Rushbearing and Internet Archive

[watervole]

 I've just discovered the Internet Archive - an absolutely wonderful resource for old books.  Project Gutenberg has better quality text because the scanned books are gone over by volunteers to correct all the scanner errors, but if a book isn't on Project Gutenberg, then try the Internet Archive.  There are masses more books there, simply because

Comments

[sallymn]

I was planning to write up the Internet Archive as one of my final group of 100 Things... I've found some priceless old books there :)

[vjezkova]

I am excited to read about this rushbearing tradition! There is a plenty of rush here but I have never heard of read about such tradition here. You always offer something interesting:-)

[watervole]

The rushes were for the floor of the church and were replaced every year. Quite a few places had processions with the fresh rushes. It's a very interesting custom.

I went to see a rush cart a few years ago and had a great time.

[catalenamara]

I remember doing Maypole dancing in elementary school.

[watervole]

Which dances? I'll bet on barber's pole and plait and the plait going wrong half the time...

[catalenamara]

That sounds exactly what we did. I don't remember the name of the dance. But the plait was always going wrong.

The interesting thing was, I was living in a town on the Mexican border at the time, which was 95% Hispanic. (My name was Catalena there.) There were only two other white children my age in town, and I didn't much like either one of them. I can't imagine Maypole dancing was part of the culture - do you know if there's any tradition of it in Spain? We did folklorico dances as well; I remember having a fuchsia colored dress with several tiered ruffles. Must have looked weird on elementary school girls...!

[watervole]

Ah! I often wondered where your LJ name came from.

Yep! Plait is far far harder than people think. It requires total co-ordination between the children or it screws up beyond recovery. I know a cheat way of getting it to work, but this is the first time I've dared try the proper version. The older children can do it, but only if I do it really fast. (I'll explain another day why it has to be fast to work - their teacher was very surprised. She was certain that I'd have to do it slower to get them to cope with it) It's still 50/50 whether they can undo it successfully...