With dances emerging from the myths, legends and wilds of Dartmoor, Beltane Border Morris prove that morris dancing can be older than tradition. With shadowed faces, tattered coats and black top hats, the musicians and dancers drum up the energy of the moor and share something ancient and mysterious with all who watch.
Beginning as all-female side ‘The Iron Maidens’ in 2000, they are still ‘women with attitude’(their motto!) and dance in the border morris style using sticks (never hankies!). They have adapted some traditional border morris dances with the obligatory Beltane fire, but most of their repertoire is self-penned. They write new dances together over the winter with their musicians seeking out the best tune to suit the mood and style of the dance. Their musicians play mainly traditional tunes adding their own arrangements to give them the Beltane edge.
The use of facepaint has nothing to do with race. It is a form of disguise that relates to performing for money (dancing or mumming) by the labouring classes to raise money. The disguise was necessary so the performers were not recognised and then prosecuted for begging, or victimised by their landlords. The disguise also taps into deeper traditions of anonymity, mystery, the supernatural, eeriness and the dark side.
However there is a much more sinister side to blacking than this. In 1722 the Criminal Law Act introduced over fifty new capital offences onto the statute book. This Act, known as the “Black Act” was in response to poaching, in particular the “Blacks” who went poaching with blackened faces, so as to not alert the gamekeepers. After the Black Act you could be hanged not only for poaching, fishing in a private pond, damaging a hedge and many similarly minor crimes, but also simply for the act of disguise itself. In other words, if Beltane had tried to perform in 1723 we would have ended up on the gallows.
This is at the heart of why later performers blacked their faces: It is a way of remembering the oppression of the past, remembering those who had been executed (or if lucky, simply transported for life) for poaching, in order to provide food for their starving families. There is a real political edge to their blacking. It is a way of bearing witness to dreadful treatment of the dispossessed labouring classes. Though they now use the mercurial colours of nature in their blacking, the spirit of our disguise is as important to us as it has ever been.
