Annotation:Upton-on-Severn Stick Dance (The)

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UPTON-ON-SEVERN STICK DANCE. AKA and see: "Barley Brae (2)," "Two Sisters," "Twin Sisters." English, Morris Dance Tune (6/8 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AA’BB. A morris dance tune from the village of Upton-on-Severn, Worcestershire (about six miles north of Tewkesbury), and is the vehicle for a dance featuring dancers with sticks in what was once perhaps a ritual-combat sequence.

The tune, however, has an odd provenance, having been collected from 85-year-old Mr. Malon Hamilton of East Orange, Vermont, by English collector Maud Karpeles, who applied it to the (Welsh) Borders morris dance, one of several dances she published in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (vol. I part 2, 1933, 101-103). Hamilton called it "The Twin Sisters". The tunes the Upton side had been dancing to were not associated with the dances, but were employed variously and included "Bonnets so Blue", "Girl I Left Behind Me (1) (The)," "Yankee Doodle", "Keel Row (The) and other equally well-known tunes. Karpeles' source for the dance steps was an elderly fisherman named William Griffen (aged 80 in 1925) and family members. The dance had not been performed for several years, but Mr. Griffen managed to put together enough dancers to recreate the dance so that Karpeles could record it.

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Hear/see the tune played on youtube.com [1]