Kirkby Malzeard & Laverton

The Kirkby Malzeard Sword Dance

This was a long-sword dance, and like the Morris, traditionally a men’s dance, although there is evidence of ladies teams.

As Cecil Sharp wrote when he collected this and other traditional dances together, ‘its roots stretch far into an unhistoried past.’ Sword dances have been found all over Germany, Sweden, the Shetlands, Spain, France as well as other parts of the North of England.

The symbolism of the swords and movements seem to originally to have been linked with ‘magic’ – to stamp and wake the earth so that it would produce crops, to leap so that the corn would grow high, and even with the final clash and linking of swords, to suggest a ritual sacrifice. And then over forty or fifty centuries it changed, until in 1886 it was a ‘prominent feature’ of the Millenary Festival in Ripon, and ‘much applauded’.


The Millenary Festival was organised by D’Arcey Ferris, a pageant master, who heard of the Kirkby team, It was thought they mostly danced in their own clothes before then. He bought/made them the red a white ‘cricket’ costumes to make them look more impressive. They did it again 10 years later for a repeat of the 1000 festival but it wasn’t as grand and the costumes weren’t as pristine!


By then it was a living showpiece, not a living part of folk-lore. It died, like so many country customs, during the changes of the 19th century, and more particularly with the Great War. Mr Ralph Wood revived it in the 1920’s, but it was no longer a natural growth and could not be sustained. The swords were locally made, and with the handles smoothed with use. Early photographs show the dancers at the village cross, where they would start their rounds. They wore ‘red flannel tunics cut soldier fashion and trimmed with white braid down the front, and round the collar and sleeves; white trousers or overalls, with a red stripe an inch or more wide down the side of each leg; brown canvas shoes and tightly fitting cricket caps quartered in red and white’. The captain has a blue coat of flowered cloth and a white cap. The fool wore a cocked hat decorated with peacock feathers. Later this was changed to green britches, a white shirt and yellow socks and small ribbons when Ralph Wood restarted the team – no one seems to know why.

For a short time they wore all white. This may be due to the availability of cricket ‘kit’.

The current kit is made up of waistcoats made from leftover curtain material, and black cords and white shirts which are easy to come by.

The traditional time to dance was between Christmas and New Year. They say that mostly the dancers were builders’ labourers. ‘They gave over building in October and didn’t start again till May, so there was not a right lot to be done.

It’s interesting that people connect Morris etc. with the summer but records show that there were hiring fairs in early December and if you didn’t get a job you were stumped. So, these people pooled what little talent they had, singing, dancing, acting or whatever and went out, basically begging. In some areas this was illegal, hence the need for a disguise.

Like bell-ringing, it went back in certain families and they had to go whether they liked it or not’. The music ‘T’awd lass o’Dallowgill’, which is a variation of ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’, was last played on an melodeon, and the Waite family were the musicians. Ray Waite learnt the tune from his father, and Ted Dodsworth learnt it from Ray.

Earlier there was a fiddle and a drum. Cecil Sharp gives ‘Harrison’ as the leader of the team in his day, and Mr Blackburn and others remember ‘Billy Harrison’ the blacksmith. Other dancers were3 Walt Boynton (mason), Herbert Waite (builder) and Bob Waite, Tom Wood, Ralph Wood (builder), Don Gill and James Gill (postman and cobbler) and Harry Hobson (farmer). At other times there were Atkinsons, Iddisons, Couplands and Moores. Some of them came from Grewelthorpe. When Tom Wood died, aged 88, the newspaper printed a photograph of him with his drum.
‘There were families who seemed to keep and no doubt will still do, the secret of music, rhyme and dance, as a sacrosanct possession’, the reporter wrote. ‘As tight as wax’ Awd Tom used to say.

As well as performing between Christmas and New Year, there is a tradition of farmers, agricultural labourers and builders picking up their tools again after the 12 days of Christmas and would perform at the Plough Service. The service is to bless the farming community, and sees the plough carried into the church and blessed. Once prays and hymns are heard, the sword dance is performed. Records show that 75 years ago the tradition was revived, having died out, and Matt Broadley, Tommy and Alfie Atkinson and Ian Oliver pulled the plough up the aisle.

The current team’s first performance at the plough blessing was 1988, and they are fairly unique in that the dance is part of the service, not tacked on afterwards.

They are called the Highside Longsword, and more details can be found at www.highsidelongsword.org.uk.