'in 1857, William Hargreaves created a “Tunstead Mill” carnival dance troupe and the dancers delighted thousands of people annually at Easter week by their dancing in the street. A two-day tour on Good Friday and Easter Saturday often travelled as far as Rochdale and Crawshawbooth. Inevitably, objections from church-goers led to stopping the Friday perambulations, the early references to “Moorish Pirate Dance” recorded by one-time leader Arthur Bracewell in 1948 has frequently been seen as just a fanciful description by the creators of the dance but recently found correspondence from these originators reveal a surprising knowledge of “Cornish History”. An element of English history untaught at school it seems, but familiar to these individuals… reference to “Moorish” marauders who, for centuries searched the Cornish coastline and seized people as slaves. Descriptions of the kilts and turbans all relate to the Moorish Pirates and their “Dance of Mad Revelry” which certainly sums up the extravagant activity of our dancers'. as unusual as this is',
well speaking of unusual many will not have heard of another great UK tradition, penny throwing, and it hurts! it all started like this, in Honiton, a town in East Devon, there is a tradition, Honiton had a celebration after being granted a Royal Charter in the year 1221, which became an annual festival, in the early days, the landed gentry would climb to the upper stories of its buildings and throw hot chestnuts to the poor people below, but really was not much fun as they could be picked up easily, so what to do for some fun? throw red hot pennies instead! Because the elite found it amusing to see desperate people scramble for the pennies and risk burning their hands to catch them, in the video above Tom Scott made it to Honiton this year to witness the Honiton Hot Pennies ceremony for himself, when I mention it hurts, people have been scared by the pennies as they are so hot, and this is fun? well it appears to be!
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