Black Sheet

In 1997 we started working on another dance based upon fenland history. In the 1650s Cromwell finally burned all his bridges with the people that he had grown up with and, like Charles 1st, decided that a way of making loads of money was to drain the fenland and thus produce the most valuable farmland in Europe. The local people would not help and, of course, did all they could to undermine the work, sneaking out in the night to damage the newly dug dykes etc. The work was mastermind by Cornelius Vermuyden from Holland, but much of the backbreaking labour was carried out by prisoners of war. Our dance, the Black Sheet, comes from a true story of the time, reflecting the new “immigrants” in our area.

Some of the prisoners of war came as a result of Cromwell’s ethnic cleansing enterprises in Ireland. One prisoner was named Johnny O’Rorke, a member of a Traveller family from Southern Ireland. One night he and an associate escaped and spent several days on the loose. One night, hungry and desperate, they reached a pub which stands on a promontory of land where the Little and Great Ouse meet. This pub was run by a Dutch couple. O’Rorke and his friend murdered the landlord and landlady and made off across the fen with as much money as they could find and all the provisions they could carry. Eventually they were caught, probably on Porter land, near to Southery. Punishment in those days was both swift and bizarre. If you killed someone from another country you were killed in the manner of that country. They were brought back to the inn, The Ship and Brandon Creek, and executed in the Dutch manner. This entailed placing them on a barge in the river, which was tidal at that time. There they were put at high tide, a beam was placed across the river and nooses hung from it round their necks. As they tide went out they were slowly hung. It is said that the beam was then cast into the river and for many years was a nuisance to boats that kept snagging on it. It was eventually removed and used when the inn was expanded. So there it probably still is, holding up a ceiling.

Other members of the O’Rorke family were held in the same prisoner of war camp and eventually, when the work had been completed, they were set free. They remained in Britain as Travellers well into this century. The family symbol on the back of their trailer was a white noose on a black background, to remind them of the lurid events surrounding the death of their ancestor. Every time they passed the Ship at Brandon Creek it is said that they placed a black sheet on the hedge in reminder of Johnny.

The task facing us when making up the dance was to reflect these events and we decided to have Johnny O’Rorke and his mate with black sheets over their heads, moving around their dancers through a range of figures until they are finally caught and hung. Happy stuff. It is the only dance for which we use an Irish tune; this is both to reflect the origins of the characters but also to celebrate the life of a good friend of many of us, a clown by profession called Jeremy Minnis of the Fenland Fool. He died recently and “The King of the Fairies” was the tune he played on his fiddle as he used his unicycle. He also lived very near to the spot where Johnny O’Rorke must have been caught.

On aspect of our development of the dance shows how quickly ideas can spread in the morris world. We actually taught the dance before we had ever performed it in public at an Open Morris workshop in St. Neots. Shortly afterwards someone reported to us that they had seen it performed by a group on the South Coast. We always teach our own dances at workshops and one supposes to a certain extent they become public property. We were approached by someone at a festival after we had performed The Mississippi Mud Dance once, who said, “You do that one as well do you?”. They had no idea that it was our dance. We don’t mind people using our ideas or even performing some of our dances as long as it is acknowledged who made the dance up in the first place.