Learn some sharp moves in the pub
THERE aren't many pubs where your Sunday lunch is interrupted by a group of men dancing with swords to the tune of an accordion.
But for Grenoside residents, this fascinating ritual is not unusual.
"Dance, dance," chants Grenoside sword dancer Steve Mettam, urging pint-drinkers to watch the unfolding spectacle.
Suddenly, legs are flying, the accordion's blazing, and swords are crossed, weaved and clashed as sword dancers perform their mesmerising ritual to a packed-out Old Harrow Inn in Grenoside.
Sword dancing has been at the heart of the community for more than 150 years in the Sheffield village, thanks to the Grenoside Traditional Sword Dancers, whose dance is one of very few surviving ritual dances in England.
In Grenoside, this somewhat unusual pastime has been passed down from person to person, generation to generation since the 18th century, as Steve himself testifies.
"That's my great, great, great grandfather Joe Wragg," he says, pointing to an old black-and-white photograph on the wall of the Old Harrow Inn.
Joe is pictured in a row of strapping sword dancers, clad in decoratively-embroidered jackets and striped trousers. Underneath the picture reads '1895' making this photograph the oldest surviving visual evidence of the traditional dance troupe.
But it is possible the Grenoside sword dancers date back even further.
One article in the Pall Mall Gazette – now London's Evening Standard – reveals the Grenoside group is at least 150 years-old, but is likely to date back even further.
According to Steve, in the 19th and early 20th century, sword dancing in Grenoside was part pagan and part necessity.
"The tradition could have been passed on by people passing the turnpike via Grenoside, before the A61 was built," he says. "Some of the dances are based on pagan ideas, such as the dance on Plough Monday, which welcomed in the new season."
But it was also a way of making money in the winter. The majority of men in Grenoside's 1,110 population in 1840 worked on the land, in quarries, light engineering, nail making and file-cutting.
"These were hard-working, fit men, who probably wanted to make a bit of extra money during the winter months," says Steve.
Quarrymen were often laid-off in the winter months and the dancers performed for beer and money across South Yorkshire, often dancing at grand houses throughout the region, usually from Christmas Eve until the end of January.
"They used to walk from as far as Grenoside to Rotherham," says Steve. "They were covering an enormous number of miles – and it was all on foot!"
In 1895 the Pall Mall Gazette reported that each man could expect between 30 and 35 shillings over the 30-day period.
But after the World War One the length and duration of the walking tours became less ambitious.
In 1973, Grenoside Sword Dancer Harrington Housely, who danced with the team for 51 years, said: "The team would go for many miles on foot to perform for the local gentry, calling at all the public houses on the way. Even if they arrived home at two or three in the morning, they still insisted on their white trousers being washed and pressed for the next day's outing."
And while in the 19th and early 20th century the group received recognition from locals, the wealthy and intrigued critics, there was one particular onlooker who set the group's heritage in stone – Anglophile, musicologist and avid folk researcher Cecil Sharp.
Sharp championed English traditions such as Morris dancing and was responsible for the revival and survival of such dance forms.
He learned of the Grenoside Sword Dancers in 1910 through his friend, composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Williams and Sharp had a mutual friend, composer and Pall Mall music critic Nicholas Comyn Gatty.
Sharp visited South Yorkshire and met the Grenoside Sword Dancers in the flesh, which led him to write about the Sheffield dancers in his Sword Dances of Northern England, Volume 1, published in 1911.
Steve says: "Cecil Sharp was pivotal to the continuation of the Grenoside Sword Dancers."
The support of Sharp and the Gatty family played a significant role in the reforming of Grenoside Sword Dancers after both world wars.
Many sword dancing teams died out after the First and Second World Wars, leaving the Grenoside Sword Dancers and just a handful of other practising traditional groups.
But the group are keen to maintain the sword dancing tradition, which provided a glimpse into British folk culture from a pre- TV and radio era.
This year marks 100 years since Sharp's discovery of the Grenoside Sword Dancers.
To mark the centenary, the group will be running a series of events, including the annual Sword Dance Union Competition and a performance at the very barn Sharp noted the dance exactly 100 years earlier – to the day.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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