Talk:Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

Antler confusion
"The horns are six sets of reindeer antlers, three white and three black. In 1976 a small splinter was radiocarbon-dated to around 1065. Since there were no reindeer in England at that date the horns must have been imported from Scandinavia.[4]"

s?

"The horns currently in use were brought from Constantinople (Istanbul') by Lord Paget, who was British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, in the 18th century, but there may have been horns in use long before."

Okay. So are the horns/antlers from Scandinavia or Turkey? Are they from the 11th century or the 18th? Or are there two sets of antlers? Or something else?

'But there may have been horns in use long before.'

Not sure what that means. It's a horn dance dating back to at least 1686, so presumably in the 17th century they weren't using the antlers obtained in the 18th century... Keefaz (talk) 18:29, 11 September 2023 (UTC)


 * The claim about the eighteenth century origin of the horns is apparently sourced to a newspaper article from the 1930s; the scientific analysis of the horns seems to have been published in 1980, and any sources predating that have been superseded are of little relevance for establishing the origin of the horns. (And at any rate a newspaper article is not an ideal source for this sort of claim.) Hutton's book published by OUP makes no mention of this story, but does quote a souce from 1686 which clearly mentions the use of reindeer horns in the dance; if there was evidence that new horns had been acquired in the eighteenth century when the dance was revived he would surely have mentioned it. There seems to me to be every reason to be suspicious of the Constantinople theory and I am therefore going to remove it Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:38, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Notes for reception/legacy
Without better secondary sourcing probably none of this is currently due for inclusion in the article, but in case more turns up: Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 23:59, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * As well as Thaxted Morris Men mentioned in the article, other teams to dance versions of the horn dance include Lord Conyers Morris Men (Sheffield), Pokingbrook Morris Players (New York), Vancouver Morris Men. It is danced at the Revels, and was featured in the Folk Festivals at the Royal Albert Hall.
 * One of the church bells at Thaxted shows the abbots bromley dancers on a relief