Goose-dancing in Scilly

the first Monday on or after 7 January · Isles of Scilly

No longer kept

Hone’s Table Book, quoting the Monthly Magazine of January 1827, says that at Plough Monday time the young people of the Isles of Scilly went goose-dancing. The girls dressed as young men and the young men as girls, and in their disguises they went in companies to their neighbours’ houses to dance and joke about the happenings of the island, telling everyone their own without offence being taken. When the music and dancing were done they were given drink and moved on to the next house.

The maidens are dressed up for young men, and the young men for maidens ; and, thus disguised, they visit their neighbours in companies, where they dance, and make jokes upon what has happened in the island

From Hone's Table Book, vol. 1, p. 41. Read the original

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Folklore from the old calendars

Sunshine on the twelfth of January Lore and belief EnglandThe Shepherd's Almanack for 1676, among its notes on January, recorded that some people held that if the sun shone on 12 January it foretold much wind.
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Goose-dancing in Scilly

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