jumps with “crossed feet.” You can see it here performed by Teatro Olimpico Nuovo as part of a vampire LARP (Live Action Role Play; I am amused and even touched by the wistful onlooking of the dance by the young vampiresses in the audience). This group interprets that direction by alternating one foot slightly in front of the other on each hop. Because Cecil Sharp used the word “spring”—the original instructions from 1657 say “step,” I deduce that the Abbey Girls and EJO herself danced Althea faster than this performance group does—it’s difficult to spring at a slow tempo.

I’m not going to excerpt EJO’s details about Althea, since it is no longer in the common repertoire, but the girls are having a difficult time remembering who is dancing as a man and who should “honor” (set to) whom. They want to have some way of distinguishing gender and Jansy says that her family used to wear bonnets when dancing as a woman, but now they’ll just have to remember.

EJO also gives us plenty of style suggestions for The Old Mole, a set dance for three couples, with an eight-bar tune that is played 22 times through. A distinctive figure is that pairs of dancers on the side of the dance (top two women, bottom two men, for example) join inner hands, advance to the singleton opposite them, retire, then cross over, with the singleton going under the arch. Jansy tells the girls:

“When you’re doing arches, don’t swing up your arms in the first bit, the forward and back. Just let them do what they want to do; they won’t go away up to your heads! Lead forward naturally, and then raise your arms when you come to the arch. There’s some point in it then.”

There’s some point in it then. The older girls in particular respond to knowing why she is asking for certain movements or style points, and EJO articulates this point directly. But, again, to know and articulate why is to be certain that there is only one way of doing the movement. It is also to have a keen sense of performance style—this level of detail is not what we’d approach in the U.S. at a casual weekend event today, although it was more commonly stressed or understood back in the 1970s.

Finally, another dance that EJO goes into significant detail about is Picking Up Sticks, for three couples: you can see it here. The girls sort of know how it goes and start dancing. Jansy watches their efforts “with widening eyes,” and stops them after the second figure, which is the one I call “sandwiches and orbits.”

“Awful! Simply awful! What a ghastly mess! Even the first figure was a scramble, but you had some idea of what you were supposed to be doing. I don’t believe you had any idea at all in the second figure. I think you’d better walk it, and I’ll tell you what it ought to be.”

Nanta Rose observes her teaching with “delight and understanding” —she realizes that not only does Jansy really know details of the dances, she can clearly articulate what she knows, which is a very different skill. Jansy asks to see the first figure of Picking Up Sticks and reminds the girls not to skip in it. Do you know this figure? It is the one that I sometimes call “shoelaces”: lead up a double and back, then first man changes places with second woman and then with third man, if you start with the set all “proper,” which they certainly did in Sharp’s time. (Some groups today dance with the second couple improper so that, if dancing in he-she couples, all the crossings are with the person of the opposite sex.) Then repeat, criss-crossing until all are in original places. Nanta Rose starts playing, and suddenly Jansy shouts: “‘Stop! Stop! I will not have those crossings skipped!’” The girls observe that she is “dancing with rage” as she stands on her chair so that she can see better. The phrase about Jansy dancing with rage and her exhortation is repeated with amusement in more than one place in this book as well as others, and I feel that EJO was remembering a teaching moment of someone whom she knew, probably Madam (Helen Kennedy North), who was very bossy indeed.

One girl protests that it is a “very skippy tune,” (it is in jig time, 6/8, which does feel skippy) and Jansy agrees but says: “‘. . .don’t you see? You skip through the other two figures. You can’t do the whole dance alike; there’d be no contrast. You want differences in the figures; a quiet one to start with, and then working up the excitement in the middle and at the end.’” Nanta Rose, whose sister Virginia is also an excellent teacher, is pleased at this exhibition of Jansy’s knowledge and her ability to explain why she wants the dancers to follow her style suggestions commands.

But here’s the thing. There’s nothing in the original of Playford’s The English Dancing Master of 1651 that indicates whether anything in this dance is skipped or not; likewise, there are no tempo markings. In fact, Sharp didn’t care for the tune associated with the dance in Playford’s edition, so he set his reconstruction of Picking Up Sticks (the middle word in the title was “of” in the original) to the tune of the dance “Lavena” in the same edition. So these rules and style points that Jansy fiercely defends are Sharp’s own, rather than based in historical documentation, and this is an insight that seems to have been opaque to Oxenham and her generation. Further, the complicated mid-eighteenth century set dances like Picking Up Sticks had never been dances “of the people”—meaning the common people or “folk,” which is such a complicated word!—they were dances of the upper-middle and upper classes and had even for them long fallen out of favor, so that there was no “folk process” going on, at least not within the last 200 years.

Don’t get me wrong—I like Sharp’s interpretations and am happy to be an acolyte. And his approach and his standardization of the dances is an enormous part of why and how he succeeded and triumphed over his competitors. I will have more to say about that topic in the future. But for now, while the characters’ references to the “folk process” smoothing out awkward bits is not entirely wrong, it is not wholly right, either. It’s complicated!

 

Filed Under: Abbey Girls, Uncategorized Tagged With: Abbey Girls, Althea, Cecil Sharp, Elsie J. Oxenham, English folk dance, The Old Mole

Elsie J. Oxenham and Margery Meets the Roses

March 21, 2021 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

Published in 1947, Margery Meets the Roses is a “Connector” book, part of the Rachel-and-Damaris/Rainbows group of eight novels, one of which is directly in the Abbey Girls series: A23 Maidlin to the Rescue (1934). Margery Paine, the principal heroine of this book that bears her name, is not an Abbey Girl, but her story introduces four sisters, one of whom goes on to become a May Queen. I enjoyed this book with its two romances when I first encountered it, not too long ago, but subsequent readings have left me a little uncomfortable or dissatisfied with it. It is, however, another important book for folk-dance readers.

(For those just joining the party, this blog’s current topics are an examination of Elsie J. Oxenham’s Abbey Girl novels plus Connectors from the point of view of a folk dancer. I have found EJO to be a reliable and informative narrator of the early days of the folk-dance revival in England, and want to explore what she has to tell us about that time. Posts generally have an initial discussion, a plot synopsis and then a dance-oriented discussion.)

For dancers, a central motif of this book is the perpetual and unresolved tension between [Read more…]

Filed Under: Abbey Girls, Uncategorized Tagged With: Abbey Girls, Cecil Sharp, Elsie J. Oxenham, English folk dance, Rufty Tufty

Elsie J. Oxenham and A31_An Abbey Champion

March 7, 2021 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

OK, folk dancers, you’ve patiently sat through all the Romances and the set-up of the Second Generation series—now you’re going to hit dancing pay-dirt with A31_An Abbey Champion, published in 1946. Ruth Allen’s chronology shows the installment as beginning in August of 1932 and ending in July of 1933, when Queen Marigold begins her reign. It is an important book for the folk-dance reader, as it shows the expansion of the repertoire in the late Twenties and early Thirties; an expansion beyond Sharp’s exploration of the complex set dances of the early volumes of Playford’s The Dancing Master (published between 1651 and 1728) and into both late eighteenth-century dances as well as the traditional repertoire.

The cover is difficult to interpret until one has read the book, but it represents the performance of the Folk Play, with Littlejan as the Fool and the head girl, Alison, as the tall doctor behind her along with St. George and other characters from the play. The illustrator, Margaret Holder, met with Elsie Oxenham’s approval (she did not approve of all of illustrations her publishers gave her), but I don’t find this a particularly appealing image—without the inside information that the reader will have at the end of the book I can’t equate the jester that I see with the word “champion,” nor does this say to me either “folk” or even “Abbey.” [Read more…]

Filed Under: Abbey Girls, Uncategorized Tagged With: Abbey Girls, Apted Collection, Cecil Sharp, Elizabeth Burchenal, English folk dance, Maud Karpeles

A30_Two Joans at the Abbey

January 24, 2021 By allisonmthompson 2 Comments

Published in 1945 but set in July through August of 1932, A30_Two Joans at the Abbey takes us into the Second Generation titles. While it is not one of my favorite titles, it is satisfactorily constructed with a nice balance of adventure and folk dancing.

There is an enormous difference in the experience of reading the Abbey Girls series in Publication Order, which is how Stella Waring and Sheila Ray organized their Island to Abbey analysis, in Reading Order, which is how this series of posts is organized, or in Random Order, which is how I (along with, I suspect, many other readers) first encountered Oxenham’s works. We don’t really need to discuss Random Order, which was confusing and sometimes frustrating, but also fun to try to puzzle out the characters and relationships. This puzzlement was not aided by Elsie’s fondness for repeating certain names: take Cecily/Cicely/Cecilia, Rosamund/Rosalind, Marjorie/Maidlin/Maribel, Joan/Janice/Jehane/Littlejan/Joan-Two/Jansy/Jean/Jen, for instance. Who are all these people?

In Reading Order, we dealt with the seven titles that form the Retrospective Titles, A4 through A10, long, long ago—way back in July of 2020. These titles focus on the exploits of young Jen Robins and her pal Jacky and the still teenaged Joan and Joy Shirley as they uncover the many secrets of the Abbey: Lady Jehane’s jewels, the Monk’s Path, and other treasures hidden by Ambrose, the lay brother who loved Jehane and who became a saintly emblem—a Guardian as it were, and I don’t use that word carelessly—of both the secrets of the Abbey and its spiritual heritage. You’ve forgotten about them, right? I know I have. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Abbey Girls, Uncategorized Tagged With: Abbey Girls, Cecil Sharp, Elsie J. Oxenham, English folk dance, Rufty Tufty, The Old Mole

A29_Jandy Mac Comes Back

January 10, 2021 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

Published in 1941 and set in June of 1932, Abbey Time, A29_Jandy Mac Comes Back is simultaneously an important book and, I’m sorry to say, one of the two or three weakest in the EJO canon:  almost as bad as A Camp Mystery (published in 1932, set circa 1924 and part of the Camp Keema series; this installment features international Bad Guys as well as Maribel Ritchie, Rosalind Firth, and Cecily Perowne (remember them?)) or A Princess in Tatters (1908;  a stand-alone that featured a neglected child and an attempt to illegitimize her). Frankly, Oxenham didn’t know how to write either roles or plots for Bad Men as opposed to benign brothers, fathers, and lovers, and Jandy Mac features a car crash, a sensationalistic kidnapping attempt by sneering thugs, and a ventre à terre gallop to the rescue. Awkward though it is, however, it is important to read in the sequence as it introduces a key character and establishes the context for what are known as the Second Generation novels. And, while it does not feature any dancing set pieces, it does bring up an intriguing dance point, one which reinforces Elsie J. Oxenham’s reliability as a reporter about the folk-dance scene in England at the time.

The only extenuating thing I can say about the kidnapping plot is that 1932 was a busy year in Abbey Time, under the rule of May Queen Mirry Honor (“Forget-me-not”).  Jandy Mac is set in June of 1932, and the famous kidnapping and murder of the baby of American aviators Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh had occurred in March of that same year. Could EJO have drafted this book or at least outlined the plot as early as 1932, real time?

However, to reiterate, A28_Jandy Mac Comes Back was not published until 1941, and there is nothing in that book (or, really, almost any other) to tie it to a particular year. Since no list of EJO’s complete works, in reading, publication, or any other order, was published in her lifetime, the average reader picking up this work would have had no way of knowing when the actions were to have occurred. It is only after several re-reads and puzzlings over the plot and perusing Ruth Allen’s invaluable timeline that I made the timing connection and, again, this would not have been possible to contemporary readers unless they had been making their own private timelines.

Before moving on, I want to stress this point about the listing. Back in the 1960s when I was reading and acquiring those shiny-covered Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames series books, I could turn to the back of any of them to see the complete listing of all the titles, since they were all published by the same publisher. I distinctly remember going down such lists and thinking that I hadn’t read this or that one—and this frame of mind was for books that had no long story arc! But Oxenham’s books were published by many publishers, some of whom only published one title, and no such helpful list—at least in its entirety—was accessible. And, remember, the first in the Abbey Girl world was published in 1914 and the last in 1959—you would have had to have been an avid reader with an extensive collection to put all the pieces together!

Back to Jandy Mac. This is where it gets a little confusing. If we are the Reader who is buying or being given the books as they are published, we met her in 1938, real time, in the title numbered A04_Schooldays at the Abbey that appeared in the same year as A27_Rosamund’s Castle. Schooldays is a good read, and Jandy Mac is, as Waring and Ray observe, a true Abbey heroine. In that first story we heard about the ring with seven sapphires that the lay-brother Ambrose made for his love, Lady Jehane. Jandy Mac, who was eighteen in that installment, was adopted as an honorary cousin by Joan and Joy Shirley, and ended that book sailing off to be married to Alec Fraser and to live in Samoa.

The brilliance of this move, as Waring and Ray note, was that EJO had simultaneously opened up a fruitful line of novels featuring young Jen, Joan, and Joy having adventures at the Abbey, and created a character who, marrying at eighteen or nineteen, can now plausibly have a thirteen-and-a-half year old daughter, older than Joan’s or Joy’s girls, who can enter fully in the life of Miss Macey’s School. Up to this point EJO has given us peripheral younger girls—Gail Alwyn, Benedicta Bennett, Belinda Bellanne—but they are either on other career or marriage trajectories or they are too old for school and cannot take on the mantle of May Queen.

My edition is a 1959 Collins imprint with the modern cover, and I do not know to what extent it was abridged from the original. The cover of this (above) depicts Littlejan with her mother, who wears a jaunty neckerchief, with the Abbey behind them. Farther down this post we’ll see what was probably the original 1941 cover showing Jandy Mac in rather Aussie-looking garb on her horse with the castle in the background. EJO often had little or no control over illustrations of her works. The publisher probably included the horse because of the craze for riding that was sweeping over English girls in the Thirties, but, other than Jandy’s ride and some later references to Littlejan’s pony, EJO did not participate in this craze: riding remained for her an upper-class activity. Remember that even Jane Austen’s Dashwood family cannot afford a horse: they would need a stable, a groom, a second horse for the groom (since no girl or woman rode unaccompanied, even in the 1930s), feed, etc. EJO’s heroines much more plausibly, by middle-class standards, learn to drive cars!

Plot Synopsis (Contains Spoilers)

Mrs. Janice Fraser is arriving by car to a big house with her thirteen-year old daughter, named Joan after Joan Shirley Raymond.

—The young Joan has been called “Littlejan” by her father since she is the spitting image of her mother. However, she wishes to leave this baby name behind and be known in England as Joan. After she meets up with her namesake Joan Shirley Raymond, however, it becomes quickly apparent to all that this isn’t going to work, so the little girl is, for this book at least, called “Joan-Two” or sometimes “Joan-Too.” However, she will end up being called Littlejan in the rest of the books and for the sake of our sanity that is how we will refer to her throughout.—

The pair are visiting England and Scotland from their home on Samoa in the South Pacific. Jandy Mac explains to Joan that they are going to visit Mrs. Raymond, with whom she has somewhat lost touch—it will be a surprise. Jandy Mac inquires at the door and finds out that Joan has just had a baby boy that morning and is not receiving.  They then go to a phone booth in the village and -call up Abinger Hall and ask for Lady Quellyn (the former Joy Shirley). Maidlin answers and tells her that Lady Quellyn is in New York City with her husband and baby boy. A young woman in riding kit, who has been sitting on the ground while her groom waits to make a telephone call, hears Jandy Mac’s side of the conversation and asks who she is, and why she is referring to the Ladies Marchwood and Lady Quellyn as Jen and Joy. All is revealed. The young woman is Rosamund Kane, Countess of Kentisbury. Rosamund had been out riding, but the ride was too much for her, so the groom has phoned for the castle car. In the true spirit of the Abbey, she invites the Frasers to come and stay with her, since Jandy Mac is an old friend of Joan, Joy, and Jen. The Frasers stay for one night and then go with Rosamund to see Jen, who greets Jandy Mac joyfully.

As she so often does, EJO uses Littlejan’s unfamiliarity with the Abbey world to give us a family news update, including ages. Let’s pause for a minute and have a baby recap. Deep breath.

Jandy Mac Fraser is around 33. She has Joan, thirteen, and two boys not named or aged in this story.

Joan Shirley Raymond, who was 16 when Jandy Mac was 18, has Janice (named after Jandy Mac), who is ten-and-a-half and goes by the name of “Jansy”—she also is the image of her mother, with dark, copper-red hair, and much will be made of the fact that Joan and her cousin Joy and their three girls all look alike—John, who is eight, Jennifer, who is two, and the newborn, Jim, named after Joan’s father. (It is rather unfortunate that EJO was so fond of alliteration!)

Jen Robins, now Lady Marchwood, married at twenty and has Andrew, Anthony (who goes by Tony), Rosemary, who is five and delicate, Michael, who is two, and Kathleen Jane, who is six months. Kathleen Jane is named after the eighteenth-century Kitty Marchwood, whose story was told in A06_Stowaways at the Abbey, published in 1940.

Countess Rosamund, who is 26, is bringing up her half-brother, Roderick-Geoffrey (Roddy), who is three. Rosamund’s son, Geoffrey-Hugh, little Lord Verriton, is two months old.

Maidlin di Ravarati, the singer, is 25 and had her romance in March through May of Abbey Time 1932, though she is not yet married. She is off-stage in this installment.

Joy Shirley Marchwood, now Lady Quellyn, has her nine-year-old twins Elizabeth and Margaret Marchwood, and a two-month-old son David with her conductor husband, Sir Ivor Quellyn.

After tea, the phone rings with bad news—Sir Kenneth Marchwood, who had taken Andrew, Tony, Jansy, and John to the moors for a holiday, has had a terrible car accident. The children weren’t with him, fortunately. A village child ran out into the road and to avoid her he swerved into a ditch. Everyone rallies: Jen, baby, and Nurse race to Yorkshire in Lady Kentisbury’s big car and Jandy Mac, Littlejan, and little Rosemary and Michael are whisked away to the Castle. Before Jen departs, a second message comes saying that Ken has regained consciousness, so our anxiety is somewhat allayed.

While at the castle, Littlejan is allowed to explore and discovers a wonderful playroom filled with toys for older children. She asks the Countess who says to wait until tomorrow when all will be explained. The next day, fifteen-year-old Tansy Lillico arrives to keep Littlejan company. Tansy shows Littlejan the grounds, include a camping sight outside the castle walls by the river. She also explains about the playroom and the children who played there, which we heard about in A27_Rosamund’s Castle. Rosemary and Jandy Mac join them briefly, mounted on beautiful horses. Littlejan had not previously known that Jandy Mac could ride—go, mom!

Since the castle’s regular head-chauffeur is up in Yorkshire with Jen, Jackson, formerly the head, returns. Tansy doesn’t like or trust him. Young Bob, the under-chauffeur whom everyone likes, also has problems with Jackson. Bob overhears Jackson’s side of a mysterious phone conversation and tells Tansy about it. The two girls think that perhaps Jackson is going to try to steal My Lady’s jewels.

The Earl and Countess have to go to a function. Jackson suggests that he drive the children for a picnic to honor little Rosemary’s birthday. The girls suspect something and make sure they attend. Against orders, Jackson drives them outside the property, to the campground. Bad Men are there—they want to kidnap Lord Verriton, but they don’t know which of the three boys—Roddy, Michael, or the baby—he is. Tansy tackles Jackson, who could have told them, and he hits his head and falls unconscious. Even though a bad man is twisting her arm, Littlejan refuses to tell which child is the heir, and he throws her, unconscious, to the ground. The men take Tansy, Nurse Agatha, and all three boys (Rosemary actually stayed at home as she was starting a cold), onto a fast launch.

On horseback, Jandy Mac has seen the scene unfold and her daughter lying dead or unconscious. She must put duty before motherly instinct, though—Lord Verriton must be saved at all cost! —and gallops the horse to the police station. Tansy knows that she must protect Roddy, who, if Lord Verriton dies and there are no further sons, will be the next Earl. The men abandon her and the little boys on an island, and she struggles to get them back to the castle.

—And here one has to say that, though this is a parent’s nightmare, little Lord Verriton is not, after all, a royal prince! It is not as if the kingdom will fail and fall if he dies. But the Lindberghs’ prominent position in society and the notoriety of the case—the biggest story since the Resurrection, according to newspaper writer H.L. Mencken—might have made the situation particularly resonant for EJO. Finally, she needed a strong reason to tie Jandy Mac and her daughter even closer to the charmed circle of the Abbey. Littlejan is a prominent character in the next ten episodes and a worthy Daughter of the Abbey.—

Well, as you can imagine, everything turns out all right. The men are apprehended; Jandy Mac, Littlejan (who is fine), and Tansy are all heroines (Agatha, too). To reward them, Lord Kentisbury gives the girls a beautiful horse each—Chestnut and Black Boy; these are very common and obvious names based on their colors—and Rosemary gives Jandy Mac seven sapphires for a ring like Ambrose’s that she gave up in A04_Schooldays, and which will tie Jandy Mac to the Abbey and its circle. Littlejan will stay in England and attend Miss Macey’s school with Jansy.

For Folk Dancers

While Lord Kentisbury gave the already-named horses to the girls, it is his wife Rosamund who observes that they are named after country dances. This is the only reference to dance and one that is easy to skim right over.

Chestnut is the name of a three-couple dance interpreted by Cecil Sharp in The Country Dance Book II published in 1911. The full title is “Chestnut, or, Dove’s Figary.” It was originally published by John Playford in 1651 and continued in his and his son’s collections until 1690, by which time dance tastes had changed. It is a pretty minor tune. Today in the U.S. the tune is more commonly used for a longways dance called All Saint’s Day written by David Ashworth in 1991.

Black Boy has a more interesting story behind it. While it is in the Barnes “Blue” book of English country dance tunes, meaning the one that contains most of the dances done when May Gadd was alive—i.e., it is heavily oriented to the Sharp repertoire—it is not frequently danced today, if at all! I have only danced it once, at a dance camp back in the seventies. It’s a shame, because it is interesting: it is a 64-bar tune with 32 bars of reel time (4/4) in A major followed by 32 bars in jig time (6/8) in D major. Fun for musicians!

“The Black Boy” was published only once in the eighteenth century, by John Johnson in 1753 in his “A Choice Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 8.” The version that Rosemary was undoubtedly thinking of comes from a booklet of dances reinterpreted by the Sheffield branch of the English Folk Dance Society which published in 1927 a booklet titled Five Country Dances together with their Tunes circa A.D. 1764 as recorded by David Wall, Ashover, Derbyshire.  but more commonly just called “The Ashover Book.” (Sheffield is fifteen miles from the village of Ashover.)

David Wall was a bassoonist and apparently a popular local figure in Ashover. There is a memorial plaque to him in All Saints Church there that reads:

To the memory of David Wall
Whose superior performance on the bassoon endeared him
To an extensive musical acquaintance.
His social life closed on the 4 of December 1796 in his 57 year.

Mr. Wall made a hand-written manuscript of sixteen dance tunes, some with figures set to them. Wall’s dance instructions are below the tunes; another hand wrote their interpretation above them. See the manuscript here.

The dances included in the Ashover booklet are:

The Russian Dance

Bonnie Cate

Major O’Flacherty

The Duchess of Hamilton’s Rant

The Black Boy

Dance leader, choreographer, composer, and dance re-constructor Colin Hume notes that in the introduction to the pamphlet the booklet’s creators acknowledge the assistance that the re-constructors derived from the country dance books of Cecil Sharp, who had died in 1924. He adds wryly that he is not sure that Sharp “would have appreciated this acknowledgement, as some of the interpretations are fanciful in the extreme.” He notes that the most blatant example of this is in The Black Boy, where in the “C” music (that is, the first strain of the jig time), the first corners (first man and second woman) change places, “right foot and right shoulder leading (step close up 4 times), left hand on hip and right hand up, a wrist wave with right hand for each step. Colin adds that “By the time I learnt the dance, a snap of the fingers had been added to the wrist wave” —

—Yes, Sharp would not have approved of this fancy!

—and notes that the original was just “Rights and Lefts.” He provides his very workable alternative, so now the dance caller can choose between two interpretations of this dance: one nearly 100 years old and the other more modern. Read Colin Hume’s anaysis of the Sheffield branch’s interpretation of The Black Boy and the other dances from the manuscript, as well as his own reconstruction.

And here’s one more fascinating tidbit which is part of why I consider Oxenham to be a reliable observer: the Ashover book was published in 1927 and Jandy Mac Comes Back is set, in Abbey Time, in June of 1932. It is therefore entirely feasible in the Abbey world that the older girls could have danced The Black Boy. (Littlejan is not yet a dancer, and Tansy doesn’t dance.)

Hear Pete Castle (concertina) and Derek Hale (guitar) play The Black Boy and see some beautiful Derbyshire scenery

Filed Under: Abbey Girls, Uncategorized Tagged With: Abbey Girls, Ashover Dances, Cecil Sharp, Elsie J. Oxenham, English folk dance

Dancing Honour & Honour Your Partner

December 13, 2020 By allisonmthompson Leave a Comment

Elsie J. Oxenham published a number of short stories in her long and complicated career. Many of them eventually became chapters in books; apparently only a few were stand-alone. Based on the only two that I have read, I don’t think her skill was in the classic short story; she needed the broader canvas of a full-length novel. But these two stories, published in 1921 and 1923, are of interest to the folk dancer, although one of them, at least, is weak as stories go.

—And here I apologize—I should have written about them around the time that I posted on A11_The Abbey Girls Go Back to School, but forgot that they were in my box of treasures! Mine are photocopies without provenance that Monica Godfrey supplied me with, but Waring and Ray in their study of Oxenham’s works, Island to Abbey, provide the dates of publication.—

Dancing Honour (1921) and Honour Your Partner (1923) were published at the height of EJO’s obsession with folk dancing. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Abbey Girls, Uncategorized Tagged With: Abbey Girls, Cecil Sharp, Elsie J. Oxenham, English folk dance, Lady in the Dark

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