Ouse Washes Molly

Mississippi Mud Dance

The first dance we rediscovered was The Mississippi Mud Dance. Strange you might think it that we found a dance with an American tune, popularised by someone with the unfenlike name of Lonnie Donegan. Little do highland folk from places like .

Berkshire and Kent understand how we have influenced culture worldwide and beyond. When the great fenland clearances took place in the seventeenth century after the traitor Cromwell went back on his word and drained the fen, some hardy souls ventured out into the North Sea in their punt gun boats. From there they set sail like the Vikings of old and populated vast areas of the new world.

The Buchanan-Bewick tribe eventually settled in the southern states of what is now called the Do You Ess Ay. The land there reminded them of home and what made them feel most at ease was the similarity of local diseases like malaria to the ailments that they loved and cherished. Mark the Molly tells the rest of the tale when introducing the dance of the meeting with the last of the Mollihicans etc. Suffice it to say that the hand clapping really concealed a method of passing jewels around the village unseen by inquisitive uplanders.

But how did the dance return to the Ouse Washes I hear you ask. Perversely one of the Buchanan tribe stayed in the border village of Southery. It is said that an ancestor there started the dance group in that village, the only one known in bygone days to have had female dancers. They, the women that is, were known for being “as bad as the men”, Ely Evening News 1907, from account of Plough Monday fracas inside the refreshment area of the Cathedral. A later Buchanan, given to playing the saxophone, lived in a council shed in the aforementioned village and was famed throughout the music world for writing such classic songs as “Does Your Chewing gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight” and “My Old Man’s A Dustman”. He corresponded frequently with his American cousins and the song and dance was sent to him from the elders of the family. The rest is history. But really- Mississippi was our first dance and owed something to our previous existence as morris dancers. We had performed a stick dance to the same tune and some will realise that the hand clapping sequence has similarities with Ring O’ Bells from Lichfield.

The Dance

A dance for six or eight, or two sets of six or eight

• Bachelors Button (two on the spot, cross and turn)

• Clap and Swing (right partner, left partner 1, 2,3 4 right partner left partner 1, 2, 3 and swing)

• Stars and Stripes (middles right hand turn for eight then back, outsides down round clockwise)

• Clap and Swing

• Real (if six or eight then tops face down and others face up, dance when tops reach)

• Clap and Swing

• Zig Zag and Oh!