Bean Setting

This Sunday, 23rd June 2024, is the centenary of the death of Cecil Sharp. Now whatever you may think of Sharp (and for all his flaws, he really wasn’t as bad as some have tried to paint him) it really can’t be denied that he made the most extraordinary contribution to the documenting of English musical traditions. If you play English traditional tunes, or sing English traditional songs, it’s pretty much inconceivable that your repertoire doesn’t include something originally collected by Sharp. You’ll find plenty of tunes collected by Sharp on this blog; and a great many songs collected by Sharp on my A Folk Song A Week site.

Sharp’s first proper encounter with folk traditions was on Boxing Day 1899, when he saw Headington Quarry Morris Dancers perform outside his mother-in-law’s house in Headington. The next day, he noted down five dance tunes from the side’s musician, the anglo-concertina player William Kimber. These were the first folk tunes that Sharp collected; and when, a few years later, he started researching the morris, and promoting its revival, Bill Kimber proved to be an important source, and a staunch and loyal ally.

Thus it is entirely fitting that the Sharp centenary will be celebrated on Sunday in Headington Quarry. At lunchtime there will be morris dancing at the Mason’s Arms, with the side’s guests, Mr Hemmings from Abingdon, and Taunton Deane from Somerset. Then, in the afternoon, there will be an event in the Village Hall, featuring talks from Sharp’s biographer David Sutcliffe, morris historians Mike Heaney and Keith Chandler, and singer, musician, researcher, and all round good bloke, Brian Peters. We’ll be celebrating not only Cecil Sharp, but Bill Kimber too. So, as we make our way from the Mason’s to the Village Hall, we’ll be pausing at Kimber’s grave in the churchyard of Holy Trinity, and laying a wreath in his memory.

One of the dances which the Quarry side danced at Sandfield Cottage on that fateful day in 1899, was ‘Bean Setting’. According to Bob Grant’s article ‘When Punch Met Merry’  – published in the Folk Music Journal, Vol. 7, No. 5 (1999), so accessible to all EFDSS members – Bill Kimber thought that ‘Bean Setting’ was the first dance they did that Boxing Day, while Sharp remembered it being ‘Laudanum Bunches’. Either way, these days ‘Bean Setting’ – which veteran Quarry musician John Graham always claimed was the oldest morris dance – is always the first dance of the set. So come along to the Mason’s Arms for midday this Sunday, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to see it.

Bean Setting

Played on C/G anglo-concertina

Cecil Sharp. Copyright English Folk Dance and Song Society.

William Kimber, from The Morris Book I by Sharp and MacIlwaine, via Wikipedia.