Pershore Not For Joes
by Dave Jones
At the Bromyard Folk Festival in 1985 I was approached by Cecily Lambourn who told me that she remembered black faced men dancing in Pershore for several years just before the Second World War. They called themselves Not For Joes but they dressed somewhat similarly to one of the Morris Teams at the festival. Cecily also recalled one of the members of the team and thought that he might be still alive.
On the 29th of October I was introduced to Bill Scarrott by Cecily’s twin sister, Freda Dutton, at the Heath1ands, Pershore. For this introduction and further information on other teams of Not For Joes I am much indebted to Cecily.
Bill Scarrott started dancing with the Pershore Not For Joes when he was eight years of age, two years before he left school at ten. “We went out before the First World War as youngsters, after the First world war as real dancers.” Bill said that they didn’t make it a full year, but that at this time of year (in October) they would have been really busy, practicing as often as ever they could. The big day was Boxing Day; Christmas Day was always very quiet, so they had to pick a quiet place and went round Defford. They danced into the New Year, “As long as it lasted so we kept going “.
They travelled far and would go off to Malvern or Ledbury; “we used to walk to the villages, as you came to a village so you danced”. Fladbury was mentioned. They didn’t sleep rough but used to put up in a proper lodging house. Bill told me of an occasion when they had danced in Worcester, in the old market opposite the Cathedral: on that occasion they had danced for about two and a half hours. On another occasion they had visited Ross-on-Wye when they had taken a tandem and cart to carry the sticks. When asked if he ever came across other groups he said yes many a time, groups like the “Mangle Worzels” and groups from out of Tewkesbury. On another occasion they attended a boar roast up by Station Bridge when they used to go around the tents at night pretending to pray.
Bill named two other members of the team as Jackie Haywood and William James. “They were brickies, carpenters, plumbers, ordinary working fellows, fellows off the ground, farmers – there were some good fellows among them. “There were about one hundred and one that wanted to join”. One of the main reasons that they went was that there wasn’t the work about at that time of year.” I can’t remember missing one, where I was, they wanted to be, that was the reason”.
The dances had been passed on by the old people. Bill claimed that the dances came from all over and that they had been passed on for hundreds of years. Although it became obvious that various tunes had been taken and used from time to time and that if we had watched anyone dance from village to village it would have been performed differently,” You could make any one dance last all night if you wanted to”. Bill still insisted that the dances did not change over the years, but always stayed the same.
The dances were usually for eight men although there had been occasions when more had danced. Bill’s minimum number of men altogether was eleven. This would have included eight dancers, the concertina player, the fiddler and the all-important collector. Cecily remembered them collecting in an old tambourine and also recalled them placing an old red coat and an old pillbox hat from the Crimean War down on the ground to show they were going to dance and to collect money in. Often the band was bigger than two and other instruments included tambourine, piccolo, triangle, tin whistle and bones. At the age of about eighteen or so Bill had taken up the fiddle and played for the side.
Altogether they performed “Many more than two dances”, but the favourite dance was always the Black Boy to the tune Not For Joe.
Bill’s version was
Not for Joe, not for Joe,
Not for Joseph if he knows it,
Not for Joe, not for Joe,
Stick him in the garden let him grow.
If I had a penny, I’d buy a penny gun.
Fill it full of powder and make the coppers run.
Not for Joe, not for Joe,
Not for Joseph if he knows it.
Not for Joe, not for Joe,
Stick him in the Garden let him grow.
There were other verses which were sung throughout the dance and Bill said that they would make up verses as they went along.
Raymond Roberts told Cecily Lambourn that he remembered the Not For Joes dancing at Eckington, Norton and Defford and singing:
Not for Joe. Not for Joe.
He shot at the pigeon and he killed a crow.
He also remembered a kettle drum, some with a melodeon, some with a concertina and fiddle.
Others remembered:
If I had a penny, I’d buy a penny gun,
Fill it full of powder and make the buggers run.
Nobbie Clark remembered it as:-
Na fa Joe, Na fa Joe
Na fa Josie if I know. (That’s all we done.)
then afterwards you’d sing
If you haven’t got a penny.
A Halfpenny will do.
If you haven’t got a halfpenny, God bless you.
He said he had danced at Pershore, Wyre Piddle, Upper Moor, Fladbury,
Charlton and Cropthorne.
Harvey Smith of Upper Eckington remembered:-
Na fa Joe, Na fa Joe,
He aimed at a pig and he killed a crow.
Bill Scarrott recalled “The dance started with the concertina. Then you’d stick up from there and away to go. Start striking sticks with dancing and song”. “The dance started in two lines, hit sticks with the sticks held at the bottom end. Strike sticks first one line then the other in time to the music. Strike as near as you could six inches down the stick”.
Bill went on to say that the sticks were always decorated by either peeling off the bark or if large canes were used they used to be painted. “Anything to do with the Black countries”, meaning African, “bi1ds animals or anything”. To each stick they attached a ribbon so that it could be carried on a belt. On one visit I took a selection of sticks with me. Bill selected a stick eighteen inches long with a diameter of about one and a half inches and said that would be suitable. Bill liked to use the very big bamboo canes but they used any wood “providing you could get a good clap out of it”. Bill remembered how they would walk through the woods to see what they could find. They nearly always performed stick dances, only occasionally performing a dance using one stick and one handkerchief, and rarely using two handkerchiefs. “Only when you couldn’t use sticks, like on a balcony”.
The steps were the same for all the dances “Two steps in a foot”. This turned out to be a right hop left hop with the free foot being brought across the other foot. “Not too far – only just in front of the other foot”. The pattern of the dances was very fluid; there were many figures that they could call upon, more than Bill could remember. Each figure had a name and although he recalled a good few figures he could not remember many of their names. The Bicycle chain for a progressive hey, a longing shank, a dance across and a circle. The various stick movements used for the different dances also had names. Double batting was the name for the movement where the sticks were struck with tips from right to left and butts from left to right. The dances too had their names, “The Black Boy” was danced to “Not for Joe”, “The Monkey Cocked his tail up” to “Keel Row Jack”. In the period of practice before dancing out the figures were always explained by using a crib score board.
Although I had been given an account of the costume on my first encounter with Bill, my wife and I visited him for the third time on the twenty first of November 1985 armed with various oddments of clothing and rags. Under Bill’s instructions we reconstructed the dress. A woman’s flowery blouse was decorated with long strips of rag about three-quarters of an inch wide of various lengths. “Rag or cord or anything like that was used”. Holes were made in the blouse, the strips of rag were threaded through with one or two knots tied on the inside to stop the ribbon pulling through. Three ribbons were placed on each arm, one on each shoulder, one about half way down and one just above the sleeve. More ribbons were placed on the back and the front of the blouse and the end of each ribbon was cut to ‘give a splayed ragged effect. “The plainer it is the better”. The rags were not doubled and paper was never used. Some used to wear a cut down ladies dress decorated in the same way. Ordinary trousers were often cut short before being tied at the knee leaving about three or more inches of the sock showing above the boot or shoe. “we wore ordinary working shoes, and don’t polish them”. A belt, often made of rag was worn around the waist, to this ribbons were attached as with the blouse. Instruments such as tin whistle or tambourine and sticks could be attached to the belt. “Don’t forget your bells, like the ones little babies used to have, about two bunches of them, put one on the leader and one on the person at the farthermost end, wear them anywhere around the waist”. On the head they wore an old tri1by, usually not decorated and had an open neck with no scarf or handkerchief. Their faces and hands were blacked with burnt cork and their nails were varnished with ladies nail varnish. They would often get the women to help them dress.
The concertina player used to also carry a larger bell which he used to start and stop the dances. The collector also carried a bladder which he used to strike the dancers and onlookers alike.
Cecily Lambourn recorded a description of a dress as worn by Nobbie Clerk. He said that he danced in the twenties and early thirties when a boy. They used to wear their mother’s dress over their shorts, a ladies hat with feathers and often wore ladies shoes. They too blacked their faces. Nobbie recalled that they were stopped by a police in 1932 who said that they would be summonsed if they did not stop and go home. Nobbie blamed the church for stopping the Not for Joe dancing as they resented the money being collected. The church introduced a house to house collection at the time.
Harvey Smith of Upper End Eckington remembered a troupe of Not for Joes from Pershore, with blackened faces, wearing any old rags with red tape around the knees, black trousers and a feather or two in their hats. He also recalled a concertina player, a pig’s bladder, Not for Joe being one of their tunes and the troupe dancing in sets of eight.
Bill Scarrott had not played the fiddle for twenty years or more so on one occasion I took my daughter to see him in order that she should be able to play some of his tunes on her fiddle, before long we had Bill on the fiddle and although, with his arthritic hands his tones were not altogether perfect, he recalled many old tunes including several that they had used for the Not for Joeing.
The favourite dance was “The Black Boy” to the Not for Joe tune. For the chorus the sticks were hit alternately by the two lines of men, singing at the same time. “John Peel” was another favourite dance and again they sang:-
Ken John Peel at the break of day.
His horse stood still and he ran away.
but with this tune they sang first then struck sticks. “You want heavier music to stick and sing at the same time, like the Black Boy”. The Monkey Cocked his Tail Up was danced to Keelrow Jack a version of the “Keel Row” and for this dance the stick movement was “Double batting”. On several occasions Bill played a polka tune which he referred to as the “Sailors Hornpipe”. A similar tune has been collected at Upton Bishop. On a later occasion he sang a version of the College Hornpipe. Other tunes they used for the dancing included The Ash Grove, This Old Man, and Pop Goes the Weasel.
Sticks were struck in a variety of ways depending on the dance. In the Clapper Dance the one side held their sticks with two hands to be struck in time with the music by the other line, then this was reversed. The usual form for a particular dance was to have a chorus of stick striking, always dancing at the same time and often singing, and then to perform the figures between choruses. The figures danced were always those called at the time, so there was never any one set way of performing a dance, but Bill insisted that the figures were the ones that had always been danced.
Even the figures were not always danced in the same way. The “Circles” were sometimes danced as half rounds, striking sticks half way round at the end of the phrase of music and dancing back, sometimes in a clockwise direction, sometimes in an anticlockwise direction, or danced as whole rounds, but this was usually done at the end of the dance. Sometimes the set was rotated as a whole with sticking continuing. A corner move might involve the four corner men changing places and reversing or all eight men changing places in turn. Another move entailed some men moving across the set and dancing three times round their opposite partner. In the “Longing shank” number seven in the set danced up the outside of the set and back down the middle to the position of number five. In the meantime all the other dancers moved into the set and back to one place round in a clockwise direction.
In a move that Bill called “Cross diagonally”, number two moved to face number seven, number eight moved to face number one, number four moved to face number five, and number six moved to face number three. This could then be reversed to place in the order two, eight, four and six, or the odd side could do a similar move to turn the set upside-down starting with number one moving to number eight.
They also performed more conventional figures such as a back to back and a long cross over. I carefully worked out the bicycle chain on Bill’s instructions using coins, this proved to be a progressive hey. Bill’s comment at the time was “a good many do it in different forms but nine out of ten’s wrong you know”.
In a move that Bill called “Dance across” number one danced to face number four, number four danced to face number five and at the same time his place was taken by number one, number five faced number eight while his place was taken by number four. number eight faced number seven to have his place taken by number five, number seven faced number six to have his place taken by number eight, number six faced number three to be replaced by number seven, number three faced number two to be replaced by number six and number two danced across to the vacant number one position to be replaced by number three.
When I felt that I had exhausted Bill’s memory I showed a video of a revival side dancing some Welsh Border dances. From his comments on these dances we confirmed a number of comments that Bill had said on previous occasions and established a few more points. He confirmed the progressive hey, and said that they held their sticks a little away from the body with the tips up. He recognised a version of the Pershore stick dance that I had taught as very similar to the “Monkey cocked his Tail Up”, with the double batting stick movement. On seeing a hand around movement he said that they used to do this either in twos or in threes but never in fours, “because you got too much across one another”. His comment on a stick movement with one handkerchief was that we used to do that.
On the use of handkerchiefs Bill explained “It’s all the same but with different material. Wave with one handkerchief and stick, put your stick over to your left hand and wave”. Wave outwards in time to the music with a small wrist movement at about eye level. Occasionally two handkerchiefs were used instead of a stick when you would advance to your partner and wave.
On New Year’s Day they used to go round from door to door dancing and singing:-
Bring out the master of this house and the mistress too, And all the little children that round the cobbler go.
Love and Joy come to you and to your wassail too.
Pray God send you a happy New Year.
A happy New Year. A happy New Year.
Nobbie Clerk told Cecily Lambourn about New Yearing and said that they used to start at about four to five o’clock in the morning when they would walk the streets. If they saw a light on then they would sing and be asked into the house when they would walk around the table three times.
“Christmas Day was Carol singing, Boxing Day was not for Joeing and New Year’s Day was New Year’s Daying, but the church stopped Not for Joeing, carol singing, they stopped the lot”.
Bill told me “They even stopped the carol singing; they can’t stop you Not for Joeing, because that’s the live thing.” “Don’t take no notice of nobody, nor what anybody says to you, take no notice, you carry on, do what you want to do, and you do the Not for Joeing the way I told you and it’ll give them something to think about”.
We invited Bill to the 1986 Bromyard Folk Festival, but sadly he died some little time before.
On Boxing Day of that year a group of us met as usual at the Butchers Arms and on Tuesday the nineteenth of January the first meeting of the “Old Wonder Not for Joes” was held. Since then we have revived old memories including that of Margaret Bramford who in her book “Lady Foley Regrets” had recalled –
Napper Joe, Napper Joe. Napper Josie 1f I know. If I had a penny
I’d buy a penny gun,
Fill it up with silver
And make the bobby run.
Oh, napper Jo, napper Jo. Napper Josie if l know.
Old Wonder Not For Joes
