Chapter 14
1971 - 85
Puppet Folk
The Hollybush pub. held a folk
dance on the first Wednesday of the month and as we both enjoyed dancing we took
to it straight away. Dancing had more or less ceased to be in the ordinary dance
halls; disco being the in thing and that mainly for the youngsters. Ballroom
dancing was limited mostly to the works annual dance or the occasional Mayors
ball at the town hall. Folk dancing was for the family and in the various 'move
on' dances one might partner an eight or an eighty year old. This happy event
led in a number of directions, socially and with puppetry. There was usually
entertainment as well.
One evening I noticed a couple of
lads doing a sort of tap dance and on enquiring found that they were the steps
of sword dancing, one of the many facets of the Morris dance. This resulted in
me joining the Giffard Morris Side of Wolverhampton and later we both joined the
Folk Dance team.
Giff, my Morris dancer
(pronounced, Jiff) was
first made as a 'bottler' or collector for when we danced around the Black
Country but one night in a pub., someone looked at Giff and said, "About time
that bugger learnt to dance". He soon learned a simplified version of the solo
jig, "Nutting Girl". He can just be seen carried by me at the rear, far side of
the group above (In Bridgnorth). The large horse at the
rear is also one of mine; I
will find a better picture of that later. The coloured photo shows the rather
odd control, held, mainly on my right wrist. He started out with a fairly
standard upright control; adequate for clutching
a collecting bag and trotting around the crowd. Morris dance, however, needs
expansive hand/arm movements, well beyond the capabilities of the usual two
wires, hence the main support is on the wrist leaving the whole right hand for
the special control to produce the typical Morris arm movements. He won the
Puppet Guild's Haslam cup in 1973. It was an honour to win in those days when
dozens of puppets were entered into the exhibition; especially when it was
presented by no less a personage than our then President, Cecil Madden.
Meanwhile, back in the Hollybush
I noticed that when someone got up to sing, play an instrument or the Irish
story teller gave us a tale, a natural amphitheatre was formed. The uninhibited
moved forward and sat on the floor to become the stalls, those at tables stayed
put as the dress circle and the rest wandered out of the big saloon bar to stand
around the back in the 'Gods'. Having found a captive audience of mainly adults,
how do I produce
a show to suit? It had to have virtually zero set-up time, be adult (but
not 'blue') or 'family' in its appeal and with a quick get-off. I had one Morris
dancer.
I had also seen a jig doll which
was then more of a folk puppet, normally used as a percussion instrument with
other musicians. So I made one that was rather bigger than the one I had seen.
There was the dissecting skeleton (Is there a
marionettist anywhere without one?) that might fit in somewhere. There was the
folk song, "Sam Hall", about an early nineteenth century chimney sweep, hanged
for murder although I preferred the spoken version by Ron Moody. I had been
experimenting with sculpted soft foam and Sam was just a head and shoulders
with a rope around his neck which app
eared when he was hung. His outfit was
similar to a coachman's of the period and as evil as I could make him. He, of
course, needed some sort of
glove booth and if I had one of those could I fit in the Punch and Judy I had
made previously but hardly used? The glove booth I had made at Halton had
been given
to the local school.
This rag-bag of puppets seemed
not to be a particularly interesting show for adults when the idea came. We
would offer, not the usual Puppet Show but various entertainments. Out with the
foam again and we made a pair of moving mouth lap puppets, an Actor Laddie in
the same style as Sam Hall but in a top hat and an Australian fantasy (that one
was pure Kath). We decided to dress as Victorian travelling entertainers and
called ourselves, "Puppet Pedlar". The brown derby was a trilby, steamed, then
pulled, scolding hot, onto my head to get the shape; the Victorian style
waist-coat belonged to Kath's dad, wing collar with cravat, watch chain and an
old pair of suede boots made very dusty. Kath, of course, made
herself a super dress of Laura Ashley fabric.
The puppets were carried in a long back-pack which opened out into a simple glove booth with room for the marionettes as well as the large glove heads. When we showed this at the Hull weekend school (April '74) Ken Barnard made a sketch of me and that is it on the right; Ken's drawings being so much better than mine.
On being introduced at, say a ceilidh (Folk dance) we would enter from a side door; me with the big pack, Kath with a stool and basket of puppets and me shouting "Puppet Show! Puppet Show! The pack would be put down and whilst being opened up, I would say,
"A hundred years or so ago one might see many singers, acrobats, performers of all sorts, walking from town to village to fair setting up in town square or village green. The Irish poet, Seamas O'Sullivan put it rather nicely with his poem, "The Piper"."
At the completion of this short
poem, everythin
g
is set up.
I sat on the stool with the jig doll and switched on the music. Later we both used jig dolls as you can see from the picture; the music was from a tape recorder hidden in a mock up of a cylinder phonograph. From then on, each item was introduced with a couple of lines of rhyming couplets. Each item was introduced as a different form of entertainment.
Giff was the Morris dancer,
representing an old and continuing tradition, followed by the Punch and Judy
man; Judy falls for the Morris man because he can dance. Punch says he can
dance but not with silly hankies,
"I do a stick dance". At the end of each line of, "Oh Dear Mother what a fool I
be, six young fellers came a courting me" he gives Judy a whack with his stick.
This was at the height of Women's Lib and that produced a howl of protest. At
the end of Punch's song and dance there is a long pause - then from Judy. "Oh,
Mr Punch, I think you're wonderful, give us a kiss!" Even more horrified
squeals from "W.L." ladies. The dissecting skeleton represented the Italian
Fantoccini men. The Actor Laddie gave a tear-jerking rendition of, "The
Mistletoe Bough" at the 'big house' soirée, "Sam Hall" typified the
greatest crowd puller of all - a good hanging and the Australian Fantasy was the
type of story told by sailors returning from the antipodes.
At folk dances and for mixed
entertainment, cabaret type evenings, we would keep it short, say about twelve
minutes but this could easily be brought to thirty or forty minutes or two
sessions at a folk club with our two singing lap puppets and "Hole in the
Bucket" or "Buffalo Girl". The Actor Laddie might lead the audience in "The Old
Bull and Bush" or another monologue.
It was ideal Folk-Scene material
and for some years we used it very successfully in dance halls, folk clubs, and
at a number of folk festivals, including the prestigious Sidmouth festival. By
the time I was about fifty I found that I could get the pack down onto the floor
but getting it back up was a problem so I built a cart instead. Not only was it
easier to pull but had a three feet (nearly a metre) high stage so it could be
used in town squares an
d malls to a
standing audience but still took no longer to set up. It was also much easier
to bring from a distant car park and we used it for some time in general street
work with marionettes other than the folk puppets. The two sketches were used
on our 'T-Shirts when not in Victorian garb; me on the front of mine with Kath
on the back, Kath on the front of hers with me on the back.
One evening we took my father, who was staying with us, to the 'Hollybush' cielidh. I had already worked with the Taffy Thomas "Magic Lantern" group at the Clun Folk Festival and Taff was there that night. They spent the evening talking about the old music hall characters and it resulted in dad often working with Taff with magic or talks of the old time music halls.
In May of '75 I did my first Folk
Festival (The Chippenham and Lacock - now only the Chippenham). It was two days
at Chippenham and the bank holiday Monday at Lacock. As it was not far from
Kath's sister at Winsley, near Bradford-on-Avon we stayed ther
e. Kath was not
performing and I was to be part of the Taff Thomas entertainment entourage,
known as 'Magic Lantern' as well as dancing with the Giffard Morris side.
Dad (Billy Beresford) who, at
this time was making 'Crazy Golf' courses and doing children's entertaining was
also invited to join Magic Lantern where he would be doing a bit of magic and
talk at the evening s
essions.
He was 72 at this time and still had a few years of entertainment left in him.
Apart from forays with Taff he was now doing the children's parties and 'old
folks' clubs. I made him the big-toothed, 'goof' puppet.
For those of you who
do not know the folk scene, especially puppeteers, this is a rich field. There
are the weekly/monthly meetings, usually in public house meeting rooms, w
hich
are mainly entertainment sessions of singers, story tellers, musicians, etc.
with good openings for puppeteers with the right sort of show. Most dances/ceilidhs
have breaks for the entertainment spots and then there are the Folk Festivals;
and there are plenty, just about every weekend from spring to autumn, somewhere
in the country. There is usually the children's tent as well as the dances and
field events so be prepared to have two or three shows for varied age
audiences. There is also the possibility of busking in the town or promenade if
it is on the coast although many of the musicians and dancers will often simply
perform without thought of bottling - just for the sheer enjoyment; folkf
ests
are like that. And although Giff and I both sport one, you really do not
need to grow
a beard!
We even had a vicar who would preside at the Sunday church service and would always apologise to the permanent congregation for filling their church with Pagans - the Morris men! That is him on the right playing a 'box'.
One thing I think I improved upon for the Giffard Morris side was a 'wooden' horse to replace the rather tatty 'hobby' horse that I borrowed for the school play. He was quite impressive and just a little scary; black with red eyes and mane and a red opening mouth to catch pennies (internal bottling bag). His head construction was a wood frame and polystyrene coated with about six layers of brown paper.
Mander Centre, Wolverhampton >
In Lacock Village: Taff Thomas, back to us, in white with red bow on his queue, Dad, (Billy Beresford), in top hat, Mike Frost (Major Mustard), in red jacket, solar topee, Taff's wife Sheila, Mother Goose in big red hat, the intrepid Jeanie in plaits, on stilts, Dave Hunt (Dr Sunshine) in Union Jack bowler hat.
Dad dancing with Jeanie.
Ted having a jig.
Giffard Morris men just finishing a 'long sword' dance to produce the iconic 'Lock' (Emblem of the British Folk Song and Dance Society).
The Giffard Folk Dance Team
which Kath and I later joined .
There were groups other than Giffard and Magic Lantern! Many came from overseas with their own unique dances:
He is dancing the solo jig, "Nutting Girl" that my puppet, Giff, uses.
Giff bottling at the Mander Centre, Wolverhampton
A German Group
My favourite Group, "Woodfidley". Well! I had a bit of a crush on one of them!
Giffard Morris side folded about 1985 although as I write, in 2009, the Folk Team is still going strong, the puppet, Giff is still in use and the 'horse' is with another West Midlands Morris side.
Learnt: The 'Folk Scene' is a wonderful area for puppets.