Abbot’s Bromley is as likely a place as any in the county to preserve traditions of immemorial antiquity. It is situated not in, but on the borders of, Needwood Forest, and is one of the estates with which Wulfric Spot, Ealdorman of Mercia, endowed his foundation of Burton Abbey in 1002. Before that date it must have formed part of the possessions of the Ealdormanship, as its neighbour, King’s Bromley, continued to do down to the time of Edward the Confessor, after which it passed to the Crown.[1] The place has thus had a continuous existence, with singularly few vicissitudes, of some nine centuries at least. A good deal has already been said here about this dance, I believe;[2] but what I want to suggest to you to-day is that it is a dramatic form of the morris-dance, performed in the woodland characters of stags and huntsmen. Observe that the deer are evidently the deer of the lords of the manor, marked with their coats of arms, while the dance is the common act of the villagers as a body. The care of the property of the dance was entrusted to their official representatives, ecclesiastical and civil; the expense of the common cup was defrayed by common contributions at a fixed and equal rate; the money realised was devoted to a common public object. I believe the primary intention of the dance to have been the assertion of some ancient common right or privilege of the village in regard to the chase. Written records might be lost or destroyed: such an “object lesson” as this was a constant proclamation of their ancient rights to the whole village and to the “forraigners” who came to see it. It is just the same principle as caused little boys to be “dumped,” ducked, and beaten at the parish boundaries in the annual peram-
- ↑ Leofric, Earl of Mercia, died here. It appears in Domesday Book as having belonged to Harold T. R. E., his sole possession in Staffordshire, doubtless through his marriage with Eadgifu, Eadwine and Morkere’s sister. It then passed to the Crown; hence its distinctive name of King’s Bromley.
- ↑ Folklore, vol. iv., p. 172.
