Roy Clowes (1928 – 1988) – Scottish Country Dance Enthusiast and Dance Deviser.
by Charlie Todd
28th January 2023
Having furnished some information on the B&F FB page re dance deviser Hugh Foss I remembered that I had an outstanding pre-Covid 19 commitment to do a similar article on fellow dance deviser Roy Clowes, although the information source for writing this article is very different, but we’ll come to that later.
Roy deserves a mention in B&F circles because he devised two of the most popular Scottish Country Dances which have transcended those invisible barriers and been widely adopted by the Village Hall dancing fraternity, namely, Posties Jig and Shiftin’ Bobbins.
BUSINESS
So who was Roy? Born in Liverpool in 1928 Roy’s father was Deputy Chief Engineer at Tate & Lyle’s sugar factory in the city, the largest in the world, at that time. In due course Roy himself became an Engineering Apprentice at that same factory, which also meant he was in a ‘reserved occupation’ as far as the ongoing war went. But although immensely creative and good with his hands, engineering wasn’t his thing, so as soon as the war ended in 1945 he left. He really wanted to grow plants and landscape gardens. He went first to a farm college then to Sutton Bonnington at Nottingham University to study Horticulture. Having got his Diploma he bought a small holding of 4-5 acres including a quarter acre of glass houses at Lathom near Ormskirk, Lancashire. His business dealt in cut flowers, pot plants, wreaths, landscaping, tomatoes and lettuce etc.. The business ‘blossomed’ and at one point he employed 16 or 17 men. But then came the severe winter spell in February 1963. Too kind-hearted to pay the men off and with business at a halt and always hoping the weather would improve he found himself in dire financial straits. He had to close the business and sell the house and land. He then took a job with the Ministry of Agriculture as a Plant Health Inspector. He was told he would be posted away, only to be posted back to Lancashire shortly afterwards. Unusually for the job he stayed in post in Lancashire until he was approaching retirement at 60 (mandatory for the job). So he decided to go back to his first love of plants, with the purchase of Elm Farm Nurseries. Sadly cancer intervened and he died 2 months short of his 60th birthday in1988.
DANCING
Roy was originally a rather shy, quiet boy so he decided that Ballroom dancing offered a path to social contact and more confidence. Somewhere along the line the Ballroom classes led him into Scottish Country Dance classes. In 1954 he married Gillian Thompson from Aughton, Lancashire whom he had met through the dancing. Together, in the early 50’s, they had formed a dance group called, ‘Eglais a Chnoc’ which translates from the Gaelic as ‘Church on the Hill’ - named for the place where the group first met in Ormskirk. Roy was closely involved with the group, as Dance Master and Trustee, up until his death when Joyce Taylor took over as leader. It was a demonstration dance group and membership was by invitation only, recruiting from the many other groups in the wider Liverpool area including RSCDS and the Scottish Societies. One particular highlight for Roy’s group in the 1950s was when they booked Liverpool’s Empire Theatre for an entire week and did a proper Scottish Variety Show. Continental visits included a dance festival in Arnhem in 1956 which was particularly poignant in view of all that had happened there. Other trips included festivals in Friborg (Switzerland) and Munich (Bavaria) and competing in the International Eisteddfordd at Llangollen (Wales).
Roy did his R.S.C.D.S. Beginner’s Certificate in Liverpool and his Advanced Certificate at St. Andrews Summer School and was soon teaching over a wide area several nights a week. Wife Gillian also danced and daughter, Cathy, remembers a succession of baby sitters looking after her and her two younger sisters Alison and Lindsay. Roy was friendly with two of the other great dance devisers on the Country Dance scene, Hugh Foss and John Drury, and was in regular correspondence with them. Over the years he developed a network of contacts all over the world, which proved useful when Cathy took two years out after university and travelled the globe. There was literally nowhere that her dad didn’t know someone with whom she could get in touch.
When Roy’s own career as dance deviser began, Cathy is not sure, but he published his dances in 5 Volumes of The Ormskirk Collection. Local musicians who played for him and helped with the music for his collections included pianist Muriel Rimmer, accordionist Charlie Mullard, fiddler David Queen and piper Colin Spence.
His other claim to fame was jointly forming, together with wife Gill and Professor Bob Donald and his wife Mamie, the Scottish Dance Archives. The Archive is still very much on the go but since Roy’s death has been renamed The Donald Collection Archive which appears on the R.S.C.D.S. London Branch website. The history, aims and objectives are interesting and I have reproduced them as Appendix A below or look them up at www.rscdslondon.org.uk/scottish-dance-archives/
LOCAL CONNECTION (of all the villages, in all the world!)
For all of the above information I have to thank Cathy (Clowes) Harley and a remarkable coincidence. Having studied genetics at Nottingham University and then taken a job with Edinburgh Sick Children’s Hospital, Cathy was a regular dancer with the New Scotland Country Dance Society at Edinburgh University – which is where I first met her forty years ago. I played at her wedding to ex submariner Donald Harley back in her home town of Ormskirk in 1994, and the couple then settled firstly in East Lothian before moving in 2001 to a house in a tiny South Lanarkshire village in the middle of a rural Estate called Carmichael. Population 100 – including me - for my first 27 years anyway. Incidentally at the time they were house-hunting a farmhouse right at the crossroads in the centre of Carmichael called ‘Harleyholm’ was up for sale by the Estate. It didn’t happen but how appropriate would that have been!
Dances devised by Roy are :-
Birkie Lads, Campbeltown Loch, Dancing Tailor, Dundee Whaler, Findhorn Medley, Glenfinnan Gathering, Hey, Johnny Cope, Isle Of Arran, Lobster In The Pot, Postie's Jig, Road To Dundee, Shiftin' Bobbins, Tapsalteerie, Threesome Jig, Twa Meenit Reel, Uppies And Doonies, Waiting For Joyce, Watchmaker's Wife, Witch's Rant.
What are the dances about :-
Postie’s Jig – while on holiday in the north-west of Scotland, Roy came across a post van in the ditch. When the local farmer got it back onto the road the postman did a wee jig.
Shiftin’ Bobbins – title taken from the chorus of the Dundee song – “The Jute Mill Song” see Appendix B – the figures of the dance showing the “spinning bobbins” (n.b. not Lancashire as I had always assumed).
The 32 bar jig entitled The Nurseryman, which was devised by Steven Brown, is published in R.S.C.D.S. Book 37 and is dedicated to Roy.
I would like to thank Cathy for her time and assistance in preparing this brief biography of her dad, Roy Clowes, deviser of two of our most popular dances.
Appendix A
A brief history of the Scottish Dance Archives by Robert A. Donald
In the early 1970’s and late 1960’s there was an explosion of new dances, devised by dancers who had no particular intention or opportunity of publishing them formally. Naturally, these were of variable quality, but there were those that were deservedly popular in their own locality. These circulated by word of mouth or on hastily written cribs where accuracy was not guaranteed. One consequence of this was the creation of local versions of the dance. A classic example of this comes from my own experience and involves the well-known and very popular “Ian Powrie’s Farewell to Auchterarder”. This was devised by Bill Hamilton of Edinburgh and was actually formally published by him. I started my Scottish Dancing in Edinburgh, then moved, due to work requirements, to Merseyside. I was not then familiar with “Ian Powrie’s Farewell” but later was given a hastily written version on a scrap of paper by a friend. This I introduced to Merseyside, where it became widely popular. Unfortunately, my crib version started off by saying “Circle” – not “Circle round and back”. So our version started with a circle left for eight bars, carried on as published, then finished with circle right for eight bars. Eventually we met up with Bill Hamilton, discovered the discrepancy which he did not see as an improvement. Unfortunately, our version was so firmly entrenched that it had become the de facto “correct” version on Merseyside. It may still be so to this day for all that I know.
For such reasons and because of our wish to winnow out deserving dances from the flood and to preserve them for posterity, Roy Clowes, Gill Clowes, Mamie Donald and I, Robert Donald, decided to set up a formal system to this end. Being conscious that what we might think to be a good dance might not seem so to others, the selection process was based on the system used by academic journals to decide research papers that were worthy of publication. We invited any who wished to submit their dances to us for publication. These were sent out to a pool of volunteer teachers of Scottish Dancing who had kindly agreed to teach them to their class and feedback the assessment, often with improvements. Each dance was sent to several referees and were anonymous, in that those trying them out did not know who was the devisor. A dance was regarded as worthy of publication only if the majority of the referees it had gone to recommended it.
Those so recommended were printed on individual sheets and circulated to subscribers worldwide for a modest cost. Originally, 20 sheets were published each year. Eventually, as it became harder to find 20 good new dances each year from those submitted to us, the number dropped to 10 each year. Scottish Dance Archives, as the process was christened, ran from 1972 to 1982, publishing 190 social dances plus a number of specialised sheets such as Set Dances, Highland Step sheets and various teaching guides and opinions. We decided to end the subscription publication in 1982 since, in our opinion, there were no longer sufficient worthwhile candidates.
An important point is that from the very beginning it was decided that all money accruing from the publication should be fed back into the support and promotion of Scottish Dancing. This still applies to this day. As an example of such support, fees were paid for a young teacher to attend the RSCDS certificate classes in St. Andrews.
In closing this account, I wish to pay a personal tribute to the great contribution made by the late Roy Clowes to Scottish Dancing as a whole, not just to Scottish Dance Archives.
APPENDIX B
Oh Dear Me / The Jute Mill Song
1: Oh dear me the mills gaein fast,
And the pair wee shifters canna get nae rest;
Shiftin bobbins, coorse and fine,
They fairly mak ye wark for your ten and nine.
2: Oh dear me I wish the day wis done,
Rinnin up an doun the pass is nae fun;
Shiftin, piecin, spinnin - warp, weft and twine,
Tae feed an claith ma bairnies affen ten and nine.
Chorus:
Oh dear me the mills gaein fast,
And the pair wee shifters canna get nae rest;
Shiftin bobbins coorse and fine,
They fairly mak ye wark for your ten and nine.
3: O dear me, the warld's ill divided,
Them that works the hardest are the least provided;
But I maun bide contented, dark days or fine,
There's no much pleisure livin affen ten and nine.
Chorus:
Oh dear me the mills gaein fast,
And the pair wee shifters canna get nae rest;
Shiftin bobbins coorse and fine,
They fairly mak ye wark for your ten and nine.