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Robin Hood

Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography

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Robin Hood
Outlaw or Greenwood Myth

Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture

Life in a Medieval Village

Medieval Folklore

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The Power of Myth
Joseph Campbell

Mythology
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Holiday Symbols

Morris dancers at Whitsuntide, from Chambers*

Whitsunday is a feast (holiday) of Christianity which commemorates the Descent of the Holy Ghost (Holy Spirit) upon the Apostles of Jesus Christ, fifty days after his resurrection at Easter, and ten days after the Ascension, as described in the New Testament in Acts, 2. Most Christians recognise this event as the birth of the Church.

It is also known as Pentecost because this event took place on the ancient Jewish feast called the ‘feast of weeks’, or Pentecost (Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:10). The Roman Catholic Church believes that as a Christian feast, it was celebrated as early as the 1st century and was mentioned by the ancient writers St Irenæus (c. 130 -  202) and Tertullian (c. 150 - 160 - c. 220 - 240).

On Pentecost, the Apostles received the gift of glossolalia, or ‘speaking in tongues’, a phenomenon associated with many religions. Actually, it was really an example of xenolalia, because there are two kinds of speaking in tongues: xenolalia (speaking in a foreign language) and glossolalia (speaking in gibberish, or at least in a tongue no one else understands). Today, Pentecostal Christian churches, which are so named because they emphasise the Holy Spirit in each individual, continue the practice of speaking in tongues and celebrate Pentecost as the anniversary of Jesus’ disciples’ being filled with the Spirit.

Pentecost (Pfingsten in German), comes from the Greek Pentékosté, meaning ‘the fiftieth’ (day after Easter) and originally referred to by the Hebrews as Shavuot, celebrated after seven full weeks, on the fiftieth day after Passover (the second day of Passover, on the 16th of Nisan, is the first day of counting the Omer).

The original Jewish festival was a harvest-time feast, associated with celebrating the first-fruits of the spring grain harvest. However, the Christian festival at first did not have those connotations, until much later when ancient pagan springtime festivities became ‘grafted’ onto it.

In English it is known as Whitsun, Whitsunday, or Whitsuntide (the suffix -tide being Old English for ‘time’), because of the white garments worn this day by those newly baptised on the vigil (or eve, evening before), which was one of the main times for baptism. In Old English the term was already known, as Hwita Sunnandæg. English is the only language of Western Europe to have a special word for Whitsuntide, but throughout Western Europe the time was one of much celebration, more than its religious significance would suggest.

Legend says that King Arthur held his most magnificent court at Whitsuntide:

Then King Arthur removed into Wales, and let crie a great feast that it should be holden at Pentecost.  
Sir Thomas Malory, Mort d'Arthur, Ch vi

 

In Chapter ccxviii, Malory adds, "So King Arthur had ever a custome, that at the high feast of Pentecost especially, afore al other high feasts in the yeare, he would not goe that day to meat until he had heard or seene some great adventure or mervaile. And for that custom all manner of strange adventures came before King Arthur at that feast afore all other feasts."

Other monarchs followed suit and it was always a season of “tilt and tournament” as Chambers calls it – a season of jousts and festivities:

In somer at Whitsuntide,
Whan knightes most on horsebacke ride,
A cours let they make on a daye,
Steedes and palfrays for to assaye,
Whiche horse that best may ren.
From a medieval romance by Bevis of Hampton

The Whitsun ale

Whitsuntide was probably identified with one of the great summer pagan festivals that pre-dated Christianity. It was celebrated in most parts of England with the ‘Whitsun-ale’, a special festival that featured Morris dancing. The event was so named because ale was the drink of choice; Shakespeare begins Pericles, the Prince of Tyre, with a reference to the ales:

To sing a song that old was sung,
From ashes ancient Gower is come;
Assuming man's infirmities,
To glad your ear, and please your eyes.
It hath been sung at festivals,
On ember-eves and holy-ales.

In the early 19^th century, a writer by the name of Douce described an ‘ale’ thus:

Two persons are chosen, previously to the meeting, to be lord and lady of the ale, who dress as suitably as they can to the characters they assume. A large empty barn, or some such building, is provided for the lord's hall, and fitted up with seats to accommodate the company. Here they assemble to dance and regale in the best manner their circumstances and the place will afford; and each young fellow treats his girl with a riband or favour. The lord and lady honour the hall with their presence, attended by the steward, sword-bearer, purse-bearer, and mace-bearer, with their several badges or ensigns of office. They have likewise a train-bearer or page, and a fool or jester, drest in a party-coloured jacket, whose ribaldry and gesticulation contribute not a little to the entertainment of some part of the company. The lord's music, consisting of a pipe and tabor, is employed to conduct the dance.

Whitsun ales might from Agapai, or love feasts of the early Christians. Boys and men often got drunk and rolled in the streets, young people danced, bowled, shot their bows. A tree was placed by the church door, and a banner placed on it, where maidens stood gathering contributions. A leafy place called ‘Robin Hood’s arbour’ was erected in the churchyard – probably for this reason, folklorist Nigel Pennick (The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992, 74) says that Whitsunday is the time for making love bowers and mazes. Over time, the ales became increasingly uproarious, which caused the  indignation of the Puritans, and they were banned in 1603, though they lasted through the interregnum in places. In Ireland, Whitsunday might have been a more staid affair, with the Irish keeping the feast with milk food, as among the Jews. A breakfast was had of cake and bread and a liquor was made by hot water poured on wheaten bran. Not quite what we might expect of the Irish, but in other ways Whitsunday was much like a wake from that country.

Whitmonday

The next day is celebrated as Whitmonday in England, Wales, Ireland, Iceland, Sweden, The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. The week beginning on Whitsunday (especially the first three days) is called Whitsuntide.

Whitsun Morris dances

And let us do it with no show of fear;
No! with no more than if we heard that England
Were busied with a Whitson morris-dance.
The Dauphin of France ridicules the English, in Shakespeare’s Henry V II.iv

Whitsuntide was not only one of the main seasons of festivity for those in Britain, it was also the main time for the Morris dance, the first records of which date from 1477 (it is mentioned in Renaissance documents in France, Italy, and Spain). The term was originally ‘Moorish dance’ and ‘Moresco’(Morisce; Morisk; Morisco) –  as it was derived through Spain from the Moors, the indigenous Berber people in North Africa  – and gradually the term was corrupted to ‘Morris’. The dance is mostly British but is also still practiced in Barcelona, Spain, where it is performed by females, as opposed to Britain where it is mainly danced by men and boys.

Chambers writes,

It has been supposed to be originally identified with the fandango. … in writers of the Shakspearian age, the allusions to it become very numerous. … it seems to have been very soon united with an older pageant dance, performed at certain periods in honour of Robin Hood and his out-laws, and thus a morris-dance consisted of a certain number of characters, limited at one time to five, but varying considerably at different periods.

The earliest records show that the two principal characters in the dance represented Robin Hood and Maid Marian (a version of the Roman goddess Flora, celebrated particularly on May Day), and there was also a frere, or friar (generally Friar Tuck); a musician, who was sometimes called a minstrel, sometimes a performer on the pipe and tabor (sometimes called Tom the Piper, as in the nursery rhyme), and a ‘dysard’ or fool. Often there was a hobby horse, the pagan origins of which are believed to be representations of a dragon, though the Celtic horse goddess Epona might be at the root. At times, a real African might have danced in the troupe, which was semi-professional and paid on the Sunday after May Day, as well as at Whitsuntide.

In the 1537 - 38 Kingston accounts of King Henry VIII (1491 - 1547), the wardrobe of the morris-dancers, then in the custody of the church-wardens, is mentioned as:

A fryers cote of russet, and a kyrtele weltyd with red cloth, a Mowrens [Moor’s] cote of buckram, and four morres daunsars cotes of white fustian spangelid, and too gryne saten cotes, and disarddes cote of cotton, and six payre of garters with belles.

Decline of the Morris dance

Before the English Civil War, the working peasantry often took part in Morris dances. The Puritan government of Oliver Cromwell, however, suppressed such festive pastimes – Christmas and May Day were two more of many suppressed festivities. In 1660, at the Restoration of the monarchy under Charles II (1630 - 1685), the springtime festivals began to be restored. Appealing to the monarch’s vanity, the commemoration birthday of Charles II was sometimes the excuse the smart citizens used to the authorities for the re-establishment of the ales.

Morris dancing continued in popularity until the industrial revolution, the commercial imperatives of which destroyed much of the social cohesion and leisure time that had formerly existed and have not since been restored. Ever since, in most of Western Europe, most of such traditional festivities have either died, have been idealistically but rather artificially revived as hyperreal simulacra of their former glory (very often promoted for the sake of tourism), or transformed into commercially oriented seasons.

Until recent times when Morris dancing has been enjoying something of a mini-revival, the practice lingered in Britain here and there. The folklorist William Hone (The Every-Day Book, or a Guide to the Year, William Tegg and Co., London, 1878; 1825-26 edition online) saw a troop of Hertfordshire dancers performing in London in 1826. Anne Elizabeth Baker, in her Glossary of Northamptonshire Words and Phrases (1854), wrote of Morris dancers as still working in that county. James Orchard Halliwell-Phillips (1820 - 1889), in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words (1846), also speaks of the Morris dance as still commonly practised in Oxfordshire, though the old costume had been forgotten, with only a few ribbons bedecking the dancers.

Today, there are three predominant styles of Morris dancing:

The Cotswold Morris, usually danced with handkerchiefs or sticks to embellish the hand movements;

The North-west Morris, somewhat military in style and often processional; from Lancashire, a county in the North West of the UK where women would dance in the street wearing clogs;

Border Morris, from the English-Welsh border, in which dancers wear rag clothes and blackface.

The Morris Federation

Who were the Moors?

The Moors is the ancient name for the indigenous nomadic Berber people in North Africa, who converted to Islam in the 7^th century. The name corresponds to the kingdom of the Mauri, Mauretania, which its last king Bocchus II willed to Octavian (Augustus Caesar) in 33 BCE, after which it became the Roman province of Mauretania. Mauretania lay in present day Morocco and Western Algeria. The name of Mauri was applied by the Romans to all non-romanized natives of North Africa still ruled by their own chiefs, until the 3^rd century CE.

Since the Mauri were a dark-skinned people in comparison to Europeans, 'Moor' came to be applied indiscriminately by English speakers to blacks, Muslims, Saracens, Persians, or Indians. Shakespeare's Othello was 'the Moor of Venice.' During the 17^th century, Africans were sometimes distinguished from others as blackamoors.

In 711 CE, some Moors invaded Visigoth Christian Spain. Under their leader Tariq ibn-Ziyad they brought most of Spain under Islamic rule in an eight-year campaign. They attempted to move northeast across the Pyrenees Mountains but were defeated by the Frank Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732. The Moors ruled in Spain, except for small areas in the northwest and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees, and in North Africa for several decades. The Moorish state suffered civil conflict in the 750s.

Source: Wikipedia

Just a few of the many European names that can indicate a swarthy complexion or African heritage include Blackmoor, Black, Blake, Blakey, Blackman, Blakeman, Brown (like Browne and Browning, could have indicated garment or hair colour, not skin), Crow, Crowe, Maurice, Merault, Moore, More, Morris, Morrison, Morse, Morce, Morissh, Moreau,  Mores, Moars, Morel, Moreno, Moretti, Morin and Morrin.

Who was America's Blackamoor Pilgrim?

The Chester Mystery plays

Under construction

During medieval times, when all but a few clerics were illiterate and had no access to the Christian scriptures, public amusements known as ‘mystery plays’ were one way that the Church instructed the people in Bible stories, just as the lives of the saints were conveyed in so called ‘miracle plays’. 

As early as the 10^th century in England, narrative ‘tropes’ were being performed in churches, and over ensuing centuries versification and theatricality featured increasingly. These dramas, or melodramas, profoundly influenced British poetry and theatre, notably those of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, including the Shakespearean tradition, as they continued after the Reformation, declining during the 17^th century.

Usually performed in churches, but also in the open air, in cemeteries, market-places, and squares, these religious performances were originally performed by clergymen in Latin, but increasingly were performed in the vernacular and from about the 14^th century were taken over by guilds, with different guilds becoming responsible for a particular piece of Biblical history. A 15^th-century development was the morality play, which dealt with subjects of personal salvation and the choice between good and evil.

Wikipedia’s article on the subject tells us: “There are four complete or nearly complete extant English cycles: the York cycle of forty-eight pageants; the Towneley cycle of thirty-two pageants, acted at Wakefield; the N Town cycle of forty-three pageants (also called the Ludus Coventriae cycle or Hegge cycle) acted probably in Lincolnshire or Norfolk, and the Chester cycle of twenty-four pageants. Also extant are extant, including two pageants from a New Testament cycle acted at Coventry, and one pageant each from Norwich and Newcastle-on-Tyne. There are three surviving plays in Cornish, and several cyclical plays survive from continental Europe.

“The cycles differed widely in content. Most contain episodes such as the Fall of Lucifer, the Creation and Fall of Man, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Abraham and Isaac, the Nativity, the Raising of Lazarus, the Passion, and the Resurrection. Other pageants included the story of Moses, the Procession of the Prophets, Christ's Baptism, the Temptation in the Wilderness, and the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin.”

The plays were often performed during religious seasons such as Christmas and Easter, and Whitsuntide was also a favourite time. Those at Chester, in Cheshire in the north-west of England, close to the border with Wales, became some of the best known in the land, and continued longer than most during the time of Puritan repression.

Whitsuntide in other countries

Under construction

 

Index of articles on folklore and other topics

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Folklore, customs, pre-Christian origins of: 

Epiphany  Candlemas/Imbolc  Hall Sunday  Collop Monday  Shrove Tuesday/Pancake Day

  Ash Wednesday & Lent  Mid-Lent  Care Sunday  Painful Friday  Lazarus Saturday

  Palm Sunday  Spy Wednesday  Maundy Thursday  Good Friday  Easter Saturday  Easter

Easter Monday  Easter Tuesday  Hocktide  Ascension  Rogation Days  Whitsunday/Whitsuntide

Corpus Christi  May Day/Beltaine  Lammas/Lughnasadh  Michaelmas  Halloween/Samhain

Martinmas  Advent  Christmas Eve  Christmas  More at Articles Index

Hundreds of feast days of saints, gods and goddesses at Wilson's Almanac Book of Days

Saint Martin and Martinmas (Hollantide)

St Valentine's Day  

Lady Day; strange Tichborne lore; the penitent thief

Poland's Dyngus Day, and other Easter Monday customs

Saints Medard and Swithin: rain prognostication

St James, folklore and the pilgrimage of Compostela

St Patrick's Day  St Brendan the Voyager

The Whit Tuesday Dancing Procession at Echternach

The 'Seven Sleepers' saints

The Horned God and Western Saints

St Ursula & the Bear Goddess

How are other ancient gods like Jesus?

The Virgin Mary as Goddess

Legend of the Moorish giant, Grifone; August 14 in the Book of Days