Grenoside Sword Dancers(

The Grenoside Sword Dance is one of the very few ritual dances of England that can be called “traditional.” What do we mean by “traditional?” It might mean that the tradition will be pre-industrial, its origins will be unknown, it will be unique to a locality and it will have been passed down from person to person in an unbroken line. The Grenoside Sword Dance can safely be called traditional by these definitions.

The Grenoside Sword Dance can be traced back to the 1750s but prior to that no one knows. The first written mention of the dance was in a Pall Mall Gazette article of 1895. At the same time Lady Tweedsmuir (an important writer in her own name and also the wife of John Buchan of The Thirtynine Steps fame) wrote in her memoirs The Lilac and the Rose of seeing the sword dancers perform at Wortley Hall. She compared the gentility of her surroundings with the historical, rough and elemental nature of the dancers and their dance.

The photograph below is contemporary with the 1895 writings and was probably taken on one of the many walking tours that the team made. Some of these tours were by request to perform at local grand houses for beer and sandwiches but other tours were for the enjoyment of the local people.

The Grenoside Sword Team over 100 years ago

There were occasions when a collection of money was taken. One of the stories within the team is of a collection at Earl Fitzwilliam’s Christmas party at Wentworth which realised the astonishing sum of 25 pounds. It is said that a gleeful and unrepeatable expletive rent the air from one of the more pious members of the team!

The cash was never the reason to go dancing but it certainly helped. It must be remembered that Christmas was a difficult period for working men and women. In the Sheffield area the cutlery industry had an enforced lay-off at Christmas for two weeks of stock taking. It was inevitable that Grenoside’s industries of nail-making and file-making would also be on “short time.” So any money to supplement the family income would be most welcome. To dance for the team at this time would be both a privilege and a benefit.

In 1905, Cecil Sharp, the folk song and dance collector and the founder of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), came to Grenoside to collect the dance which was then published in his book “The Sword Dances of England.” The interlocking swords became the symbol of the EFDSS. In 1933 the EFDSS presented the Grenoside Sword Team with new swords which are used to this day. In 1951 the team was presented with a set of paisley jackets. These were to be worn for a presentation of the dance at the Albert Hall as part of the Festival of Britain. Even today the team is asked to perform the dance at prestigious events throughout

England

and has been part of a town-twinning event at the city of Bochum in

Germany

Boxing Day, more than a century on from the first
picture above. The glory of the 1951 jackets is
highlighted by the low mid-day sun!

Other than during the two World Wars (when Grenosiders had other things to do!) the dance has been performed during the Christmas period and particularly on Boxing Day – a day close to the Winter Solstice. Boxing Day became the focal point of the Grenoside Sword Dancers’ year. On Boxing Day at 11:00 am you will see the sword team, resplendent in their bright costumes, come walking down Main Street led by the Captain. It is an important but not stiffly formal procession. The dancers seek out friends to wish a merry Christmas to as they march loudly in their clogs down the road. As with many traditions it takes place outside a public house, in this case The Old Harrow.

Boxing Day 2001. The low mid-day sun indicates 11am as the dancers march to their first spot outside The Old Harrow.

The Captain sings a song of bravery and love and the dance proceeds with his symbolic beheading and death. The main part of the dance then starts and immediately the Captain revives and “rises from the dead” to lead the dancers in reviving the spirit of the New Year. The six dancers weave intricate patterns with their swords and equally complicated rhythms with their steel-shod clogs. The dance reaches its climax as the fiddler increases the tempo of the dance whilst the dancers perform a rolling figure. The dancers finally form a tight circle and perform a fervent tattoo on the floor before raising their swords, pointing upwards to the sky and, one hopes, a mid-winter sun.

Each year a large audience of locals and visitors from far afield come to witness the dance and celebrate the renewal of friendships and a new year. After the dancing is done you may be lucky enough to hear traditional Grenoside carols being sung in a local pub. You may ask, “what are traditional Grenoside carols?” Well that will have to wait for another time or better still get yourself up to Grenoside on Boxing day and become part of the tradition.

The Grenoside Sword Dance
The text of a publicity pamphlet written by the much-missed Peter Clarke in 1995.

This dance belongs in the village of Grenoside on the north-west edge of Sheffield. It still forms an important mid-winter ritual for the village when we dance outside the Old Harrow in Main Street at 11 o'clock on Boxing Day. It has been danced in the village for many years: the earliest printed account was in the Pall Mall Gazette in January 1895, there is a photograph dated 1885 and a written record which probably dates from the mid 1700s. At times it has seemed that the dance may die, but men have always sprung up to learn from the old dancers and to carry on the tradition. Our fiddler's grandfather was in the team and there are still other family connections with the dance. Dancers from before the war still live in the village. The dance continues to evolve: Cecil Sharp's account does not match our present dance precisely and before the last war the stepping was more elaborate and the dance was followed by Ring 0' Roses in which each man stepped a solo.

At that time each man's jacket was different and the Captain's helmet was covered by a rabbit (or hare?) skin rather than the fox fur of today. At other times the music has been played on a melodeon instead of a fiddle, but the four tunes (Drops 0' Brandy, Roxborough Castle, Wonder Hornpipe and Smash the Windows) remain the same.

The Captain and the six men dance a series of figures which are similar to other long sword traditions and cycle round the six swords in turn. However the sequence and style of the dance, the break step between figures, the songs, the beheading of our captain, the music and the costume make this dance unique. The 'new' swords of Sheffield Steel date from 1933 and the scarlet paisley jackets with green and red braid and rosettes were made for the Festival of Britain in 1951. Our iron shod clogs sound best on good flagstones. We do not dance simply for the pleasure of it, for beer money or a good day out; we dance because this dance, this tradition matters to us. We often speak of 'our' dance but in a sense we belong to it rather than it to us. It may signify much or little, one thing to one dancer and another to another, but it marks the season for all of us with a special sense that we have performed an important rite for ourselves and our witnesses. For some of us and of the bystanders, the Boxing Day dance gives a perceptible shove to the turn of the year and encourages us to believe that winter's dark and cold will again yield to warmth and light before we give up hope - and reminds us that life follows death as death follows life.

At other times and places we dance to share the dance with friends and to improve our funds, but the Boxing Day ritual has a meaning of its own. In 1994 we revived the custom of taking the dance around the village later in the Christmas period. We have not toured the 'Big Houses' for miles around over several days as the team used to do but on the Saturday nearest Twelfth Night we dance at shops and pubs and houses where the dance is honoured. These days we may be seen in newer duller jackets because the stature of the dancers has changed over the last forty years, and because we have so far been unable to find material to match the splendour of the 1951 jackets. When we dance indoors on delicate floors we muffle our clogs with rubber.

The ceremony has been recorded on film and video, and was studied in depth in the 1980s.

Click here for Another View!

The Village Walking Tour

Click here for this year's Traipse programme

On the Saturday after the first Sunday in January, the team tours the village on foot, dancing at different locations. The first ‘Traipse’ as it has come to be affectionately known, took place on 8 January, 1994. It was an attempt to recreate, in a modest way, the well-documented walking tours of previous teams.

Early records confirm that the Grenoside team used to tour a large area on foot, visiting many of the large houses en-route. It is reported that tours would begin on or around Christmas Eve and continue to the end of January.

The 'tribute' was considerable and an article in the Pall Mall Gazette, recalling a visit by the team to Wortley Hall in 1895, reports that each man could expect between 30 and 35 shillings over the thirty-day period.

After the Great War, the length and duration of the walking tours were less ambitious than those reported in 1895. However, in an interview with John Mitchell circa 1973, Harrington Housely who danced with the Grenoside Sword Dancers for 51 years recalls:

"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 2 or 3 in the morning, they still insisted on their white trousers being washed and pressed for the next day’s outing."

Eventually, Boxing Day became the focal point of the Christmas outings. Fred Myers, who also danced with the team for over 50 years, recalls his first Boxing Day tour in 1937:

"At 11am, the Captain rapped on the door of Sharp’s shop and the dance began. After that, we rolled our white trousers up over our knees and were ready to start our round, dancing at all the big houses, Greno Lodge, Whitley Hall, Chapletown Club and Dr Moles at Ecclesfield, where we finished our long and tiring day. I would like to add, that we walked from place to place."

The traditional outing has been slimmed down even further to a single event outside the Old Harrow on Main St. where guest teams are invited and the Grenoside dance is performed twice in front of large crowds on Boxing Day morning.

In addition to Boxing Day, the Traipse is an attempt to promote the dance in the village and gather to it friends and benefactors and, it is hoped, some new recruits.

Joe Dunn, Grenoside, Jan. 2006.

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