The Origins of Montol
The origins of the name Montol are bitterly contested and perhaps even all somewhat spurious.
But it is generally agreed that the people who revived the Cornish Christmas custom of guise dancing in 2007 were sure they’d stumbled on a real Cornish word for
balance
light and dark, the threshold between this year and the next, the pivot point.
Our Cornish Language expert, Paul Tyreman, has researched the name extensively and suggests that it must be considered a new proper noun and the only reasonable translation should be:
“Winter Solstice or Mid Winter Festival in Penzance”.
But the guise dancing itself was very real indeed.
Ever since the Middle Ages, during the Twelve Days of Christmas, guise dancers could be found entertaining each other and their communities all across West Penwith.
The earliest Cornish references to mumming, involving complete disguise in grotesque or elaborate costume, though very little dancing, come from 15th-century accounts at the manor of Lanherne, near Newquay.
“At Christmas time, the young people exercise a sort of gallantry among them called goose-dancing; when the maidens are dressed up for young men, and the young men for maidens. They visit their neighbours in companies, where they dance, and make their jokes … The maidens, who are sometimes dressed up as sea-captains and other officers, display their alluring graces to the ladies, who are young men equipped for that purpose; and the ladies exert their talents to them in courtly and amorous addresses: their hangers are sometimes drawn, after which, and other pieces of drollery, the scene shifts to music and dancing; which being over they are treated with liquor, and then go to the next house of entertainment.”
Robert Heath – A Natural and Historical Account of the Islands of Scilly – 1750
Survival and Revival
In the autumn of 1934, BBC radio visited Landithy Hall in Madron to record a group called the Madron Guise Dancers for a programme called “Cornish Conversation”, broadcast in January 1935 and re-broadcast in 1937. Sadly the recordings are now thought to be lost, but the Western Morning News covered both events, and photographed the guise dancers.
Montol is alive and well
Traditional guise dancing has had its ups and downs but it has never left living memory. There have always been old hands ready to show new ones what to do, with memories of the antics of their forebears.
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes,
but the transmission
of fire.”
Gustav Mahler
In 2007 an idea was hatched – to have a Winter festival in Penzance based on the Christmas and Midwinter customs at one time found in West Cornwall, very much like Golowan celebrates the Midsummer traditions of the area.
There were two options to choose between:
Chewidden
Or White Thursday.
A festival celebrated by the tin miners of West Cornwall on the last clear Thursday before Christmas.
Guise Dancing
The colourful tradition of Guise Dancing throughout the twelve days of Christmas.
With its masks and ornate costumes, the music and dance associated with it and the then fading tradition of the Cornish Carol.
And Guise Dancing won
Of course!
And the twelve days were compressed, a little like Mazey Day in the summer, and moved as far from Christmas as still made sense – it can be a busy time for many people – and the solstice was perfect.
“Our auras keep us warm and dry”
Crucial was the, arguably barmy but beautiful, decision to make Montol an all weather event very much like the Guise Dancers of old who regularly “travelled through the mire” to bring festive joy to their neighbours and friends.
Thanks to Tom and Tehmina Goskar and Simon Reed