07/06/2020
WOKINGHAM 1723. Will Shorter, Thomas Power and Ned Collier lead a gang
of violent felons that has won national notoriety and even caused many a sleepless night for Sir Robert Walpole Britain’s first Prime Minister. They are about to execute yet another violent felony, this time an armed robbery against the game-keeper of a local magnate landowner. The muskets are ready and the gang assembled.
But Will Shorter and Ned Collier are not the sort of people who usually commit armed robberies, rather they are good hardworking upstanding middle-class men who today would read the Daily Mail. Will is a farmer and Ned runs his own felt making business, while Thomas is a clergyman in the Church of England! But these men have had their natural law-abiding instincts swept away by a tide of wrath following incurring heavy losses investing in the recently collapsed South Sea Company which has opened them up to the economic pressures that poorer rural folk have to live with. This has caused them to make common cause with local poachers in resisting the incursions on their commons rights by the Royal Hunt and the demands of their betters. It’s alright for the nobility and major gentry, their South Sea losses were covered by their extensive estates, or mercantile interests, perhaps investments in the Slave Trade and Plantations in the West Indian Colonies worked by them them.
The gamekeeper destroyed the dogs, and plundered the few possessions of a poor poacher, so the warning letter has been sent and retribution upon that gamekeeper will strike from the dark night. Before these latter-day Robin Hood’s take up their weapons and head into the darkness, they take the cork from the bottle they shared and burn the end and apply a traditional English disguise, smearing their faces as black as the night that will veil them…………………..
The Nightface, the face of the Wolfshead roaming in the moonlit woods.
Veiling the face by darkening the skin, (and sometimes cross-dressing)worn by rural folkup to no good, had been employed as a disguise by rioters and poachers for a long-time before the time of the “Wokingham Blacks”, and would be seen again in Carmarthenshire 116 years later when Twm Carnabwth (Thomas Rees) led desperate impoverished Welsh farmers and agricultural workers to take direct action against toll-gates and turnpikes that made the transportation of goods prohibitively expensive for poor Welsh farm folk, this was the start of the Rebecca riots of 1839-42 where cross-dressed men in Nightface tore down the offending toll-gates. Likewise like rioters in Gillingham Wilts in the 1640’s, and the “Levellers” of Northamptonshire, who in 1607 ripped down enclosings.
Following the activities of the Wokingham Blacks in 1723, wearing the Nightface was not any made illegal, but became a capital offence!
The notorious “Wokingham Blacks” are perhaps the best known use of the “Nightface”, (as I shall call it to distinguish it from the Minstrel “Blackface”), but wearing the nightface and men cross dressing were traditions deeply embedded in the revels, “Skimmington” rides and winter cadging rituals of popular rural culture, so it was little to be wondered that they should re-emerge when old Yuletide/ Plough Monday cadging customs evolved into a culture nicknamed “Molly Dancing” during the nineteenth century and still was to be found being practiced by children in Manchester as late as the 1950’s.
The Nightface is a plain black face, a poor man’s mask of charcoal, burnt cork or soot applied to disguise a rioter, poacher or rural cadger while out making mischief. It should be worn as a mask, oval to the shape of the face with underlying skin showing as the edge of the face and neck. Preferably (for historical reenactments) unevenly “smeared” on, and is much better “authentic”, charcoal or soot rather than well applied face paint if possible.
In contrast the Blackface stage make-up of the "Minstrel" blacks all visible skin and the Blackface emphasises exaggerated painted eyes and mouth features. Unlike the Nightface disguise, Blackface is worn to entertain using hideous parodies of Afro-descended people. The Nightface was designed to hide a human face, the Blackface was invented as a caricature invented to parody and belittle another person’s human face and re-enforce negative and oppressive racial stereotypes.
Beyond the actual kit itself, there is the question of the character inside it. The Nightface was worn to empower the wearer giving the wearer an element of mystery and threat, a good example of how it should be worn and how it works is Old Glory Molly who capture the menace of a late Nineteenth Century Plough gang very accurately.
The Nightfaced character is asserting his worth and dignity, standing up for his rights. In contrast the character in the Blackface mask was a parody of the enslaved African, jolly “Jim Crow”, portraying the African as a silly childish lesser humanity who sings and dances happily away because he loves the happy life on the plantation his superior white master provides. An adult Jim Crow even talks like a child “He had no wooly on de toppy of his head in de place where his wooly ought to go……….”
Nightface belongs to English folk-tradition, Blackface has no such place and has been consigned to the poo-pan of history.
In my humble opinion what the PC bods who lump Nightface and Blackface together and want to ban the Nightface, ought to seriously consider the delight some of the real racists Border Morris dancers, many active in Folk Against Fascism, have actively opposed would find in seeing some strongly Anti-Racist, being turfed-out of the HQ of the English Folk Dance and Song Society for Border Morris Dancers wearing the olde English Nightface.
In wanting to ban the olde English Nightface those PC bods are acting out perfectly another stereotype, to wit, the "Anti-English" PC offical who is not predjuiced against any culture except British culture. A powerful stereotype that actually helps the xenophobes and racists win support.
What really pi**es me off about all this is the fact that Border Morris and Molly dancing people are among the kindest, fairest, humane and progressive thinking human beings I am blessed to know they represent Britishness at its very best. Narrow minded PC-ism which attacks our folk traditions on grounds of “racism” hammers Britishness at its very best, only to encourage the darker side of National self-identity.
But what if some people continue to be hurt and offended by the Nightface?
Tolerance, Diversity & Respect is a two-way thing, So how about the Social Equality people educating complainers against English Nightface customs about its history, the non-racist nature of these customs, and encourage them to show native culture a bit of tolerance and respect?
