Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

[@ohno6919]

A town near me holds a solstice party every year, with folk dancing and a mummers play, and the play always starts with this dance interrupting the general dancing. I've been going to this solstice party since I was little and this music has always seemed so hauntingly beautiful to me. It's wonderful to see a recording like this :)

[@Peacebirdie]

I remember this horn dance and tune being performed by the Pipe & Bowl Morris at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Novato. Lovely. Happy to have found it here, thanks ever so for posting it up

[@dancingcolorsVdeRegil]

Yes! Well met in these threads! So happy to find it after some funny other tunes and quick stepping horn dancing elsewhere...

[@mplahke]

I first saw this years ago on a solstice sunrise on the East Palo Alto mud flats -- the eerie tune and then horned figures emerging from the dark. Instant goosebumps. This is also the tune that Boston Revels uses.

[@neilmanthorpe1035]

This is the tune that the Thaxted morris side play for their horn dance in the square at the centre of Thaxted village

[@dancingcolorsVdeRegil]

I am so interested in the diversity of music, and garb.. as originally for me it was Pipe and Bowl Morris who performed this version, and no, not ancient horns but some made for our Renaissance Faire. The tune is this tune and though the slow aspect apparently offends people who grew up with the jaunty jig horn dances I saw from the actual Abbots Bromley group, this music and timing took all of that raucous energy away for a few minutes, offering something calming, bringing reflection into the otherwise wild entertainment space, and to see something ancient and more pagan ("with a little p") than say, the country dances(that we were otherwise doing or the Morris dances also) ! I would hope that the natives whose families have done the September day for centuries would enjoy that theirs is special and own it and not be offended by other versions!

[@jaynwinslade3970]

Interestingly this tune is written in 6/8 which makes me wonder if it was a horn dance tune because of the walking step (more in 2/4 due to the weight of the antlers). Let's not get in a flap about whether this is an Abbots Bromley Horn dance or not, rather let's celebrate that there are pockets of people, from all walks of life, keeping our dance traditions alive.

[@MandolinSunrise]

123, 456 their steps are on the 1 and the 4 rather than 1-3, 4-6

[@Wotsitorlabart]

It wasn't a horn dance tune.

[@RevelsNorth]

The tune, also called Robinson's Tune, had been the traditional Abbots Bromley tune prior to the 19th century. Most of the video footage seen from the past decade indicate the current popular tune to be "By the Rising of the Moon", but this is not thought to be the original, or even the oldest, tune for the Horn Dance. californiarevels.org/abbots_bromley_music

[@hwicki5612]

+Revels North Thank you, I've always wondered why the documentaries online seem to play such a different, upbeat tune, compared to the one I was taught. It's a shame that we don't know the original, but I suppose all traditions change over time

[@MandolinSunrise]

There’s also a tune called Jack Robinson.

[@Wotsitorlabart]

The Abbots Bromley dancers have said that 'Robinson's Tune' was never used in the Horn Dance.

[@wylier]

A lovely clip. I'm curious to know where it was shot?

[@JR15491]

This is the tune used by the California Revels, and I imagine it may be older because it is modal, rather than major minor.

[@captainnemo2176]

Same used as the portland revels

[@sossabell]

what's the melody? the traditional music of this dance in the town of Abbots Bromley is very different, not in a minor key, and is played on accordion -- but would love to know origin and name of this melody if anyone knows? i certainly remember it from the beautiful Boston performance.

[@DocRowe]

[Wheelwright] Robinson's Tune

[@cassier9482]

my ancestors have been performing the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance for centuries. it looks nothing like this

[@cassier9482]

This is definitely NOT the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance.

[@billblakely3472]

+Cassie Rowantree Care to elucidate? If this isn't a version of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, what is?

[@jeanglendinning1860]

I agree, iused to watch the horn dance when i lived near Abbots Bromley in the 1960's

[@JourneymanAlto]

Agree - this is a reinterpretation. The original is quite different. They are using the right tune though.

[@cassier9482]

@@billblakely3472 it's a version of something. The antlers are over 1000 years old and much heavier and larger. No violin. The accordion is missing and the tune my people dance to is called Cock o the north. I don't know what this is. It's ok. But it's not THE Abbots Bromley Horn dance

[@Wotsitorlabart]

@@JourneymanAlto The Abbots Bromley dancers don't use this tune and according to them never have done.

[@tricianeal8348]

That is nothing like the Abbots Bromley Dance - wrong costumes, too slow, nowhere near the real thing.

[@gunnarthorsen]

There can never have been just one way of dancing what we now call the Abbots Bromley dance. First documented only in the late 1600's, it goes back to much earlier times, as evidenced by the antlered reindeer skulls that are kept in the church in Abbots Bromley. These have been used by successive generations of dancers (they were no doubt hidden away during Puritan times) have been carbon dated to the 11th and 12th centuries, and would have been imported from Scandinavia, as there were no domestic reindeer herds then in what is now the UK. The dance possibly began as a fertility rite to increase flocks for livestock, or more likely as a dance related to hunting, which means that it had more than entertainment value for villagers as it touched on survival. Based on similar dances seen in other cultures and times, the first dancers likely wore deer hides as "costumes" to go with the antlers, and the dancing and attire changed over the course of centuries, as did the music. The song that you often hear played today for the dance, "The Wearin' of the Green", only dates to the 18th century.

[@Wotsitorlabart]

@@gunnarthorsen But Tricia Neal is correct - this is not the Abbots Bromley dance. It is Thaxted Morris team's slowed down modern concoction with no basis in tradition - seemingly to entertain the tourists. Even the tune, which is now synonymous with the horn dance and originating from an Abbots Bromley musician, was never used at Abbots Bromley. It really should be called the 'Thaxted Horn Dance'. The fertility rite origins is the usual pagan mumbo-jumbo with no evidence to back it up (it looks pre-Christian therefore it must be!). And the first written evidence from the 1500's notes a hobby horse but makes no mention of the antlers. So is its origin simply a medieval hobby horse dance with the later additions of antlers? Even Abbots Bromley give a date of 1226 rather than some mystical pagan beginnings (but even that date is based on no evidence whatsoever).