‘Reviving’ the name of guise dancing at Montol and beyond

Montol, guising, guisers, guise guilds. Dressing up in animal costumes or “mock posh”, joining friends to form a “guild” at Montol (Penzance’s festival of Cornish wintertime traditions on 21 December). What does it all mean, and where did it come from?

Many people won’t know that the “dressing up” aspect of Montol, one of its key traditions, has genuine medieval origins. It’s a form of mumming known traditionally as guise dancing, which originally took place during the Twelve Days of Christmas, sometimes extending to Plough Monday. Participants disguise themselves thoroughly, and get up to a number of different activities whilst going house to house, or more commonly out on the streets as groups or in processions. It’s a tradition that has never left living memory, and guise dancing is a distinctive and unique form of mumming in West Cornwall.

Today, most people don’t realise that the disguise element of Montol is an ancient custom. They might have heard the terms “guising”, or taking part as “guisers” in their “guise guild”. However, these are relatively modern words. The old and original name of guise dancing seems to have been largely forgotten in popular parlance. I’d like to see it revived.

Why does it matter? What’s in a name?

The tradition of “guising” comes mainly from northern England and parts of Scotland and Ireland. It’s another disguise custom, but in Scotland it is usually practised at the end of October and is the ancestor of modern trick-or-treating. In parts of England, it’s also at Christmas, and there are similarities. But we have our own name for our own brand of mumming; we should be distinctive and use it.

Simply put, “guising” is the name of another tradition. Since the 1970s the term has been gradually adopted here, along with “guisers”, and our original names guise dancing and guise dancers have been largely forgotten.

I have conducted many hundreds of hours of research, examining historical sources including 19th–20th century newspapers, and have found only two references to “guisers” or “guising” in Cornwall—one from The Graphic (Saturday 25 October 1879, published in London) and one from The Cornish Telegraph (Wednesday 7 January 1903), where “guisers” appeared in quotation marks.

Lelant Notes by “Marcus”

The “Guise dancers and hunters” have been numerous in our midst during the week. The hoary old custom seems to have revived a little during the last few years. But, alas! its followers have fallen on bad times, at least some of them. I hear that some of our “Guisers” during the week got roughly handled for being a bit too intrusive, and several rushed to their homes “guiseless”, feeling a little sorer and warmer than when they sallied forth, believing after all that the days of guise-dancers are past.

The Cornish Telegraph – Wednesday 7 January 1903

This compares to over 300 articles using “guise dancing” and its variants (guize, geeze, goosey, goose).

And yes, I’m very very slowly writing a book!

A Time and Name Shift

Dave Lobb, a Cornish folklorist and morris dancer based in London, played a key part in bringing guise dancing back to St Ives in the late 1970s—and, in doing so, helped change the language used for it. In 1972 the town’s mayor, Keith Slocombe, took a renewed interest in the ancient Feast Day, held on the Monday after the first Sunday in February, and revived the hurling of the silver ball alongside new elements of pageantry. A few years later, in 1978, Slocombe invited his friend Lobb—already active in the London folk and morris scene—to help reintroduce guise dancing to the Feast.

Lobb had founded the Grand Order of Guisers (GOG), a London-based fellowship dedicated to reviving historic street traditions such as the Jack-in-the-Green, the Islington Milkmaids’ Garland, and processional giants. Drawing on that experience, he and Slocombe organised a revived procession that first took place at the 1979 St Ives Feast. Members of GOG, many from London morris sides, joined local musicians and maskers in a costumed parade through the town, linking the celebration to the well at Venton Ia. The performers called themselves guisers, and the event was described as guising—terms more familiar to Lobb’s London circle than to Cornish usage. Their adoption in St Ives marked the beginning of a linguistic shift: guise dancing and guise dancers, the older Cornish expressions, began to fall from use.

The spectacle was striking. Postcards of the Grand Order of Guisers circulated across Cornwall during the 1980s, but not everyone welcomed the change. Some felt that Feast Monday was too far from the Christmas and New Year season when guise dancing had traditionally taken place; others thought the revival too boisterous, or too shaped by outsiders. By the early 1990s the Feast Day processions remained, but the masks and costumes had largely vanished. Yet Lobb’s revival left its mark. It reawakened interest in the custom—and it was during this period that guising and guisers supplanted the older Cornish terms that had named it for centuries.

Further forgetting

Not everyone forgot. I’ve spoken with many older people in their 80s and 90s who remember guise dancing as it was, and called it that. But the big revival of guise dancing as part of Montol Festival in Penzance rather forgot to explain what it was reviving at its core: a truly ancient, never-forgotten survival of a medieval mumming tradition called guise dancing. All the solstice bits were sort of nailed on afterwards. A lot of people seem to think that dressing up in disguise is how you celebrate the winter solstice. Maybe it is for some. Folklore in action!

The terms “guisers” and “guising” crept in again. Along with Simon Reed, Tehmina and I are guilty of inventing the whole “guise guild” concept—and its name—which came about down the pub (Lamp & Whistle, if you must know) while planning costumes in 2013. I didn’t know much about the history then either.

Today’s organisers of the festival have enthusiastically re-adopted guise dancing as the name for its central tradition. They use the phrase on the website. Excellent. Progress.

Now, more people need to know what it is they’re actually doing, so that the tradition can survive beyond one (rather well) organised night.

What next?

This revival of guise dancing as part of Montol has arguably been the most successful since the “revivals” of the 1920s and 1970s, with perhaps more people taking part in guise dancing today than at any time in history. I’m passionate that people should understand the tradition they’re joining when they dress up in disguise at Montol.

I’d like participants at Montol to know that our unique Cornish name for the disguise tradition is guise dancing, and that they, for that night, are guise dancers. Rewind 200 years, and the scenes in Penzance might well be recognisable.

So let’s use the name that would have been recognised back then as well.