Evergreen

68
EVERGREEN Autumn
Above: Jester and musician.
GEORGINA HINE
Right: A striking black-andwhite
picture of the dancers
in the Market Place.
GEORGINA HINE
Far right: The troupe at
Blithfield Hall. GEORGINA HINE
Terry explains how some people
interpret their enactment as a fertility
dance. For them, “It’s like the rutting
season when you see the horns going
back and forward and the circling
part of the dance, where the female
teases the male.” Others in the village
regard it as a celebration of getting
the harvest in. Some people have
postulated it as an assertion of local
forestry rights. For Terry and his
troupe, there is no exact definition
of when it started, and what it
represents. He lets others draw their
own conclusions; his sole concern is
to see this tradition carried on.
Everyone would assume the antlers
used in the Abbots Bromley Dance
were deer, but they are in fact reindeer
so the mystery deepens. Reindeer
were extinct before Saxon times.
It seems the likely source of these
antlers came from Scandinavia. The
area around Staffordshire was settled
by both the Saxons and Danes. The
neighbouring River Trent would
have ensured a feasible route between
Viking settlements and Denmark and
Norway via the Humber Estuary.
When the second brown (antler) was
damaged, just over 20 years ago, it
was sent to Derby University where
it was carbon-dated to the year 1065
plus or minus 80 years, which raises
yet another conundrum for those
seeking a comprehensive explanation.
The day begins at 7.30am when
the antlers are collected from St.
Nicholas’ Church. They’re kept in the
Hurst Chapel under the supervision