DANCE, and the music that goes with it, plays an important part in Cornwall's culture, and a new book provides a fascinating insight into its history.

Scoot Dances, Troyls, Furrys and Tea Treats, by Merv, Alison and Jowdy Davey, looks at dance traditions and shows that performance is a mark of Cornish identity.

Some of the most enjoyable nights of my teenage years in Cornwall were spent in pubs or folk clubs where people made their own entertainment with song and dance.

This book shows that those traditions went back many years, but were often looked down on by those in authority, with the worthy mayor of St Ives, Mr Edward Hain, prohibiting guize (or disguise) dancing for the year 1900.

Padstow has retained its traditions and as well as May Day, with its meaningful song, many black up for the Boxing Day and New Year's Day guize which young Padstonians are trained to continue.

Helston, too, has its Flora Day. Although in the mid-1800s the custom had all but died out, it is now hugely popular.

Over the years there have also been examples of flora or furry dancing in many other towns and villages – from Bude, Boscastle and Looe, through Newquay, Grampound and Truro down to the Lizard and St Ives.

The traditions in other parts of Cornwall are not so well known or have fallen by the wayside but in some areas the customs of dressing up and dancing have been revived.

Methodism, which the Cornish embraced after Wesley's visit in 1743, generally took a dim view of some of the dancing culture which was associated with drinking alcohol.

Curtains

Methodists in Helston would draw their curtains when the Furry Dance went by, while a mill owner near Padstow offered the Mayers a bullock if they would desist from their May Day merrymaking. Having to choose between merriment or roast beef, the Padstow boys drove Mr Tregaskis and his bullock out of town.

However, in other ways, Methodism helped promote traditional music and dance. Preacher Billy Bray (1794 to 1868) was known for his dancing and singing, incorporating step dances and songs into his sermons.

The tea treat tradition of chapel culture was also a conduit for old folk customs, with the spiralling snake dance appearing everywhere across Cornwall.

Personally, it was interesting to see reference to my own home area of North Cornwall and the people who were famous locally for their music and dancing. The Boscastle Breakdown, or broom dance, was recorded for the BBC in 1943, but local farmer Charlie Jose was performing it into the early 1980s and singing at the local Boscastle Fair.

The Davey family is well-qualified to research and write about Cornish traditions. Merv and Alison are both bards of Gorsedh Kernow – Merv is Gorsedh piper – and are organisers of Lowender Peran, the annual Celtic festival held in Perranporth, which provides a platform for Cornish dance. They can trace a family connection with Cornish dance that reaches back across five generations to the 1880s up to their children, Jowdy and Cas.

The family is committed to Cornish dance as a living and developing tradition with as much to offer the communities of the future as it did those of the past.

The book presents a history of dance in Cornwall from the earliest references in literature to the modern folk revival. Largely collected by members of the Davey family, musicians and dance teachers, it includes 45 dances and tunes.

A large part of the book's 158 pages is devoted to the musical scores themselves, archive photographs, words where appropriate, actual steps, origins, and the communities in which each dance was used and performed. The whole spectrum is examined – from mystery plays and folk dramas to Morris, guize dancing, furry dances, tea treats and country dances.

Their names alone serve as a snapshot of a lost age... Annie Asker, Boscastle Breakdown, Claude Parkin's Hornpipe, Cornish Mating Dance, The Gookow, Kiss In The Ring, Lattapouch, Tobacco Roll, Serpent Dance and Turkey Rhubarb. How I wish I could have seen the clay villages' Snail Creep, to the music of the Molinnis Fife and Drum Band. These names illustrate the richness, much of it lost, of Cornish dance.

Edward Veale – aged just five at the time – gives a revealing account of a troyl in a Newquay fish cellar to mark the end of the pilchard fishing season in 1885.

He describes "dancing and general merriment in the long room" and tells how "there was a big fire in the corner and they were roasting herring on a grid iron".

Scoot Dances, Troyls, Furrys And Tea Treats: The Cornish Dance Tradition by Merv, Alison and Jowdy Davey is published by Francis Boutle (www.francisboutle.co.uk) at £12.99.