Molly Dance
Molly Dance
Where
East Anglia – Mostly Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, also including parts of Bedfordshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and Lincolnshire.
Context
Molly dancing was connected to Plough Monday customs. Plough Monday was the last day of the Christmas holiday. Plough Jags (men who worked on farms) would take the plough through villages and ask people for money, it was another cadging activity. However there was a dark undertone similar to Halloween’s ‘trick or treat’. If the householder did not give money then the plough boys might plough up their front garden – a public humiliation. Molly dancing was performed with or without a plough by men who worked on the land. The music, costume and dances were a bit ‘rough’ not a polished performance. They would have performed versions of common social dances of that time.
What
In its original form the dance was linked with poverty. Although we have references to dancers wearing ribbons these might have been strips of any fabric rather than expensive shiny satin. The Cambridge Chronicle (1851) records:
“Parties of five, dressed and beribboned in a most grotesque fashion to represent various beings, human or otherwise”.
The costumes seem to have a focus on humour or subverting (turning upside down) normal expectations by dressing in an unusual manner. Examples include dressing as red Indians, wearing straw (perhaps making a joke of ‘simple country folk’), or creating false hump backs. In the past it was socially acceptable to mimic people with mental or physical disabilities. The dancer’s disguised their faces using a variety of methods including masks, face blacking (see Border morris) and even goggles! These elements of disguise have been linked back to the roughness which went with the performance of molly dance. Black face in particular was a form of disguise used by people who were involved in political riots, as well as crimes such as poaching.
One of the most distinct elements of molly costume is the use of cross-dressing (see The Fool). Several members of the team would dress up in women’s clothing. This is likely to be where the name Molly comes from. In the past it often used offensively to describe a man who was gay or because he did chores which were seen was women’s work - such as cooking or washing. It is likely that the men dressed in women’s clothing not only because it would have been comparatively easy and cheap, borrowing from willing female relatives or buying second hand, but also because it would have been funny to watch the local men of the village wearing women’s clothes and dancing. There are similarities to today where we find cross-dressing by stag parties funny when the groom is dressed up as an unconvincing woman.
Molly dancers today either try to give a historical feel to the dance by wearing Edwardian style working men’s attire with additions such as: sashes, rosettes, rags or ribbons, or outlandish costumes which subvert our accepted dressing patterns; wearing loud, bright colours and clothes which are not normally worn together. Many teams use face paint as a token of disguise and many teams have at least one man dressed in women’s clothing, he is often known as ‘The Molly'
Key words
Black face, cadging, cross-dressing, customs, disguise, grotesque, mask/s, molly (the), plough jags, Plough Monday, rags, ribbons, rosettes, sashes, subvert.
