Презентация «Необычные праздники и традиции Англии, Шотландии и Уэльса»

Used resources: Woodlands Junior School, Hunt Road Tonbridge Kent TN10 4BB UK http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/

Calendar of unusual Customs and Traditions in England, Scotland and Wales

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January

Twelfth Night Celebrations - London

Twelfth Night is an annual seasonal celebration held on the Bankside by Shakespeare's Globe, in London. It is a celebration of the New Year, mixing ancient Midwinter seasonal customs with contemporary festivity. It is free, accessible to all and happens whatever the weather.

To herald the celebration, the extraordinary Holly Man, the winter guise of the Green Man, decked in fantastic green garb and evergreen foliage, appears from the River Thames brought by the Thames Cutter. With the crowd, led by the Bankside Mummers, the Holly Man 'brings in the green' and toasts or 'Wassail' the people, the River Thames and the Globe (an old tradition to encourage good growth) with the London Town Crier.

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The Mummers Play

The Mummers then process to the Bankside Jetty, and perform the traditional 'freestyle' Folk Combat Play of St. George, featuring the St George, Beelzebub, the Turkey Sniper, the Doctor, Clever Legs, the Old 'Oss and many others, dressed in their spectacularand colourful 'guizes'. The play is full of wild verse and boisterous action, a time-honoured part of the season recorded from the Crusades.

Plough Monday

The first Monday after Twelfth Night is, a day when ploughmen traditionally blackened their faces and marked the end of the Christmas period for the agricultural communities.

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Straw Bear Festival Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire

The Whittlesea Straw Bear is maintaining the folklore tradition of parading a man dressed in straw around the streets near to Plough Monday. The Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival takes place every January.

Easter

April

In 1570, to encourage good neighbourliness among parisherners, Lady Scudamore arrange for five shillingsworth of cake and ninepenn'orth of ale to be provided every Palm Sunday in four Herefordshire churches. Nowadays small biscuits stamped with the image of the Pascal Lamb and the words ' God and Good Neighbourhood' are distibuted at the church doors after the service. In a ceremony that dates back hundreds of years, 21 widows are given money and hot-cross buns after the church service

The Bacup Nutters Dance traditionally takes place on Easter Saturday in the small Pennine town of Bacup. Each year a team of folk-dancers with blackened faces dance through the town from boundary to boundary.

May

May Day

The first day of the month of May is known as May Day. It is the time of year when warmer weather begins and flowers and trees start to blossom. It is said to be a time of love and romance. It is when people celebrate the coming of summer with lots of different customs that are expressions of joy and hope after a long winter.

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Morris Dancing

A traditional dance seen throughout the month of May is Morris Dancing. It is a traditional English form of folkdancing, performed by groups of men or women. Morris Dancing has been danced for hundreds of years, and passed down through the generations in the villages of rural England.

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Well-Dressing Derbyshire

Well dressing is one of Derbyshire's and the Peak District's best known, most popular and colourful customs. It dates back hundreds of years, and though there have been religious associations, the true origins remain unknown. Well dressing is the art of decorating (dressing) wells, springs or other water sources with pictures made of growing things.

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August

Scarecrow Festival, Kettlewell, Yorks

Life-size scarecrows are made and displayed around the village by local people in early to mid-August. A hugely popular event.

September

The Horn Dance

The ancient Horn Dance is an annual event held traditionally on the first Monday after the first Sunday after September 4th!

The famous Horn Dance is performed by six Deer-men who wear reindeer horns. The dancers follow a 10 mile course and perform the ritual in 12 different locations in and around the village, whilst the musician plays tunes such as “The Farmers Boy” and “Uncle Mick” on a melodeon, with accompaniment from a triangle.

Horseman's Sunday - Hyde Park Church - Third Sunday

The vicar of St John's Church appears before his congregation on horseback and blesses a hundred or so horses. He then leads a cavalcade of over 100 horses and riders to the church to celebrate horse riding in the heart of London.

At noon the horses begin to arrive in procession, lining up along the forecourt of the church and on Hyde Park Crescent for a blessing, before taking part in a ride-past and a presentation of rosettes.

Twelfth Night celebrations

• After the toast or 'Wassail' to the people, the River Thames and the Globe, the Mummers then process to the Bankside Jetty, and perform the traditional 'freestyle' Folk Combat Play of St. George. Mummers' Plays are one of the oldest surviving features of the traditional English Christmas. Mumming in England goes back for over a thousand years. Mumming is best described as early pantomime. The plays are based loosely on the legend of St. George and the dragon. The plays are intended to show the struggle between good and evil. There is much medieval sword play in the play and usually one character eventually plays dead.
• Cue the quack doctor who enters, performs a miraculous, albeit comedic, cure on the body and in the process neatly performs the symbolic act of reawakening the earth from the death of winter. At the end of the Lions Part Mummers Play, cakes distributed, by a character known as Twelfth bake, have a bean and a pea hidden in two of them. Those who find them are hailed King and Queen for the day and crowned with ceremony. The new King and Queen then lead the people through the streets to the historic George Inn in Borough High Street for a fine warming up with Storytelling, the Kissing Wishing Tree and more Dancing.

Plough Monday

As agricultural work was scarce in the winter, farm labourers disguised themselves, by blacking their faces with soot, to get money by dragging a decorated plough around the larger houses in the villages. As they dragged the plough they would shout out "Penny for the ploughboys!“Molly dancing is most commonly performed on or around Plough Monday. In the past, Molly dancers sometimes accompanied the farm labourers to dance and entertain for money. They blackened their faces with soot to disguise themselves so they could not be recognised by their future employers.

May Day

Traditional English May Day celebrations include Morris dancing, crowning a May Queen and dancing around a Maypole. On May Day, people used to cut down young trees and stick them in the ground in the village to mark the arrival of summer. People danced around the tree poles in celebration of the end of winter and the start of the fine weather that would allow planting to begin.

Morris Dancing

The dancing is very lively and accompanied by an accordion player, a melodian or fiddle player (Cotswolds) or a noisy band with a drum. Morris dancers wear different clothes depending on the part of the country in which they dance. They are often dressed in white with coloured baldrics (coloured belts) across their chests. There are usually six or eight dancers arranged in two lines or in a circle facing each other. The dancers may carry white handkerchiefs that they shake, or short sticks that they bang against each other as they dance. Some dancers have bell-pads tied at their knees, which make a loud and cheerful rhythm as they dance.

Well-Dressing Derbyshire

This ancient custom is popular all over Derbyshire and is thought to date back to the Celts or even earlier. The wells are dressed with large framed panels decorated with elaborate mosaic-like pictures made of flower petals, seeds, grasses, leaves, tree bark, berries and moss. Wooden trays are covered with clay, mixed with water and salt. A design is drawn and its outline pricked out onto the surface of the clay.

Used resources:

Woodlands Junior School, Hunt Road Tonbridge Kent TN10 4BB UK

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/