Furry / Flora / Faddy / Helston Furry / Helston Foray / An Maidhrin Ruadh` / John The Bone
WordsEnglish REFERENCES
Carew
Survey of Cornwall 1602
Davies Gilbert
Some Ancient Cornish Carols 1823
Oxford Book of Carols
May 1887 "Procession preceded by a fiddler"
Gratton Flood
The Story of the bagpipe` (1911)
Cecil Sharp
Sharp Mss NOTES from 8/5/13
Dunstan
Lyver Canow Kernewek / Cornish Song Book, Reid Bros Ltd, London, 1929 p 31
Morton Nance
Cledry Plays, Federation of Old Cornwall Societies, Penzance, 1956: p 69
Joseph Needham
Journal of the English Folk Song and Dance society
(Vol3 p 1 - 45)
Inglis Gundry
Canow Kernow, Soundpost Publications, 1966 (see Bibliography) p 10
NOTES
Interviewed by MD in Oct 1987, Inglis Gundry commented that his instinct would place this/these versions of the tune not earlier than 16th or 15th century at the earliest. Four versions are given in Canow Kernow, Soundpost Publications, 1966 (see Bibliography):
A) as published by Davies Gilbert
B) as NOTESd by Baring Gould
C) As NOTESd by Inglis Gundry 1962/63
B) as sung by Skinners Bottom Glee singers
For Peter Kennedy 1956 for BBC
Baring Gould NOTESd the Furry from J Matthew 1888
NOTES from Corollyn, Cam Kernewek, Perranporth, 1993 (see bibliography).
Coinage Hall Dance
This was the traditional finale to the Helston Furry up until the First World War. One assumes that sheer number of dancers have now made this part of the Furry impractical.
INFORMANT: First observed by the authors at Helston on 8th May 1976
Miss Helena Charles, Truro, 1981. She ran a Celtic dance
School in Truro circa 1949. Her Aunt helped lead the
Furry until 1913 or 1914.
Carew seems to give us our first written reference in his survey of Cornwall 1602 but the concensus among folklore scholars seems to be that it is of pre Christian origins . Joseph Needham writing in the Journal of the English Folk Song and Dance society(Vol3 p 1 - 45) makes the hypothesis that such processional dances are Celtic or Romano/British in origin. Celtic links are further affirmed when you consider that the Furry was clearly an established tradition in the sixteenth century when the Cornish Language was still used to a wide extent in the West of the Duchy. The furry dance belongs to the era of Cornwall`s History that represents the high point of Celtic culture along with the Gwary Myr (miracle plays), geese dancing, wrestling and the use of Kernewek as a vernacular language. In her `Critical Study of the Cornish Ordinalia` Janet Baker draws a firm link between these different activities and the `Plen an Gwary`
Like any living tradition the Furry at Helston has varied in structure and presentation format over the years. Post cards in Helston Museum dating from the turn of the century hint at much higher stepping than is customary in the 1990s. Cecil Sharp visited Helston on 8th May 1913 and described the dance during the procession as `very irregular and slipshod`. He went on to say that they simply led their partners in a walk for the first part of the tune and swung their partners for the second. He was apparently told that in recent years each couple had danced hands across with the couple behind instead of swinging. However he obtained the following description of the dance as it had been done some 50 or ,60 years previously from a 78 year old gentleman called John Stevens . . . . . .
. . . . .Interestingly enough, Cecil Sharp`s description of the Coinage Hall dance differs quite markedly from what must be very nearly a contemporary one from our informant.
The furry has variously been called the `Furry` the `Faddy` and the `Flora`. The booklet published by the Helston Flora Day Association reaches a compromise by suggesting that the dance is referred to as the `FURRY` but the day as the `FLORA DAY`. The use of the word `flora` probably comes from the attempts of 19century classical scholars to rationalise the tradition in terms of the Roman `Floralia`. Use of the word Furry and Faddy is much older, Furry probably coming from the Cornish for fair, as in the Fer Mo or St Ives Pig fair and faddy from the Irish `Rinnca Fada` meaning a long dance. In `The Story of the bagpipe` (1911) Gratton Flood refers to this link between the faddy and the Rinnce Fada stating that the latter was `generally tripped to the accompaniement of the bagpipe` and goes on to say that the Furry dance itself was originally a pipe tune called `An Maidhrin Ruadh`. We have not been able to track this tune down and verify this but there are Irish tunes which resemble the Furry.
Although Helston is now seen as the `home` of the Furry Dance , furry dances of various different forms were in fact once quite widespread throughout Cornwall. Cecil Sharp NOTESd Furry dances in St Austell, Grampound, Penryn . Eleanor Hull, `Folklore of the British Isles`, 1928,refers one being done at the Lizard, and our own more recent informants insist that furry Dances were performed at Towns such as Newquay and Bude along the North coast
There is also a version of the Furry in Derbyshire which is attributed to migrant Cornish Miners, a suggestion that may be substianted by the widespread examples of the Furry being used in Cornwall and the solitary example of the Furry in Derbyshire.
