Esoteric Isle: The lore of the land - Kent folklore
Columnist Anna Willatt speaks to a crew of folklore enthusiasts who resolutely uphold the traditions of the county with some seasonal events
Kent is moving into its show-off months, with hedgerows bustling with life, apples, hops and grapes maturing in the sunshine of our green land. As Jo Fletcher, co-founder of Whitstable’s May Day, now in its 50th year, explains, “all the spirits of nature need to be appeased and cheered up”.
Back in January I dragged a friend to Sandwich to witness first-hand what they call Hooden Horses, not fully appreciating the niche provenance of this tradition with its home in east Kent. These slightly alarming hinged-jaw horses acted as the prompt for this article – my guides into Kent’s rich folklore.
Imogen Tinkler, co-owner of foraged-food company Bangers and Balls, explains her love of the cheeky mares who have been given a home at Broadstairs Folk Week, in its 60th year this year. “My favourite piece of Kent folklore has to be the Horses. They’re strange, spectral creatures. I love how they clatter and that they’ve been around for centuries,” she says.
In 1909, antiquarian writer Percy Maylam published The Kent Hooden Horse, about the tradition’s deep roots in Thanet. The oldest remaining Horse in Kent belongs to St Nicholas-at-Wade Hoodeners. James Gaunt, creator of Margate’s Bower Street Morris, shares that “it was carbon-dated once, and it was from the early 1800s”.
Whitstable’s Jack In The Green
Enough horsing around (for now), let’s meet some of the faces keeping Kent’s illustrious folklore alive. If you speak to anyone in these circles in Kent, one name will keep coming up – Whitstable’s Dixie Lee, who, along with her daughters and Oyster Morris, brought the town’s Jack in the Green back to life in the 1970s and has kept him dancing ever since.
Laura Bailey, dancer in Bower Street Morris, says: “Folklore needs people to carry on doing it. It doesn’t just happen by itself. But you have someone like Dixie, who says ‘No, it’s gonna keep going!’.”
Since revitalising the tradition, Whitstable’s Jack in the Green has kept growing organically with a ‘yes and’ approach. Take the addition of Boris the Bear – a happy accident of someone once showing up in full bear suit years back and chasing policemen around town… and now returns every time.
This May Day (5th May) the team are preparing for their biggest party yet. The celebration is for everyone, from kids playing up at the castle to those having their ceremonial Babycham halfway through the spectacle. It’s a riot of folkloric strands, with James Gaunt starting his day searching for hedgerow hawthorn flowers as ‘sprigs of May’ to cover the Jack and spruce up the Morris dancers before embodying the big man himself.
“It’s kind of horrible every year,” admits James. “It’s scratchy and there’s sticks poking my eyes, bits falling down the back of my neck, trying to pierce my face. But it’s magical once you get in and give Jack a shake.”
“When he comes round the back of the Duke [of Cumberland pub], there’s something magic,” agrees Dixie. “Jack’s a living character, isn’t he?”
Hayley-Mae Taylor, of Yew Tree Holistics
Kent magic came out strongly in my conversation with Canterbury healer Hayley-Mae Taylor, of Yew Tree Holistics. Her introduction to local folklore was at the “supremely sacred St Martin’s church with my university class while studying old English texts such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”.
This experience left her “pretty desperate to know as much as possible about the deeper unseen vibrations of this magical landscape” and has led to explorations of spaces that tell of the “harmonies and friction of Celtic pagan living and Catholic influence”, such as the Holy Well at Harbledown, also known as the well of the Black Prince.
After all, our county’s lore is deeply influenced by the water around us. Imogen at Broadstairs Folk Week tells me tall tales of the Thanet Serpent that lurks around the isle before we chat about the festival, which will take over the town in mid-August.
It was started by the late Jack Hamilton in 1966 with a caravan and tent in Pierremont Park and this year celebrates six decades of folk culture with 400 events across more than 20 venues. The line-up includes legends like Lindisfarne, Eddi Reader and Martin Carthy with Eliza, along with global acts such as Bangladeshi folk-fusion Khiyo and Zimbabwean rhythms from Gorora Sounds.
But Folk Week is more than music. “It’s where folklore walks the streets – Broadstairs becomes something extraordinary: a place where the past and present dance together.”
Tradition, chaotic, intricate, alive, exuberant, reinvented and persistent are the terms most mentioned about Kent folklore. As Imogen muses, it’s “not something that belongs in a museum”. With the reinvigorated interest in folklore through Weird Walk, artist Ben Edge (interview on page 18), Charlie Cooper’s Myth Country and the Neo Ancients festival in Stroud, I wondered whether folklore was on a golden plinth at the moment and hard to get into if you weren’t born in or had the right Arc’teryx Gore-Tex jacket.
James Gaunt shares a story of enquiring about joining a Morris dancing group and being rudely shut down. Since that experience, he has been deliberate in making Morris dancing inclusive and accessible to all – “I want to dismantle those barriers as much as possible”. His dance group Bower Street Morris run a quarterly folk club night called A Night for Weird Folk at Margate Arts Club (next on 24th May). “Everyone’s obviously welcome. Some of the people that come know a lot about folklore and are into the folk scene. But a lot of people just come as it’s a fun night!”
Image credit - Tim Hinchcliffe
Kerry Fletcher, one of Dixie Lee’s daughters and founders of the folk/hip-hop dance company Folk Dance Remixed recalls: “When I started at Oyster Morris, we got a huge amount of kickback from men, specifically saying women shouldn’t dance the Morris. We all pointed out again and again that if women hadn’t danced the Morris during the wars there would be no Morris today.”
Luckily, times are changing thanks to the perseverance of Kerry, James and many others.
My takeaway is that there’s no right or wrong way to approach folklore and folk customs. This land is yours and ours. It’s worth remembering that customs such as May Day are not just a celebration of Earth but also a workers’ holiday. In that there’s a sense of rebellion – this is no twee knees-up.
As James sums up: “It’s about mocking the masters and creating a new world order. It’s about shutting down streets. That always feels really pertinent, the luxury of letting people walk down the middle of Whitstable High Street without dodging a giant 4x4 down from Islington.”
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