ABSTRACT
Modern England has a remarkable history of linked sword dances. While most early (eighteenth-nineteenth centuries) accounts refer simply to “sword dances,” with little or no information on the actual style of dance, at some point – perhaps in the second half of the nineteenth century – two distinct styles developed. Since the time of Cecil J. Sharp (1859–1924), who began his research into English sword dances in 1910–1913, these have commonly been referred to as “longsword” (or long-sword, or simply long sword) and “rapper” dances. The former were found chiefly in Yorkshire; the latter in Tyneside, from Northumberland and County Durham. The relationship between the two types, if one exists, remains uncertain. While the two types were distinct in matters such as social community, footwork, and figures, they were most obviously distinct in the dance implements used: longsword using a rigid wooden or metal sword surrogate, and rapper a two-handled implement of flexible steel, of uncertain derivation. This essay draws directly from sources describing both styles of dance from the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries, including early dances, up to the start of the twentieth.
England has made enormous contributions to the modern development of European-linked sword dancing. Documentation is very significant from the late eighteenth century onwards, though very little is known about English dancing before that. In this essay, I will summarize and review the evidence beginning in the late eighteenth century up to the early twentieth century, when Cecil Sharp’s compilation, The Sword Dances of Northern England, provided the first survey of the two distinct styles of dance which existed, naming them long sword and short sword, or rapper.
