Flitter Dance

The tradition & historical record

The Flitter Dance (Flitter Daunsey in Manx) is a traditional dance from the Isle of Man associated with Good Friday. It was collected by Mona Douglas in the 1940s or 50s and is popular among younger Manx dancers today. ¹

The traditional custom on Good Friday on the Isle of Man was to gather shellfish on the shore and eat flitters in particular for breakfast, after cooking them in the fire without the use of iron. A dance was collected in connection to these customs by Mona Douglas, who first mentioned it as ‘partly noted but still incomplete’ in 1937. Her informant at this stage, a Mrs Callow of Cardle Veg, Maughold, was able to recall the process of gathering mychurachan to make a fire on the beach, in which "arran-traaie" barleymeal cakes were made and baked in the hot ashes and flitters were baked in their shells. After the meal accompanied by milk, the remains were thrown into the sea with the words: ‘Gow shoh as bannee orrin’ (‘Take this and bless us’) spoken as ‘some kind of prayer or charm.’ It was after this that the Flitter Dance was performed, by pairs of dancers to ‘wind to and fro in the shape of an S,’ however, no steps or details of the actual dance were recalled by Mrs Callow. By 1957 Douglas had completed the collection of the dance, thanks to material from a Mrs Teare of Ballaugh and in particular from Ada Skillicorn and a Mrs Radcliffe of Maughold, who were able to provide the actual steps of the dance. ¹

The Flitter Dance was first published in Rinkaghyn Vannin in 1983. No mention is made here of an S-shape to the dance; rather, it is described merely as ‘in processional form.’ It is in this form that the dance is performed today. The dance is in two halves: firstly, the distinctive stamp steps; then two sets of side-steps and the Manx Balance (a distinctive swinging of the foot in a kicking motion), before re-joining the same partners and repeating. Because of its simple and repetitive form, the dance is popular today for beginners and young dancers alike. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Flitter Dance”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Flitter Dance is manx traditional dance, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation. ²