| ST ANDREW’S, Kirkby Malzeard, is a rural parish in Ripon & Leeds diocese. The church is 11th-to-12th-century, and Plough Sunday has probably been celebrated on and off ever since then. This year is the 60th anniversary of its latest revival. Farmers carried a plough into church to be blessed, while a packed congregation prayed for a good farming year.
A picnic lunch for 150, including 30 children, followed the service; and food was provided by local businesses. But what makes St Andrew’s Plough Sunday unique, says the Revd Robert Sellers, Rector of Fountains (Fountains Abbey is within his parish), is that the service traditionally ends with a long sword dance in the nave to the praise and glory of God.
The group of dancers are like morris men, he says, “six chaps, a caller, and one with an accordion”. The “swords” are a little less dangerous than their name implies, being “like long pallet knives with wooden handles”, but could still inflict damage if someone got in their way. Mr Sellers is very trusting of the dancers, as the picture shows. |
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