Red Cuthbert danced out for our third anniversary on Saturday 11 April 2015, and our recent tenth anniversary brought it to mind. It was the first time I danced out with Red Cuthbert, a great introduction to morris dancing taking in locations around Bedford.
Starting the day
We mustered at The Pavillion in Bedford park (where we plan to dance again soon!). That’s where we took this video of one of our self-penned dances, Raggle Taggle.
You’ll notice we still wore the original costume at the time. Starting there also meant we could begin the day with a nice cup of tea!
Progressing to pubs
From Bedford Park we moved on to continue morris dancing at D’Parys. That’s where we captured another of the videos on our YouTube channel: Drowsy Maggie (another one we wrote ourselves). We also captured some beer, very refreshing on an unusually warm day for April.
Besides Raggle Taggle and Drowsy Maggie, dances that day included Cuthbert’s Brawl from our own tradition. We also performed Bluebells, a cotswold dance from the Adderbury tradition, and Constant Billy from the cotswold village of Headington.From the border tradition we danced Brimfield. Our set that year also included Jenny Lind and The Vandals of Hammerwich, traditional dances from the city of Lichfield that are somewhere between border and cotswold.
Leaving D’Parys we moved on to our home pub, The Three Cups on Newnham Street, where the landlady Bev had sandwiches and more beer waiting. So we refreshed ourselves, did some more dancing, and settled in to celebrate the first three years of Red Cuthbert Morris.
