May Day Remembrance for Roy Judge
Roy Judge, 24 July 1929 - 17 November 2000
Morris scholar and dancer Roy Judge died on the morning of Friday, 17 November 2000 in a London hospital. Like a lot of people who study the morris in order to better understand the history and societal context of the dances, I am indebted to his wonderful work.
As morris historian John Forrest points out, teams in America who celebrate May Day owe a huge debt to Roy. It was Roy's life-long interest in May customs and his enthusiasm as a dancer with the Oxford University Morris Men and the Ancient Men that reunited May customs with morris dancing. The customs were brought to America by Roger Cartwright, a fellow Ancient Man, and as a member of Pinewoods Morris and other early American teams in the 1970s, Roger spread Roy's May Day revival throughout the United States.
Syracuse morris teams are in a lineage from the Binghamton Men, the oldest morris team in North America, learning core traditions from them. Roger Cartwright, a Binghamtom Man, passed along his knowledge of the May Day celebrations to Thornden Morris who, in their first year of performing in 1981, held a May Day celebration on Watertower Hill in Thornden Park. They and the Hounds have continued the custom to the present day.
This spring, the Syracuse teams dedicate their May Day celebration to Roy Judge.
- Tom Keays, 10 April 2001
See Mike Heaney's An Introductory Bibliography on Morris Dancing for a brief list of Roy's publications. [69, 70, 88, 175, 195]
Derek Schofield wrote this obituary which appeared in the Guardian on 5 December 2000
Roy Judge
Exposing the myths of morris dancing and Merrie England
Roy Judge, who has died aged 71, did more than anyone else to demythologise the early days of the 20th-century folk revival and the origins of May Day folk customs.
In a series of carefully researched studies, he examined such subjects as the work of Cecil Sharp, morris dancing in the theatre, Merrie England and maypole dancing. He overturned preconceptions, recognised the contribution of those who had been overlooked in previous histories, and examined the provenance of ancient folk customs.
Judge was born in Hastings, went to the local grammar school and read history at Oxford University between 1947 and 1950. After national service, he taught for 10 years at secondary schools in Peckham, south London, and Erith, in Kent, before becoming a lecturer in religious studies at Furzedown college of education.
By the mid-1970s, such colleges were seeking to expand their range of courses and, under the guise of pursuing research into social anthropology, Roy obtained a sabbatical to study folklore at the University of Leeds folklife studies institute.
His dissertation was published as The Jack-In-The-Green (1979), which set new standards of meticulous research in a discipline that has frequently attracted shoddy and fanciful scholarship (a second edition has recently been published). He then turned to Changing Attitudes To May Day: 1844- 1914, the title of his doctoral thesis. He took early retirement in 1980, and, significantly, much of his work was therefore completed purely for enjoyment rather than for career advancement.
Roy's interest in folklore was first stimulated by folk dancing as an undergraduate, when he took part in the May morning celebrations in Oxford. He later published his research into the origins of the singing on Magdalen College tower and the festivities below, commenting, in particular, on the Merrie England image as illustrated by the painting of the scene by Holman Hunt.
Merrie England became a recurrent theme in Roy's writing, and he used his first address as president of the Folklore Society in 1991 to illustrate its importance in the development of May Day customs. His other studies of May Day customs looked at the origins of plaited maypole dancing, May queens and the Helston furry dance. His dis coveries showed that many of the customs we regard as old are, in fact, quite modern, although often they had older, different forms. One of his papers contrasted the images of May Day in Tennyson's The May Queen and Flora Thompson's Lark Rise.
In 1959, Roy joined the London Pride Morris Men, and later the Ancient Men, comprising past and present members of the Oxford University morris team. Although fascinated by the south midlands, village-based morris dances of the rural working-classes that formed the basis for the 20th-century morris dance revival, Roy was also drawn to the other contexts for morris dancing in the 19th century, contexts which the folk revival preferred to ignore. These included morris dancing as part of the Merrie England movement, morris dancing on the stage and the pageants of showmen such as the pageant master, D'Arcy Ferris.
I n his studies of the early days of the folk-music revival, Roy examined the controversies that surrounded Cecil Sharp's work on folk dance, a topic that led him to a major re-assessment of the work of Mary Neal, an early colleague, and later critic, of Sharp. Always even-handed, Roy's study allowed both parties to emerge from the events with credit.
The study of the morris dances from Lichfield, Staffordshire, required even more sensitivity. There was no notation for these dances until they were sent (anony mously) in the 1950s to key folk dance enthusiasts, who performed them as genuine. It was often suspected that one of the enthusiasts had invented the dances, and passed them off as traditional - and Roy's research indicated this to be the case.
Although hesitant and cautious in conversation, he was a powerful speaker in public, with a dramatic presence and a strong sense of humour. He was always conscious of his readership, a mixture of academics and practitioners of folk music and dance, and he managed to present his arguments with academic rigour in an accessible style.
In addition to his presidency of the Folklore Society (1990-93), Roy also served as vice-president, and was awarded the society's Coote Lake research medal. He was an assistant editor of the English Folk Dance and Song Society's folk music journal, and a strong supporter of that society's Vaughan Williams memorial library, where much of his research took place.
Everyone who came in contact with Roy was touched by his generosity, humanity and ability to see good in everybody and everything. He was always willing to help younger researchers and was an inspiration to many.
He is survived by his wife Betty, daughter Elisabeth, and sons Peter
and Derek.
• Roy Edmund Judge, folklorist, born July 24
1929; died November 17 2000
This article by team-mate and friend, John Hawkins, appeared in the January 2001 issue of the Morris Dancer.
ROY JUDGE: a personal recollection
"Well, isn't this nice?" I hold a mental image of Roy, looking around in childlike delight as he enters the Pearly Gates: suddenly spotting some old friends, he raises his arms in amazed, joyful salutation. "Webber! Francis! Lionel! Russell! Kenneth! Bill! Wonderful, wonderful! Who else is here?"
For Roy, every new encounter and experience was something to be relished in the present moment and cherished in the memory. "It's always different!" he would exclaim, as the morris men performed for the benefit of a commercial television crew or an inquisitive flock of sheep.
I first knew Roy in the late 1940s when, as a shy undergraduate, he accompanied his girl friend Betty Jones to meetings of the Oxford University Cecil Sharp Club. Not for him, in those days, the beery Saturday evening outings of the newly revived morris side. It was a good ten years before he took up the morris as a member of the (relatively) sober London Pride: he then very quickly made up for lost time.
Invited by me to join a camping tour of the Ancient Men - OUMM in travelling mode - he rarely thereafter missed an opportunity of going on tour, often twice or even three times a year for the next forty years. Roy being one of those rare people who manage to get through life very happily without the encumbrance of a motor car, it was often my privilege to act as his chauffeur on these occasions, and as the years passed our friendship matured. He always liked to arrive at tent-erection time, in order to claim his traditional post by the door: "Chaps are nice, but they're only human", he wrote to me in 1995. (One memorable occasion when Roy demonstrated that he was only too human himself was when he tried to set fire to my brand new Fiat 124 Estate outside Beverley Abbey with one of his horrible roll-your-own cigarettes, a habit shortly thereafter discarded, I am glad to say).
To further his career in teaching and teacher training, Roy read for a postgraduate diploma in religious studies, and became interested in the supposedly religious ancestry of the ceremonial seasonal dance. I recall our giving a joint lecture/demonstration to a churchmen's group some time in the early 1970s, based on the accepted 'immemorial past' concept of that era. It was at about this time that Roy, as an historian, began to question that concept by investigating the documented history of the Oxford May Morning tradition. His subsequent work in related fields rendered obsolete most previous English folk studies.
By a kind of natural progression, Roy became involved in the Folklore Society, succeeding to its Presidency, and eventually gaining the prestigious Gold Medal of the EFDSS for his services to folklore. On that occasion I had to twist his arm for a copy of the citation. It came with his scribbled comment: "Humbling! . . . and Exhilarating!".
Roy lacked all vestige of the arrogance that seemed to afflict some of his fellow scholars. While he could speak with complete authority on a wide range of customs, he would never 'put down' another opinion, beyond the comment, made with a characteristic twinkle in the eye, that it was 'a nice thought'. "I do try to be indulgent/understanding" he once wrote to me, "I'm sure that's the great virtue of the historian - or should be - which is why it puzzles me when something gets in the way of understanding".
His refusal ever to cast judgement belied his surname: he was a constant example to us weaker mortals in always finding something good to say about other people. He was a creator of community. As one morris man has put it: You wanted to be part of something that Roy was part of. Optimism was at the core of his personality; that and a humble sense of service to others. In camp, his self-appointed task was to clean the men's black shoes, with the care and yes, reverence, normally associated with polishing altar silver. (When the men were in Japan, staying at one of the country's top hotels at the personal invitation of the Crown Prince, he performed this task one morning in the main foyer, to the bemusement of the other residents).
Others more qualified than I can testify to the painstaking rigour of his research work. As a dancer he was blessed with a seemingly inexhaustible reserve of physical energy: well into his seventh decade, to the amazement of many a spectator, he would take part in every dance when younger men were flagging.
When prostate cancer was diagnosed, he made it known that he would 'befriend' the disease rather than fight it. He would accept such treatment as seemed reasonable, but he needed to conserve his energy in order to fulfil a specific task, which was to complete a new work on Cecil Sharp. The first draft went to the publisher on the eve of his final bout of hospitalisation. He spoke of entering a period of "gentle, thankful and (I hope) graceful decline". At his bedside was the stack of morris tapes that sustained him when he became too tired to read. At his own and his dear wife Betty's request, more than thirty men danced at his funeral. What better way to celebrate a good life - and a good death?
Wassail and Farewell, you ancient man. In the words of the Celtic
prayer, May we meet merrily in heaven.
- John Hawkins, December 2000
The following emails remembering Roy Judge were posted to the Morris Dancing Discussion List.
John Frearson, Bagman, The Morris Ring wrote:
The Ancient Men - Oxford University MM have advised that Roy Judge died - very peacefully - in Guy's Hospital, London this morning [17 November] at 4.40 am.
John Forrest wrote:
Many people who knew Roy Judge have been offering sweet thoughts in his memory over the past day. The Ancient Men have been grieving profoundly because Roy was the founder of so much, and he was one of the strongest pillars of our strange and rambling edifice. Many people have mentioned his meticulous scholarship and his gentle nature. No one could question either. Many people have also said that Roy will live in our memories and in our hearts. That, too, is unquestionable. But he will also live on in our actions.
I know that every time that May morning comes round, there is a flurry of activity on MDDL about what dancing at dawn means, where it started etc., and eventually it is (re)discovered that the modern practice began at Oxford University in the postwar years [and was brought to America and subsequently disseminated by Roger Cartwright -- who among many other things is an Ancient Man]. It was Roy's cohort at Oxford who founded the custom (not Roy himself), but it was Roy's undying passion for May morning and Jack in the Green and Maypoles and all things to do with May that kept it alive over the years, as generations of undergraduate dancers came and went.
This passion also led Roy into scholarship rather late in life -- he was in his fifties when he began postgraduate research -- and you see the thread of May customs running through it all. So while we should, indeed, be grateful to him for the wonderful scholarly treasures he has unearthed, let us also be grateful for his support of and devotion to dancing itself and to May customs.
I cannot think of dancing on May morning without thinking of Roy, and so I would like to offer a humble suggestion. Perhaps teams that dance at dawn, could in this coming year dedicate their dancing to the memory of Roy. That way he will be remembered in what we do and love the most, and what he loved the most. I am not making this as some grand or formal proposal, only as a thought for you to ponder. Roy would never push himself forward in some grand manner, and I would not do the same in his name. But the sun will never rise on May morning without my thoughts turning to Roy. Go in peace, friend.
Derek Schofield wrote:
Although a Morris dancer for 40 years (with the Ancient Men and London Pride) he actually came late to Morris dancing, and did not dance whilst an undergraduate at Oxford in the late 40s. And although many knew him as a dancer, it is for other reasons that many of us will remember him. As a researcher and writer , his contribution has been immense, tackling many of the issues in custom and Morris dancing that many people have known about, but few had researched in detail. There was the book on Jack in the Green, carefully - meticulously - researched (and recently reprinted). There was the whole relationship between Sharp and Mary Neal which carefully restored Mary Neal's rightful position as a founder of the revival. The Lichfield Morris Dances discovered in the 1950s - often thought to be composed by a revivalist - were researched by Roy with some clear conclusions to back up the hunches. D'arcy Ferris. The Plaited Maypole Dance. Helston. May Customs. He was also fascinated by those early days of the folk dance and Morris revival. There was a recurrent theme - to quote the title of a book by Hobsbaum and Ranger -- 'The Invention of Tradition', but also the clear connections between the 'invention' and the tradition that was there in the first place.
Roy's research of all of these topics - and others - have had an important influence on the ways in which we have viewed Morris dancing and customs in recent years. They were also researched with sensitivity (Lichfield) and even-handedly (Mary Neal).
Roy was on the Editorial Board of EFDSS's Folk Music Journal, and a President of the Folklore Society (he danced a jig as part of one of his Presidential addresses). he was awarded the Gold Badge of the EFDSS and the Coote Lake research medal of the Folklore Society.
More than all this, Roy Judge was a kind and generous man - with not a malicious thought in his head. He saw good in everybody and everything. He was a great encouragement to me, especially with the Kimber CD, and to many others. He was a good friend and he will be very sorely missed.