Ouse Washes Molly History

In 1980 four members of King’s Morris and Ring Of Belles from King’s Lynn started a mixed morris side. This was called Ouse William Morris. The reason for starting the group was that King’s Morris appeared at the time to be developing into a group that was marginalising the women’s group, Ring Of Belles, and the four individuals wanted to create a team where men and women danced/performed together. Ouse William Morris was quite individual, wearing William Morris fabric for costume and developing their own dances. The group had no real friends in the morris world initially because of the deep-rooted sexist prejudice that predominated. However there were several other similar groups that we did not know of, most in East Anglia, and these sides formed their own organisation, called Open Morris. We were members from the start and the very first workshop the organisation arranged was in Molly Dance. This was in Cambridge in 1980 where Cyril Papworth, a member of Cambridge Morris, taught those dances he remembered from his youth in Comberton.

Cyril stated that he didn’t mind teaching members of both sexes as the molly dances were also performed as “feast dances”, i.e. country dances performed at village feasts and at harvest. There was one dance, called The Special, which he wouldn’t teach the women, as it was only done by the molly dancers, but we let him off. The dances were unexceptional, performed with a double step and very little power, but we thought them a pleasant addition to our repertoire and performed in the early years only in the season after Christmas that we know was the traditional time. In fact we used to dance molly just twice a year, at Whittlesey Straw Bear Day and at Fenstanton on the evening of Plough Monday.

At first our costumes were the traditional peasant garb of corduroy trousers, waistcoats and hats for the men and long dresses with Victorian Bob caps for the women. The dances were performed pretty much as Cyril had taught them and we performed alongside other groups, notably Old Hunts Molly who had been taught at the same time. We practised molly only during December in readiness for Plough Monday and spent most of the practice time trying to remember what we had forgotten from the previous year. It would be fair to say that we didn’t really think that molly was real dancing, compared to the morris, but things did start to slowly evolve. One dance that Cyril taught, Smash The Windows, no one else seemed to perform, so we put some work in on that and started to dance it with a lot more energy. This gradually started to affect the way we performed the other dances. At around the same time our women started to “improve” their costumes, getting away from the Victorian Milkmaid and adding colour, in fact beginning what they have today. The men, of course, were slower to think about clothes and carried on with cords, waistcoats etc.

Several things occurred round about the same time to really change the group. Firstly some of us formed a belly dance group! The group was started by Jo, one of Ouse William’s founder members, and three others of us joined, Phil, Sam and Derek along with several members of Golden Star. The group quickly became successful in the folk world and this took us to a number of festivals, notably Towersey and Whitby. The format of Arabic dance made us think much more about what makes for an effective performance, along with the high profile events we were performing at. The friends we made as part of this process also had an important effect. We became very friendly with the great Seven Champions and the sensational Blowzabella. We had heard of Seven Champions, but they weren’t invited to Whittlesey, in fact the prevailing wisdom there was that they “weren’t real molly dancers.” When we saw them at Whitby we thought they were absolutely fantastic. Power, poise, humour, great music, real performers. Those of us who were there became really enthused to make something of our molly dancing but on our return found it hard to persuade some of our other members. It was then Phil invented what subsequently became Ouse Washes.

He was a teacher at the time and for a number of years had taught morris and sword dance. He decided that as our adults were not totally interested in developing the molly he would do so with the pupils. He started teaching them to dance with powerful single stepping, with the arm and leg going down together. We can’t remember the dances very well, but do remember one done with 5 dancers which eventually became the Molly’s Dance. About a year later the proportion of Ouse William who were becoming more interested in molly had increased and the real turning point came when we were invited, via Brian Kell of the Straw Bear, to perform at Lincoln Folk Festival. During this period we had also strengthened our links with 7 Champs. Several of us were involved with Open Morris and we hosted a Molly Dance workshop, run by the Champs, in Fincham. This can be dated reasonably accurately as it was the weekend that Sam gave birth to Finn, so 1991. With the invitation to Lincoln and the contact with 7 Champs we started to take molly seriously, took up the style of the school group and actually started to practise and make up dances. We chose a Molly, Derek, and added the Molly’s Dance and Mississippi Mud to our traditional repertoire. The Mississippi Mud was actually first developed as a morris dance but was quite easy to adapt as molly.

The festival performance went well but we were still basically a morris team but decided that some of our dance outs would be molly. It was at one of these that the earth moved. We danced on a Monday evening at Beachamwell and it obviously went down well. When we went into the pub Sam said, “We ought to do molly all the time because when we danced it went quiet and people actually watched.” We didn’t suddenly become a full time molly side but a number of us agreed with Sam and things started to move in that direction. It was after a visit to Heiloo, in Holland, that the crunch came. We had performed both morris and molly, as we had at several events in the previous year in the UK. A number of us had decided that the Heiloo visit would be the last time we morris danced but on return a small number of people objected. This lead to a rather unpleasant argument and three die-hards decided to leave. We had never been a particularly large group so decided that we needed to have some recruitment evenings, particularly as molly was danced with 8, rather than the 6 that many morris dances have. We ran a number of taster sessions in different venues around West Norfolk and the people who joined, plus the ten or so that we already had, became the basis of the side. As none of the newer people had morris danced there was now no going back.

We had very quick success in the folk world, dancing at a large number of festivals in our first few years. We were “the other” molly team on the folk scene, alongside Seven Champs, and very soon were the main team as their numbers dwindled. Of course other teams have come along since, some inspired by us, but for a while we were the main molly side at festivals and so we have performed at virtually all of the large ones, some on several occasions.

There have been so many highlights, but here are just a few:
“Death in the Fens” performances at Sidmouth and Towersey
Resurrecting Plough Monday in Norfolk
All the Winter/Mark Jones Days of Dance and their incredible sessions and impromptuness
Every time we did Mucky Porter with the story
Walking up the High Street in Chippenham and hearing one group after another dancing to our tunes
When our Molly John announced that we weren’t going to do Mucky Porter as we had planned on the big stage at Sidmouth as he wanted revenge for being rolled down a hill in a massive inflatable for his birthday.
The incredible following we had in the Auvergne- and dancing on the top of the highest mountain.
Loads of workshops, thousands of people, 16 sets at the same time at Whitby
Every time we’ve danced Strange, the best molly dance of them all.
Performing in front of huge audiences, especially a ceilidh spot in Chippenham
Performing in front of a tiny audience at Talbot House when they all cried.
The audience singing “Long Long Trail” as we danced in the Festival Hall
Every school performance, and running/taking part in the largest ever project taking traditional dance back to its roots.
Dancing inside the pubs at Whittlesey
Setting fire to the sticks of a border team who kept throwing them on the ground at the end of each dance

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