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Pictures

Here you will find a fairly random selection of images and movies of us in action. To see more archive material, please ask to look through the scrapbooks.

Cheltenham Folk Festival 15-02-09

Photograph taken by Clive Thomas. For more of Clive's images, please see his Flickr photostream.

Priddy Folk Festival 08-07-06

From Priddy's Festival Photo Diary / Saturday Afternoon, here we are dancing in the Dance Tent once again.

Half Lent Festival in Sint-Niklaas, Flanders 24/25/26/27-03-06

Priddy Folk Festival 09-07-05

From Priddy's 2005 Festival Blog: Saturday, here we are dancing in the Dance Tent.

Brandon Hill 01-05-05

Courtesy of Simon Chapman, here we are on Brandon Hill on May Day.

Auckland, New Zealand 01-05-05

Meanwhile [well, actually some 12 hours earlier I guess], on the other side of the World, Michael and Eleanor were celebrating the dawn of May Day with City of Auckland Morris Dancers.

The Cornubia 31-03-05

Here are some pictures taken by Bob Bailey [Thankyou, Bob] at our dance-out at The Cornubia, Temple Street, Bristol on 31 March 2005.

Wassail, St Werburghs 17-01-04

Ragged and Old Weekend of Dance 2003

FRESH 2002

Stolen from the University of Bristol Union site, we have a picture of Jason and Chris bravely manning the stall.

Great Western Morris Weekend of Dance 2001

Taken by Pete Langley - Thankyou.

Streets Alive, Bristol 2001

Taken from the Streets Alive web site, here we are at the end of a dance in King Street.

The Cornubia 27-07-00

Here are some of the pictures and movies taken by Brian Houston [Thankyou, Brian] at our dance-out at The Cornubia, Temple Street, Bristol on 27 July 2000.

Movie number 1 [344kb .mpg]
Movie number 2 [344kb .mpg]

Assorted others

In a couple of older pictures, we have Tony Target [former local weatherman-type celebrity], and Valerie Davey [Bristol West MP] and Julia Watson [Baz from Casuality] acting as our 'normals'.

Here we have Rag Morris in the Tipi field at Glastonbury 1999, with our new friend Bernard [centre, with disproportionately large head] and Gavin and Rags having a paddle at Swanage

Music

Introduction

Way, way back in 1985, a Rag Song was written. The tune chosen [which has, by now, become extremely irritating as it plays along in the background] can also be used for I Like a Moose together with its feminist version. In fact, a little searching reveals that the same tune is used for a huge song family all based on Villikins and his Dinah. Bluey Brink is also related. For completeness, here is the Mudcat Cafe version of the tune, which, as they say, has probably been used for more texts than any other in the English-speaking World, though none is surely as important as ours.

The song

The Rag Morris Song
Copyright © 1985 Rag Morris

Marc

The postcard below was drawn by Marc Vyvyan-Jones, as was the card he handed out to all of us for Christmas one year. Even in times of strife, the Morris must continue.

Marc also features heavily [ably assisted by Guy] in the infamous tripping incident, captured on video in a dark Leipzig nightclub. If anyone fancies having a look at the evidence [sorry, no sound], then click here [919kb .avi].

Print

Epigram Online - Societies Slut - the awards, 05 May 2008 [Issue 203]

"Such is the beauty of Morris Dancing. It should be a rite of passage for every fresher."

Epigram Online - The Societies Slut, 28 January 2008 [Issue 198]

"...these people really enjoy what they do, and don't care that everyone else thinks they're raving lunatics."

Bristol Evening Post, 15 March 1999

Bloody Students: Bristol University student Mike Shaw continues his look at student life in Bristol.

Morris dancing is the new rock 'n' roll. At least, that's what the University morris dancing team would have you believe. They're young, they're mavericks and they're willing to break the rules. A Weybridge [sic] group described them as a 'disorderly bunch of egomaniacs' and, like the Prodigy, they perform regularly at Glastonbury Festival.

Morris dancing may have an image-problem matched only by train-spotters and young Conservatives, but this doesn't bother them. "You only have to watch us - people are surprised when they see us that we're not the traditional old fogey morris dancers. We bring life to it a bit more. We do it for fun. It's really good to go out and make an arse of yourself in a silly costume".

The team was formed 18 years ago and named 'Rag Morris', because of their rag-decorated costumes; they also hoped the name would get them confused with the charity RAG, as that might get them ball tickets.

Their bagman, or secretary is Gavin Skinner, who graduated from Bristol in 1992. Though Rag Morris is a student society, [and gained 40 new members at the start of the year] the majority of the team are graduates still living in the city.

Indeed, morris dancing seems to have lured many of them back to Bristol. "I went away for a couple of years," Gavin commented," then came back because all my friends were here." Originally from Edinburgh, Gavin is a big, well-spoken man with curly brown hair. He works for a multimedia company in Bristol, though admits he doesn't own a television.

After spending only a few minutes with him I realise that this is someone who must take the social side of the sport very seriously. It's still the morning yet we're sitting in the Union bar with pints of bitter and a big plate of chips.

The Rag Morris website is a surprisingly professional affair with down-loadable video footage of the dancers. Like Gavin, it stresses drinking and fun. That's all very well, but couldn't they just go to the pub? What drives them to put on strange costumes and knock sticks together?

"It's traditional," Gavin replies. "It's nice to be doing something people have been doing for centuries. The dances have been handed down from generation to generation, though we do our own sometimes. We've got to bring it up to date - it's unusual for most people at morris events to be under 30."

Gavin also claims, surprisingly, that morris dancing looks good on your CV. "Oh yes - it's something people point out at interviews and go 'That's interesting.' There's not an obvious career link with it though."

Five years ago there were over a dozen university morris teams in the country: now there are only three. "There's us, Norwich and Southampton - though all the students there are at least 40. I don't know how that works."

The team attracts a number of international students, mainly Americans intrigued by the English tradition. It also has as many female members as male, and they dance in mixed groups, much to the horror of more conservative morris teams. With a shudder, Gavin recalls how 10 years ago in Bath, they were paired with an all-male team which walked off in disgust the moment they saw the students.

You have to admire the team's enthusiasm but there remains something slightly sinister about the morris dancers. It's not the pagan connection [though the Rag team does dance in a secret cave each solstice] but the mafioso-type seriousness with which some of them treat it.

"Once you're in," Gavin stated, "you don't leave."

Venue, 05 - 19 February 1999

Roots/Country Music News [Tony Slinger]

Bristol based mixed-sex morris side Rag Morris are celebrating their 18th birthday with a series of events over the weekend of February 13 - 14. Originally formed mainly of ex-Bristol University students, the team is now a good blend of students and native Bristolians. Always unusual in their very distinctive rags and tatters, they dance in an energetic and exciting manner that makes morris enjoyable for even the most hardened skeptic. They also have something of a musical pedigree with Steafan Hannigan [Sin E], Mike Fossett [Electric Lobsters] and Jane Harbour [Spiro] being ex-members. The main event of the weekend is a combined ceilidh and concert by Spiro on Saturday 13, although Rag Morris will be dancing all over Bristol throughout the weekend [see Roots Diary for details].

Glastonbury 98 Live

One group of determined morris dancers didn't let the weather get them down - Rag Morris from Bristol just tied their bells to their wellies and danced through the mud in the Green Futures field.

Take a Break, 14 November 1996, Issue 46

Imagine how surprised we were to find ourselves featured in Take a Break magazine. In the middle of an article by Richard Newson ['The Hills are Alive - Richard's family hit all the right notes on their musical hike round Cornwall'], we come across:

"We managed to keep her quiet long enough for breakfast, then caught a bus to the nearby Lost Gardens of Heligan. Kezia found the 'hairy' palm trees hilarious and Eddie loved charging through the jungle area.
"Next we found some morris dancers leaping on the village green and bought our two morris minors a set of bells. We jingled our way down a cliff path to the scenic harbour of Charlestown, where we visited the Earl of Pembroke - a full sized replica of Captain Cook's ship Endeavour."

English Dance and Song

Rag applied for assistance from the English Folk Dance and Song Society [EFDSS] Douglas Kennedy Memorial Fund one time when it went on a foreign trip [to Rudolstadt Folk Festival, Leipzig and Prague]. The fund is designed to help teams, especially those with a high proportion of younger members, to travel abroad, in order to show some aspects of English folk culture to people outside these islands. We were awarded [if I remember correctly] £150. During the tour, and on the literature we handed out at the time, we gratefully acknowledged the assistance provided by the Fund. After we came home, not quite as strapped for cash as we had anticipated, we returned £50. This award featured in the EFDSS accounts, which were posted out with the Winter 1995 issue of English Dance and Song, and prompted the following response from Gordon Ridgewell:

"I was also astonished to read in the Annual Report of the English Folk Dance and Song Society for the year 1994/1995 that under the Douglas Kennedy Memorial Fund an award had been made to a body which is in fact a mixed morris team.
"I feel sure Douglas would not have approved such an award as he was very much of the view that the English morris is a mens [sic] ritual dance. Let it not be forgotten that Douglas as Squire of the Morris Ring from 1938 - 1947 led an association of men's morris clubs devoted to maintaining our heritage of the morris as an exclusive male dance.
"As this particular fund is used to make awards to help bodies share our folk traditions with other countries then surely awards should only be made to those bodies who present our dance heritage in its traditional form. To my mind displaying the morris in other countries as a dance for both sexes gives a misleading impression of what the morris is all about."
"Finally allow me to echo these words of Dr W Fisher Cassie, Past Squire of the Morris Ring [1956 - 1958], who in a letter published in The Times on 27 August 1956 concerning the Winlaton rapper sword dance being performed on television by a bevy of girls, stated, 'Let the English be as proud of their dance heritage as are the Swedes or the Yugoslavs, who do not confuse the role of the sexes or the significance of their traditions'."

This prompted the following response from our Guy:

"Mixed morris dancing will not go away, will it! We are no longer living in 1938 or 1956. This is 1996 and men and women dance morris with complete sexual confusion in the same team, and have been doing for 15 years in the case of our team, and longer in the case of others.
"We precisely met the conditions for a grant from the Douglas Kennedy Memorial Fund, particularly on two counts: we represent a current folk tradition as it is danced today in this country and we involve young people.
"We had no need to give a misleading impression to the folk public at the Rudolstadt Festival, they already have their own mixed morris team in Germany, Leipzig Morris, who have been in existance for 12 or so years.
"I acknowledge the excellent moral support we get from a large and increasing number of male teams and male dancers, we have had praise for our 'attention to detail' and other positive comments about our style from several male teams on several occasions and from the Trustees of the Douglas Kennedy Memorial Fund, who were positive and helpful throughout the planning stages of that particular tour.
"That was no 'bevy of girls' either. That sort of demeaning talk has been consigned to the history books as well.

Now, in the winter 1996 English Dance and Song, we find two responses to Guy's letter. The first is from Julian Pilling:

"Gordon Ridgewell's animadversion on the administration of the Douglas Kennedy Memorial Fund which enabled a 'mixed morris' team to go to Germany was indeed justified and a reply from a beneficiary hardly fitting.
"The winner of a music competition may well feel well disposed to the adjudicators but does not fly to their defence if their judgment [sic] is criticized [sic]. That would be unmannerly but then one might perhaps expect this from a group styled 'Rag Morris'!
"If Guy Watson wishes to be in a world of 'sexual confusion' that is his choice, many of us prefer it the other way. He also seems confused about the word tradition, some of us would feel that a self-concious grouping with brash political overtones is not in keeping with the traditions that the EFDSS should succour. His arrogant attitude to the past - 'we are not living in 1938 etc'! and blustering - 'Mixed morris dancing will not go away - will it' speaks a conceit that hardly recommends itself.
"It seems difficult for some people to appreciate the sensibilities involved in traditional ceremonials, how much more must it be for people of another country? One regrets that 'Leipzig Morris' has been misinformed, presumably by people like Guy Watson, just as so many people in America seem to have been. The political creed of self interest is unfortunately very pervasive.

And the second from Chris Clarke:

"I was saddened to read the letter by Guy Watson concerning the grant to Rag Morris by the Douglas Kennedy Memorial Fund. He takes offence at Gordon Ridgewell's objection to the award, but in so doing, he seems to miss the point of Gordon's objection. Many men, including me, feel deeply hurt that what we see as a very powerful celebration of masculinity should be stripped of it's [sic] meaning in this way.
"Given that Guy and Rag Morris are the victors, having won the award, it seems a little off for them to portray themselves as the injured party. If they feel insulted by the tone of Gordon Ridgewell's letter, they should remember that Gordon and the other 'all-male' dancers themselves have to contend with strong abuse from the supporters of women dancers: including the frequent misrepresentations of our opinions and actions, accusations of misogyny, anachronism, and so on. This award spits in the face of the pro-male position: even when they lose out, men are never the victims, are they?"

I don't think we are going to honour these comments with a reply.

Television

Old footage of us dancing [perhaps in 2000?] at the late Frank Buckley's wassail out towards Cribbs Causeway appeared again on Points West, Thursday 17 January 2008. It was first spotted in the Breakfast News local segment(s) and then in the main early evening broadcast, sandwiched between live segments from another wassail that did not feature Rag:

We were previously on telly on 17 November 1996, dancing on the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The event, organised by Bristol Student Rag, made the BBC West early evening news. Chris Vacher said:

"Motorists driving across the Clifton Suspension Bridge today had a colourful journey. Morris dancers braved the weather to perform at the end of the bridge.
"They then swapped their handkerchieves for heavy duty rope and took part in a sponsored tug-of-war. It's all in aid of Bristol University Rag Week, which has so far raised more than £48,000 for local charities."

T-shirts

Above, you will find our latest t-shirt designs. These are available to buy, £10.00 each, in the two colour combinations of olive-on-natural and black-on-olive. 'Natural' t-shirts are made from unbleached cotton. Please let Eleanor [0117 946 7527] know how many of each you would like to purchase.

Please send any comments or corrections for this page to Keith R Hallam [k.r.hallam@bristol.ac.uk] Click here for my home page Click here to be forwarded to Rag's home page Copyright © 1998 - 2010 Rag Morris Last modified: 2010-03-15 Number of visits since 2002-09-30: 15746