Witchmen

After living in Peterborough for 30 years, today we finally made it to the Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival. The festival of the Straw Bear or "Strawbower" is an old custom known only from a small area of Fenland on the borders of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire. On Plough Tuesday, the day after Plough Monday (the first Monday after Twelfth Night), a man or boy was covered from head to foot in straw and led from house to house where he would dance in exchange for gifts of money, food or beer. The custom died out early in the 20th century, c.1909 (probably because the local police regarded it as begging), but it was resurrected by the Whittlesea Society in 1980.


The festival has now expanded to cover the whole weekend when the Bear appears (not Plough Tuesday nowadays, but the second weekend in January instead). On the Saturday of the festival, the Bear processes around the streets with its attendant "keeper" and musicians, followed by numerous traditional dance sides (mostly visitors), including morris men and women, molly dancers, rapper and longsword dancers, clog dancers and others, who perform at various points along the route.

Although the wind was truly bitter, the experience was truly exhilarating. I had always thought of Morris Dancers as wearing white and waving handkerchiefs, but many of the molly dancers were far more wild and pagan than that, and had also updated their repertoire to cater for 21st century audiences. Among our favourites were Hemlock Molly, Pig Dyke Molly and the Witchmen, who describe themselves as dancing Morris from the Daarkside where pagan ritual dance meets street entertainment. 
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