Last Saturday on our way to a concert at Ely Cathedral we bumped into a sight of 'middle-aged men bedecked in ribbons and bells, capering and jigging and clacking sticks in the air' or, in other words, Morris Dancing aficionados. As Jemima Lewis claims from the pages of The Independent, 'Morris Dancing is not like other hobbies. It inspires a unique mixture of horror, hilarity and bewilderment. Why aren't they embarrassed? Don't they know how mad they look? All the characteristics that we now think of as typically English (self consciousness, irony, a certain cool) are subverted by this least beloved of national traditions.' But then in a stroke of genius she turns 180 degrees as she goes on saying 'Yet Morris dancers have much to teach us, not at least about ourselves' and as we read on we learn that the English were once, before bureaucrats rationalised and modernised the country, a nation of 'prancing yokels' and that Morris dancers are to be regarded as 'fifth columnists, defending English eccentricity from within, heroes of the ancient and anomalous, in the citadel of the bland.'
I did enjoy watching them and their display of awkwardness, they gave our daughter a badge and explained to her that with such a badge she could be naughty all day. She was delighted.
I wonder whether we, Spanish people, would have the same courage when it comes to analysing our traditions with a critical eye.
What do you think?
