Isle of Wight Folk Music – NEWS – Can you help?

Re: Folk themed IW Mardi Gras Carnival project for 2025. The exact title has not been chosen yet.

This is a quick alert about a project which could be very useful as a way of interesting younger people in folk culture. IOW Mardi Gras is a big summer parade involving children and young people. As well as the parade, there are workshops and pop-up performances so opportunities for dance, drama, instruments and perhaps song. In addition, there is ‘Merry and Bright’, an illuminated carnival in winter. We don’t have the dates for either yet.

The project director, Hannah Ray, contacted folkonwight (Debbie Wyke and John Bentley) and Steve Baker with a view to picking our brains, she has now asked us to spread the word so that anyone with interest/ideas/skills can offer to get on board. Hannah plans to write up information about the project in the near future, this mail is just a preliminary to get everyone thinking.

John and Debbie plan to use our folk club lists to circulate this, also Facebook, so you may get it more than once. Please forward the mail to anyone who might be interested. Thanks.

The results of our brainstorming of possible items which might be of use is below. We hope you will be able to add more. Hannah seems to be particularly in favour of Isle of Wight connections – eg evidence of early morris revival here and calendar customs

Isle of Wight Mardi Gras – New Carnival

Please look at the website above if you are not familiar with what the events involve. Then, if you have useful information, could teach dances, have more ideas to add to the preliminary brainstorm etc please send an email to folkonwight@aol.co.uk in this format.

Title Re: Folk themed IW Mardi Gras Carnival project

Your name

Your email

Your ideas. How you could help. Information. Photographs etc

Apologies if this all sounds very formal. But it is essential to keep our workload down to a minimum. This format will be easy to share and avoid a lot of retyping. If you can send ideas etc within a couple of weeks that would really help. Thanks in advance as individual replies may not be possible.

Our brainstorming – this is what we thought of so far

Customs recorded or currently or recently practised on the island are marked *

Seasonal customs –

Christmas – Mumming *

Two scripts – 1. from WH Long Dictionary of the IoW Dialect etc.’ The Christmas Boys’

2. Modern version incorporating characters from elsewhere

Descriptions of costume in Long and photograph from Bembridge, 1930s

New Year

Wassailing* Blessing the fruit trees/ Going from house to house asking for donations into the wassail bowl. Either 12^th night or 17^th January (old 12^th night before the calendar changed)

Plough Monday – East Anglian custom, First Monday after 6^th January.

Straw bears- Tuesday after Plough Monday. Straw bears traditionally feature in carnivals in Germany

Shroving *- Shrove Tuesday Recorded on the IoW

May Day* Records exist of houses in Newport being decorated with greenery from woods

Men of Wight dance at dawn at The Longstones, also pagan groups

Maypole Dancing – photo from Bonchurch

Pace Egging – Easter

Beating the Bounds* – recorded on the Iow. At Rogationtide – around 25 April

Halloween*

Penny for the Guy – early November

Morris dancing*

Photos of girls in costume popularised by the Esperance Morris dancers show IoW was in forefront of the morris revival. Esperance first performed 1906. Photo is 1915/16, later photo around 1930.

Men of Wight*, Oyster Girls*, Moonshine Border Morris*, Mr Baker’s Dozen* are all active

Traditional dance types– Cotswold morris*, North-west morris*, Border morris*, Molly, Rapper, Longsword*, Maypole, Scottish, Welsh, Great Wishford Faggot, Abbots Bromley, Manx, Hebridean, Step dancing, Clog dancing*

Morris Beasts often accompany the dancers. Men of Wight have a seahorse*. Dragons, horses, bears, chickens, stags, unicorns,eagles etc, etc

Hobby horses are mostly found in the West Country

Sea Shanties* – actions which could be demonstrated.

Capstan eg South Australia

Raising heavy weight/mainsail eg. Blow the man down,

Brake pump eg Leave her Johnny

Pulling weight (stamp and go) Donkey riding, Drunken sailor,

Holystoning deck eg Banks of Newfoundland

Smuggling Should not be glamourised as was illegal

The Parkhurst Boys Young boys convicted of a minor crime were taught a trade and shipped to Australia to work out their sentence there.

Some pictures

An imagined country dance in Brading ‘Brading in times of prosperity’ RW Bloxam (possibly born 1808 Fellow of ? & teacher)