Montol and the Guisers

The Montol Festival is an annual celebration in Penzance, Cornwall, UK, held on the 21st of December each year. The festival is a revival - or reinterpretation - of many of the traditional Cornish midwinter customs and Christmas traditions which were formerly practised in and around the Penzance area and were once common to much of Cornwall. The word Montol is the Cornish language word for ‘balance’.

Montol was resurrected  in 2007 by the same people who originated the midsummer Golowan Festival (see here). Since 2014, Montol has been run by the Cornish Culture Association, a charitable organisation. It kicks of six days of arts and community events to celebrate the midwinter solstice, Cornish midwinter traditions of the past, and customs associated with Old Christmas.

The festival consists of lantern and mask-making workshops, strolling bands, carol services, storytelling, Mummers Plays, processions, fire performers, 'Obby 'Osses and guise beasts. There are several fire beacons lit throughout the town, leading up to the chalking and burning of the 'Mock'. 

Another element of Montol is the ancient practice of Guise Dancing - an ancient Christmastime mumming tradition. At Montol, Penzance is overrun by hundreds of people in complete disguise. They roam the streets and take part in organised parades. Groups skip from pub to pub giving performances of music, dancing, and bizarre acts of ‘theatre’ or games that make no sense for their own amusement – and for the confusion of others. 

Early on in the evening, there is generally a bonfire with ‘beasts’ dancing around it. Then, later in the night, hundreds gather before a second bonfire at the foot of the town on which a chalk figure, or ‘the mock’, is burned. 

The earliest Cornish references to disguised mumming come from 15th-century accounts at Lanherne, a little further east near Newquay. Money was recorded as being spent for the ‘disgysyng’ in the account roll for the manor of Lanherne in the winter of 1466/7. 

It’s not until 1750 that we get our first specific mention of 'guise dancing' in print. Robert Heath’s A Natural and Historical Account of the Islands of Scilly contains a fabulous description: 

'At Christmas time, the young people exercise a sort of gallantry among them called goose-dancing; when the maidens are dressed up for young men, and the young men for maidens. They visit their neighbours in companies, where they dance, and make their jokes upon what has happened in the islands, when every person is humorously told of their own without offence being taken. By this sort of sport according to yearly custom and toleration, there is a spirit of wit and drollery kept up among the people. The maidens, who are sometimes dressed up as sea-captains and other officers, display their alluring graces to the ladies, who are young men equipped for that purpose; and the ladies exert their talents to them in courtly and amorous addresses: their hangers are sometimes drawn, after which, and other pieces of drollery, the scene shifts to music and dancing; which being over they are treated with liquor, and then go to the next house of entertainment.'

By 1804, guise dancing was already described as ‘ancient’ in a letter published in the Royal Cornwall Gazette on 14 January: 

'Sir, it is the wish of several of your subscribers, that you would favour them, in an appendix to the poetry in your Gazette of 24th December, with the best account you can collect of the origin and particulars of the ancient custom of geese or guize dancing, with the ceremonial used on the occasion.'

The editor published a fulsome description, also noting the similarity to the ‘guisers’ of northern England and southern Scotland, linking guise dancing to the survival of a wider mumming tradition. There are many related traditions, such as molly dancing, but each survives with their own unique features. 

The official website for the event is here.