FOLK-ART AND ITS REVIVAL.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1016, 4 January 1911, Page 10

FOLK-ART AND ITS REVIVAL.

It is just five years ago since there happened on event which has since become a landmark in tho history, of that ■revival of folk-art iii England which is to-day' an accomplished fact, says a writer, in an English paper. This event was tho coming of two country men to Londoa.,to show a group of.working girls the morris dances which were in tho olden days a part of the national life. The first dance learnt was called "Bean Setting," and the first song was of "Seed Sowing," and to-day the harvest stands high and golden in town and countrythroughout tho length and breadth of England.

Folk-music is of the peosle, and it appeals to tho simple, sincere, and genuine emotion which is always alive in simple folk, even when overlaid by the insincere and artificial music which is all wo usually mink them capable of standing.-To-day in England there are factories where dance and song are as much a part of the life as tho actual work done in the; factory. The Board of Education has made tho. practice of morris dancing and the singing' .of folk-songs, part of the school curriculum, and last spring in more than one village the schools were dosed for a competition, attendance at which, was reckoned as part of the school course. '

Quite recently at Barford, near Warwick, a village fete, which seemed, perhaps, more significant of what tho future will bring 'than anything which has as yet happened, was celebrated. On a beautiful lawn with a background of trees, thero were dancing some hundred children, some of them from the village schools some of them on a days visit from London, and witli them were dancing a band of stalwart ploughmen and other workers on tho land, and a set ot country girls also at work in the neighbourhood. The dancing and singing lasted during nearly four hours, and after tea, when the dancers should have dispersed to their various homes, the dancing broke out again in the parish - parlour, and was well on towards supper time before thov finally left for home,. giving three chee'rs, over and over again, lor 'Hip clergyman of the village, whose guests they were. „,,.,■ 'i Tt is honed that Stratford-upon-Avon, with its theatre and its Harden, will become the centre of this folk-art revival in the country, and that not many years hence no boy or girl will leave our national schools without an .equipment of tho English dance and song, and that in the nest generation the yillaee green and tho .town parks will sen the boys and girls and tho young men and young women dancing and singing and acting.