Many Feasts and Fairs still continue in Cornwall today, for instance Padstow May Day at Padstow or Helston Flora Day . It was these more traditional feasts that have also given rise to ‘new’ feast days such as Trevithick Day in Camborne or Heritage Day in Bodmin, which fill the gap of those feast days which have died out, and continues this very Cornish tradition. The association of ‘furry dances’ with Feast Days also helps to date them. Perhaps one of the oldest mentioned is Allen’s ‘History of Liskeard’, which suggests the Liskeard fairs were a relic of the ‘Parish Feast’ which was transferred from August to June by Bishop Brantynbham in 1001. In fact the midsummer feasts date the Furry dance back to Pre-Christian times, meaning they could be older still. The dancing done on feast days seems to have been a mixture of processional dances, geese dances and mummers plays. Although Helston is now seen as the home of processional Furry dancing, Cecil Sharp noted Furry dances in St Austell, Grampound and Penryn, and Eleanor Hull refers to a furry dance from the Lizard in her book ‘Folklore of the British Isles’ which was published in 1928. And the processional dance ‘Bodmin Riding’ also known as ‘North Cornwall Furry’ is still at large at Bodmin Heritage Festival every year.
