Here's a Health to the Barley Mow

The reputation of folk culture has waxed and waned in Britain, from being seen as quaint and faintly ludicrous (Morris dancing, anyone?), to being championed as an important repository of authenticity in our increasingly uniform, commodified culture. The long running revival of folk music means that the time is perhaps ripe for this BFI collection of films documenting the weirder folk traditions of our isles, although this is far stronger fare than fey singer-songwriters with songs of heartbreak.

The collection consists of six hours worth of rough and ready films, beginning in the 1910s and running up until the present. Included are labyrinthine traditional dances, pub singalongs, "football" games that involve whole towns and resemble slow motion mass wrestling competitions, and the simply bizarre Burry Man of South Queensferry. Never has Britain seemed so exotic and so baffling. But for the many sword dancers represented in the collection I have two (or is it three?) words: Health and Safety. [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]