strathspey@strathspey.org:52645

John Chambers

Re: No more sword dances?

June 3, 2008, 1:55 p.m. (Message 52645, in reply to message 52619)

Anselm wrote:
| Thomas G. Mungall, III wrote:
| > Somehow the crossed bananas dance just doesn't cut it.
|
| That reminds me of the story when a team from, I think, New Scotland went to
| France and used a pair of the local =BBbaguettes=AB for the Breadsword Dance.

For some years, I've been playing for a Rapper team that has a bit of
humor that they do for gatherings of Morris/Sword dancers.  When it's
their turn, they rush on all in a panic because they can't find their
swords.   After the usual chaotic everyone-talk-at-once bit, they get
an idea, and borrow hankies from  onlookers.   I  start  playing  the
Winster  Processional,  they process on, I switch to the same tune in
fast jig time, and they start doing Rapper their dance the hankies as
swords. It's pretty funny. Finally, they make a "knot", one guy holds
it up and looks disgustedly at the tangled mess of cloth, and someone
rushes  out  with  the  swords.   We  don't do this dance for general
audiences, as it  wouldn't  mean  much  to  non-dancers,  but  Morris
dancers often request the dance.

I do wonder whether the Rapper swords would qualify for  the  purpose
of  the proposed law.  These are "swords" only in the sense that they
are thin steel blades.  It's actually spring steel,  of  course,  and
these swords have never been weapons. They were developed as scraping
and shaping tools around 1800, when  flexible  steel  was  developed.
I've  used  some  very similar tools for smoothing curved surfaces of
furniture and boats.  It would be difficult to  inflict  any  serious
injuries  on anyone with one of these swords, though you could make a
sort of "road burn". The dancers do occasionally get small scrapes or
even cuts.

But we're living in an  age  when  the  airline  security  folks  ban
dangerous  weapons like nail clippers and toothpaste tubes.  I've had
this image of terrorists breaking into the cabin and forcibly  giving
the  pilot  a manicure, which brings the plane down when the pilot is
unable to reach the controls  due  to  the  terrorists'  work  on  an
especially  difficult cuticle problem.  If Monty Python were still on
the job, I supposed they'd have done a skit like this.


--
What if the Hokey Pokey really IS what it's all about?