Editing Molly dance (section)

==History==
[[File:Joseph Needham in Cambridge 1965 04.jpg|thumb|right|[[Joseph Needham]] collected Molly dances in the early 1930s, as the tradition was dying out]]
Molly dancing is a dance tradition from [[East Anglia]], first attested in the 1820s. The first recorded use of the word ''Molly'' in relation to this tradition was in 1866.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|title=A Dictionary of English Folklore|entry=Molly dancing|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2003}}</ref> The dance was performed on [[Boxing Day]] (26 December) and [[Plough Monday]] (the Monday after 6 January).{{sfn|Bradtke|1999|p=7}} The tradition had died out by 1940.{{sfn|Bradtke|1999|p=7}}  The term ''Molly dancing'' probably derives from the word ''[[Molly house#etymology|Molly]]'' meaning an effeminate, homosexual, or cross-dressing man, referring to the invariable presence of men dressed in women's clothing among the dancers; an alternative possibility is that it is a corruption of ''[[Morris dance]]''.{{sfn|Bradtke|1999|pp=18–21}}

In 1911 [[Cecil Sharp]] interviewed a man from Little Downham about Plough Monday dancing, but he did not consider it worthy of further study, and the practice was largely ignored by collectors of folk dances until the 1930s.{{sfn|Simons|2019|pp=193–194}} In 1930, [[Joseph Needham]] and Arthur Peck collected four Molly dances from a dancer from [[Girton, Cambridgeshire|Girton]] and a concertina player from [[Histon]], near Cambridge;{{sfn|Needham|Peck|1933|pp=80&ndash;83}} they continued to collect information about Molly dancing over the following three years.{{sfn|Simons|2019|pp=194–195}} William Palmer recorded a broom dance performed by the Little Downham dancers in 1933.{{sfn|Palmer|1974|pp=24&ndash;25}}  In 1978, Russell Wortley and Cyril Papworth published four dances collected from the [[Comberton]] Molly dancers.{{sfn|Wortley|Papworth|1978|p=58}} 

The recorded dances are largely ordinary social dances of the period, rather than special molly dances.{{sfn|Forster|2002|p=5}}  Needham and Peck proposed that a previous dance tradition, perhaps a kind of [[sword dance]], had at some point been lost, and molly dancing had been revived using social dances.{{sfn|Needham|Peck|1933|p=85}}  Most commonly, molly dances were danced in [[Glossary of country dance terms#longways sets|longways sets]] and were accompanied by popular tunes.{{sfn|Bradtke|2001|pp=67–68}} The music was provided by a fiddler – or, from the latter half of the nineteenth century, concertina- or accordion-player – who was usually hired for the occasion rather than being a farmworker like the other performers.{{sfn|Bradtke|2001|pp=66; 68}}