Shandy is Dandy

Our first spring in Minnesota came late. It had not been much of a winter, in fact we felt fairly blasé about our capacity to survive Minnesota’s fabled frigidity. (But oh, how we have learned since!) The torrents pouring over St. Antony Falls inspired no particular shock nor awe, unlike the ceaseless roar of Spring 2001. There was road-grit, weak sunshine, and windblown tulips. Surprising then to hear accordion music outside, and the clash of small bells. But it was true—this music came by me on the waters. Rounding a corner we saw a white sleeve rhythmically waving a handkerchief, and were promptly transported from the shore of the Mississippi to the banks of the Thames at Oxford.

England, God knows, is full of odd customs. The unwise think they are vestiges of primeval paganism, but most of them seem to have started in the High Middle Ages, the most Christian era of English history. If you don’t believe me, read a book called The Stations of the Sun by a learned bloke called Hutton. These calendar customs began not as gnarled substitutes for child sacrifice but as the secular entertainments of Christian civilization.

Whatever the history, every May 1, thousands of Oxford people creep out of bed in the wee small hours of the morning. The crowds converge on Magdalen Bridge, where the main London road crosses the river. There they hear, generally in silence, the choir of Magdalen College, grouped on top of the college tower, sing a Latin hymn and a few madrigals, no louder at ground level than birdsong. Then the crowds head back into the city where the purveyors of greasy breakfasts do land-office business and “sides” of Morris dancers, dressed in white shirts and trousers, with colored cross-belts, bells strapped to their legs, and substantial boots perform with a vigor remarkable for the earliness of the hour.

It was Morris dancers we ran into that evening in Minneapolis, one of four sides in the city (two men’s, one women’s, one—from the village of Uptown-on-Calhoun—mixed). They say they are often asked if their art is Irish, but no, it is firmly in the tradition of Thames Valley Morris dancing. This art form was “discovered” in 1899 just in time to prevent its disappearance by a remarkable musicologist named Cecil Sharp (did anyone dare to call him D Flat, one wonders), and it’s now more popular than ever before. Like their Oxford fellows, the Minneapolis dancers also take May Morning exercise early, clashing batons, fiddling, leaping, whirling hankies, but they also meet at a more sociable hour in the evening and come together from the four points of the compass to dance in front of the IDS Tower. (Isn’t there something a bit Freudian about that name?)

So much leaping and clashing (even watching it) naturally works up a thirst, and it is indeed as much with Saturday evenings at Cotswold country pubs as with May Morning in the city that one associates the Morris. How good those white outfits look seen through a pint of Hook Norton Best Bitter, pulled by a shapely forearm from a proper draught-beer engine. Hook Norton promise an on-line shop for their bottled products, but who knows if they will be able to ship to the United States.

Until they do, I recommend a refreshing summer beverage called “ginger beer shandy,” described as “new-fangled” in 1888. One simply adds one of the ordinary bitters (Bass, say, or McEwans Export) to an equal quantity of ginger beer. Not ginger ale, a clear brown cisatlantic drink, but ginger beer as my mother used to make it—with live yeast in the family’s heated linen cupboard (until it exploded), a sweet cloudy non-alcoholic drink now conveniently available from superior Minnesota grocers. The mixture brings out a healthy sweat. Let’s hope the summer is hot enough to warrant drinking plenty of it.