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Greatham, being on the northern side of the River Tees, is in County Durham and therefore on the margins of the Yorkshire longsword tradition. We have often pondered on where the dance may have originated. Could a link be established with a dance tradition south of the river? Or is Greatham a unique isolated survival of a custom that once stretched much further north? The present level of knowledge of the ancestry of the known participants would suggest a ‘not proven’ verdict on both counts. Certainly there is a tenuous link with a village in North Yorkshire, but the majority of the Greatham dancers all appear to have been from established local families. The existence of a dance tradition in the village was discovered by chance in 1935. An American collector, James Madison Carpenter, was touring the United Kingdom seeking folk songs and mummers’ plays and was recording the Hunton (near Richmond, North Yorkshire) play from a resident of the village and a visitor from Greatham prompted his informant when he hesitated. Following on from this, a few days later Carpenter visited Tom Armstrong, the leader of the Greatham dancers, to record the play and brief details of the dance. Carpenter’s main interest was in mummers’ plays and folk song and he neglected to make any record of the Hunton dance at all! According to Carpenter’s notes, Armstrong informed him that the play had been acted for 100 years. If this is correct, then the play element of the tradition would date from the first quarter of the 19th Century, but no evidence is available to either prove, or disprove, this statement. Unusually, for collectors in those days, Carpenter made notes regarding his informants and the names of other participants. Thus we have a unique 'snapshot' of history whereby the names of a complete team are known and the parts that they played. Armstrong informed Carpenter that he last took part in 1922 and it is assumed that the names that Armstrong supplied are the team from that year. The latest Census records currently available, 1881 and 1891 have been used to try and identify the most likely inhabitants and their origins. The ages given are what they would have been in 1922. King - Thomas Armstrong. Age 52, born 1870 in Greatham, learned the dance from Christopher Day (or Dee?) and Joseph Stephenson in 1892 Mr. Sparks - C. Hardman. Not found in Census Records for Greatham in 1881 or 1891. Mr. Stout - J (ohn?) (W) Tinkler. Age 63, born 1859 in Greatham. Mr. Wild - H (arry?) Frank(s). Age 52, born 1870 in Greatham. Squire's Son - Robert Taylor. Not found in Census Records for Greatham in 1881 or 1891. Prince and Doctor - Ralph Young. Age 53, born 1869 in Greatham. Not in Census Records for Greatham in 1891. Clown - Joe Thomas. Not found in Census Records for Greatham in 1881 or 1891. Clown - Metz Musgrave. Age 58, born 1864 in Greatham. Musician - A (lbert?) (W?) Right. Age 50, born 1872 in Greatham. Part played not recorded by Carpenter - George Tinkler. Age 55, born 1867 in Greatham. The ages of these men in 1922 led me at first to doubt that I had found the right people. Most of the names are fairly common, but there is only one ‘Metz Musgrave’ in the Census Records. Could it be that there was no interest amongst the younger men of the village to continue the tradition? Is this evidenced by the need for Ralph Young to dance and also do the Doctor’s part? Or were places in the team jealously guarded, as, after all, it was a source of beer money during the week following Christmas? The two men who taught Armstrong and possibly the other members of the team, since they are mainly of the same age group, Christopher Day (or Dee) and Joseph Stephenson would also appear to be local people. A Joseph Stephenson aged 45 and born in Greatham is included in the Census Records for 1891. There are several ‘Dees’ but no ‘Days’ in the Records for 1891 amongst who is a Christopher Dee aged 55, born in Billingham. Billingham in 1836 was a small rural community bordering on the parish of Greatham. This may not be the correct Dee however as Armstrong stated that Dee was 65 years old when he taught him. Apparently the custom was only enacted sporadically in the years after 1922 and it was 1953 before the Greatham tradition next came to the attention of the folklorists. The schoolmaster, Charles Howard trained a team of schoolboys, to perform as part of the Coronation celebrations, following Armstrong’s verbal instructions. This revival became known to Dr Norman Peacock of Leeds University and he recorded the words and a full version of the dance from Tom Armstrong. The results of his research were published in the journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in 1956. The play associated with the Greatham dance is very similar to a number of others and it seems likely that they share a common ancestry. As previously mentioned, it was the similarities with the one from Hunton that led Carpenter to visit the village. Lines and verses are also echoed in the plays from Ampleforth, Bellerby and Sowerby, all in North Yorkshire. It has been suggested by earlier researchers that they are the corrupt remnants of texts sold by itinerant hawkers in the 18th Century to the then equivalent of today’s village dramatic societies. In a less literate period than today, the words would most likely have been passed on by word of mouth with the inevitable result that over the years there has been an understandable divergence from the original scripts. It is unfortunate that no photographic record has been brought to light of any of the old Greatham dancers’ performances or even those of the schoolboy team of 1953. Efforts to trace the descendants of the men named in Carpenter’s notes and members of the teams from more recent years have, so far, proved unsuccessful. |