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Whitsun Dance / Dancing at Whitsun

[words Austin John Marshall, music trad.]

The tradition of Morris Dancing had been performed exclusively by men for several hundred years. During the First World War, when the male mortality rate in some English towns and villages approached seventy percent, this tradition would have been lost were it not for the women who chose to carry it on. Austin John Marshall has written this poignant song as a tribute to the widows, sweethearts, sisters and daughters of those men, who kept the tradition alive.
(Note from Priscilla Herdman's album The Water Lily)

Austin John Marshall wrote Whitsun Dance to the tune of The Week Before Easter. It was first published in 1968 in Karl Dallas' Book The Cruel Wars. Marshall's then wife Shirley Collins sang it as part of the Anthems in Eden Suite on her and Dolly Collins' albums Anthems in Eden (July 1969) and Amaranth (August 1976). It was also included in 2002 on Shirley Collins' anthology Within Sound.

Austin John Marshall comments:

Many of the old ladies who swell the membership lists of Country Dance Societies are 1914/18 war widows, or ladies who have lost fiancés and lovers. Country dancing kept the memory of their young men alive. When Shirley Collins started singing the piece to the tune of The False Bride, the impact was disturbing, for many people in audiences identified with it. Tears were frequent. Now a sharp relevance in contemporary song is one thing but such a pessimistic effect was not what was intended. So when Shirley recorded the song we showed the way the spirit of the generation sacrificed in the mud of France had been caught and brought to life by the new generation born since World War II by concluding with the chorus of the Staines Morris:

Come you young men come along
With your music, dance and song
Bring your lasses in your hands
For 'tis that which love commands
Then to the Maypole haste away
For 'tis now a holiday.

Tim Hart and Maddy Prior recorded Dancing at Whitsun in 1971 for their third duo album, Summer Solstice, and June Tabor sang it, accompanied by Tim Hart on guitar, on a BBC Radio 1 John Peel Session recorded on March 4, 1975 and broadcast on March 10, 1975. I don't know if this recording has ever been published.

Priscilla Herdman sang Dancing at Whitsun in 1977 on her first album, The Water Lily.

Lyrics

Shirley Collins sings Whitsun Dance

It's fifty-one springtimes since she was a bride,
But still you may see her at each Whitsuntide
In a dress of white linen and ribbons of green,
As green as her memories of loving.

The feet that were nimble tread carefully now,
As gentle a measure as age do allow,
Through groves of white blossom, by fields of young corn,
Where once she was pledged to her true love.

The fields they are empty, the hedges grow free,
No young men to tend them, or pastures go see.
They've gone where the forests of oak trees before
Had gone to be wasted in battle.

Down from their green farmlands and from their loved ones
Marched husbands and brothers and fathers and sons.
There's a fine roll of honour where the Maypole once was,
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.

There's a row of straight houses in these latter days
Are covering the Downs where the sheep used to graze.
There's a field of red poppies, a wreath from the Queen.
But the ladies remember at Whitsun,
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.

Links

See also the Mudcat Café thread Lyr Add: Dancing at Whitsun.