Long sword dance

What it is

In this dance the swords are stiff rather than springy. Teams hold rigid blades of metal or wood. Dancers stand in a ring or a line and weave the swords together, passing one hilt over the next point until the blades grip each other in a locked pattern, often a star or a knot. Figures and step patterns differ from team to team. The nearest relation is the rapper dance of Northumbria, whose swords are flexible spring steel. That makes the two dances feel quite different, though both come from a wider European family of sword dancing.

Origins and history

Sword dances in which the blades are locked together have been documented across northern, western and central Europe. Records go back at least to the fifteenth century, and perhaps to the fourteenth. How far those continental dances shaped the English version is not settled. Evidence for sword dancing in England is thin before the middle of the eighteenth century. The word lock appears in an English source in 1777, and Yorkshire references begin in the early nineteenth century. Cecil Sharp and other folklorists of the twentieth century argued that dances of this kind grew out of a religious or magical rite, performed at Plough Monday to encourage the soil. Later researchers have questioned that reading.

How it is kept

Winter is the shared season, though the day differs from place to place. Some teams dance at Christmas or on Boxing Day. Others wait for Plough Monday, the Monday after Epiphany that once marked a return to the fields. A performance can be slow and soldierly or quick and light. The number of dancers and the figures they make change from one tradition to another. Teams that still dance in their own village keep the version their families and neighbours passed on. This is unusual among English traditional dances, most of which are kept going by revival groups.

Teams and gatherings

Several named teams carry the dance on, among them Flamborough Sword Dancers, Grenoside Sword Dancers and the Goathland Plough Stots. Each keeps its own local shape. Teams also travel to folk festivals, Sidmouth and Beverley among them. Larger gatherings have been held: the International Sword Spectacular took place in Whitby in May 2004 and again in York in May 2008. A print journal, Rattle Up My Boys, serves people interested in sword dancing, and a booklet on the Yorkshire longsword tradition appeared in 1980.

How Long sword dance is kept

Village teams and festival teams dance in the open, most often in winter. Dancers take up rigid swords and work through a set of figures, weaving the blades until they lock into a shape. Each team's tradition decides the pace and the patterns, so some dances move slowly in a military style and others are quick. Dancers' numbers and particular movements also differ. Village teams perform on their own chosen day, such as Boxing Day or Plough Monday, and teams also appear at folk festivals away from home.

When and where

Chiefly around Christmas time. Village teams often choose Boxing Day, or Plough Monday, which falls on the Monday after Epiphany. The dance follows the season rather than one fixed date, so different teams keep different days.

Yorkshire is the heartland, above all East Cleveland, the North York Moors and the Sheffield district. A smaller group of dances belongs to south County Durham. Individual dances were also noted in the East Midlands and other parts of north eastern England. Teams have travelled further for festivals, and two international sword gatherings were held in Whitby and York.

What Long sword dance means

Early folklorists, Cecil Sharp among them, believed a dance of this kind began as a religious or magical act performed around Plough Monday to ask for fertile ground. Later researchers have doubted that. For the teams who keep it now, the meaning is more local: a village holds its own version and performs it in the same season each year, and the locked swords and shared figures belong to that community.

Days Long sword dance is marked

Questions people ask about Long sword dance

See also

Christmas carolFestive songs and hymns sung during the Christmas season and door to doorMummers' playA comic folk drama of staged combat, death, and revival by an eccentric doctorChristmasA festival of Jesus's birth, kept on 25 December with gifts, lights and shared mealsAdvent wreathAn evergreen ring of candles lit week by week in the lead-up to Christmas

Good reading and sources

• Elaine BradtkeThe Guardian, Article
• Elaine BradtkeThe Guardian, Article

• Long sword dance on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-05.