Ran Tan Waltz

[Al Truest]

Do any of you still Ran-Tan? Please explain.

[Sven Golly]

Does "Ran-Tan" not mean to party or be wild?

[tannis]

"Ran Tan Waltz"

Where is she
When the little thing cries?
She lies in a bed
With a friend of mine.
But some nights
She'll run back in fright
If she picks on a dick
That's too big for her pride.

Oh! Oh!
Why did I ever go marry her?
I was a child!
I'm holding the baby,
She's ran-tanning constantly.
She saw me coming for miles.
She saw me open wide.

Four o'clock
And the key's in the lock.
And she's been on the win [The word might be "wing".]
And she's stinking of drink.
Wakes the kid,
So I put him to sleep,
And she's in there all night,
Doubled over the sink.

Oh! Oh!
Why did I ever go marry her?
I was a child!
I'm holding the baby,
She's ran-tanning constantly.
She saw me coming for miles.
She saw me open wide.
She saw me coming for miles.
Open wide.
Open wide.
Open wide.
Open wide.
Open wide.
Open wide.
Open wide.
Open wide.
Open wide.

©1980 Kate Bush Music Ltd.

Ran Tan Waltz

KaTe first performed Ran Tan Waltz (original title, The Ran Tan) on the 1979 "Kate: Christmas Special" television show; and it was released as the b-side of Babooshka the following year. KaTe's songs have occasionally combined comedy and horror to form dark humour, such as murder by poisoning in Coffee Homeground and revenge in The Wedding List. And featured in The Ran Tan Waltz is an alcoholic mother.

KaTe references the drinking song, "Little Brown Jug", about a man and his wife and their hard life due to alcoholism, in the song A Coral Room. However, unlike A Coral Room, the tone and tune of "Little Brown Jug" are bright and cheerful:

Me and my wife live all alone
In a little log hut we call our own;
She loves gin and I love rum,
And don't we have a lot of fun!
Chorus:
Ha, ha, ha, you and me,
Little brown jug, don't I love thee!
Ha, ha, ha, you and me,
Little brown jug, don't I love thee!

KT on THE DREAMING: "I knew the beat from Sun Arise and Aborigine music, so we just ripped that off, used what was already there ethnically..."
ZigZag "Dream Time in the Bush" (1982)
gaffa.org/reaching/i82_zz.html

Maybe KT knew the beat from Shostakovich or a Russian or ethnic folk waltz, so ripped that off for the Ran Tan Waltz, used what was already there ethnically...


Russian Waltz Wedding Dance
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5-MBNnLiEg&feature=related
This Russian Waltz was absolutely beautiful to watch...

Ran-Tanning

Closely resembling a riot was the process known as " ran-tanning," a method of expressing indignation for which the County of Lincoln was rather notorious, particularly in the fenlands. “Ran-tanning” was a form of folk law, known more generically to folklorists as ‘Rough Music’. If a person had committed some act of which the other villagers disapproved, they would congregate near his house, making a terrible noise by beating with sticks, tins, cans, buckets and kettles, playing mouth organs, booing, shouting and singing and on occasions would light a bonfire and burn an effigy of the person who had incurred their displeasure. This was carried on for a number of nights in succession.

The last known instance of "ran-tanning" occurred on the 15th February, 1928, at Quadring Fen. Constable Thomas Jukes had been posted to Gosberton a short time before this date, and on the 14th February, 1928, he was amazed to find a "ran-tan" going on at Quadring Fen. He made enquiries and learned that a woman was being "ran-tanned" because she was alleged to have made remarks scandalising her neighbours, and to have written scurrilous statements about a young lady in the village

Because it was a form of vigilantism and likely to provoke public disorder, Ran-tanning and similar activities were banned under the Highways Act 1882, so the incidents described above and in the photograph below were therefore illegal instances of "ran-tanning".

‘Ran-Tanning’ at Rampton, 1909.
www.thorotonsociety.org.uk/gateway/themes/folklore/folklore4.htm

Kate Bush - Ran Tan Waltz (Xmas Special 1979): Great quality
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju6cGzfDfTY

Brisbane's Rantan Bush Band
A bush band is a group of musicians that play traditional Australian folk music or contemporary folk music played in a traditional Australian style. In addition to vocals, instruments featured in bush bands may include fiddle, accordion, guitar, banjo, mandolin, concertina, harmonica, lagerphone, bush bass (tea chest bass), tin whistle, and bodhrán. Bush bands play music for bush dances, in which the dance program is usually based on dances known to have been danced in Australia from colonial times to the folk revival in the 1950s. Bush bands also play "bush ballads," many of which date to the 19th century. Perhaps the best known bush band internationally was the Bushwackers. Brisbane's Rantan Bush Band has continued to survive till the present (2008) having played continuously since its formation in 1977. This busy band still has two original members (Robyn and Alan Craig) and a lead guitarist/banjo player (Bob Hall) who has served with the band for more than 25 years.

[tannis]

Associated with Ran-Tanning was the custom of Rough Music and Skimmington:

Francis Grose described the way of it in his _Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_ in 1796: "Saucepans, frying-pans, poker and tongs, marrow-bones and cleavers, bulls horns, etc. beaten upon and sounded in ludicrous processions". So crucial was the noise element that another name for the custom was 'rough music'; yet another was 'ran-tanning', probably an echoic phrase. Effigies of the guilty parties were paraded through the streets on a cart or the back of a donkey; sometimes neighbours would impersonate them instead. It was this part of the custom that was the skimmington, or skimmington riding. The word probably derives from a skimming ladle, shown in early illustrations wielded by an enraged wife. The custom is recorded from the seventeenth century onwards, in Pepys's diary for example, and there's a good description in Thomas Hardy's _The Mayor of Casterbridge_ of 1884:
The numerous lights round the two effigies threw them up into lurid distinctness; it was impossible to mistake the pair for other than the intended victims. "Come in, come in," implored Elizabeth; "and let me shut the window!" "She's me - she's me - even to the parasol - my green parasol!" cried Lucetta with a wild laugh as she stepped in. She stood motionless for one second - then fell heavily to the floor. Almost at the instant of her fall the rude music of the skimmington ceased. The roars of sarcastic laughter went off in ripples, and the trampling died out like the rustle of a spent wind.

Riding Skimmington
Right across mainland Europe, in the early modern period, social customs existed whereby individuals who transgressed social norms in the eyes of the community could be disciplined by a process of humiliation and collective rule to force conformity. Husbands who supposedly permitted themselves to be beaten by their wives were the subject of particularly sharp censure. The popular custom, which characteristically involved a noisy and mocking procession often involving hostile laughter and derision, was a widely distributed and well known phenomenon in England, although it may have originated and been particularly associated with certain regions such as the West Country (Barrett, 1895). A key element of the procession was that either the victim himself or the victim and his wife or indeed "the neighbour next nearest the church" or even a paid volunteer, were paraded on a donkey or horse. In other versions, a 'stang' or 'cowlstaff was used in the procession. Where only the man was the subject, he was forced to ride facing backwards holding the horse or donkey's tail, but where both the man and his wife were subject they were often forced to ride 'back to back'. Neighbours of the beaten husband were sometimes the subjects ridden and ridiculed on the basis that they were guilty of failing to convince the errant couple to conform to the social norm of a man being the authority in the household. It is from the West Country (ie. Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset, Devon) of England that the name most associated with the custom arose. 'Riding Skimmington' or 'Skimmington' was the term particularly associated with the beaten husband. An integral part of a Skimmington procession was the use of a number of symbolic elements. An accompaniment by 'Rough Music', which was the clanging of pots, pans and bells with the raucous playing of musical instruments, was central. The procession itself also usually featured a posse of armed men and animal horns often featured as well as a mocking commentary upon the victim or victims. Animal horns were the symbol of cuckoldry, the assumption being that the beaten husband was also being 'cuckolded'. An early example of a reference to one such 'Skimmington' procession is reported by the contemporary author Lupton as occurring in Charing Cross in London in 1562 as "1562 Shrove Monday at Charing Cross, was a man carried by four men, and before him a bagpipe playing, a shawm and a drum beating, and twenty links burning about him. The cause was, his next neighbours wife beat her husband". Other examples of the spectacle can be found, for instance, in clerical records whereby at Waterbreach in Cambridgeshire in 1602 a vicar was reported to have been beaten by his wife and a riding occurred. An official record of a Skimmington occurs in Suffolk in 1604 and another fine example is recorded in Marsden (Wiltshire) in 1626 whereby the woman had not only badly beaten her husband and badly scratched his face, ensuring that the matter came to public attention, but she also threatened that she would "make an end of him" and his daughter by a former marriage.

The fundamental tenet and underlying philosophy of Skimmingtons was, of course, the notion that men should be the head of the household and dominant over their wives. Thus the fact that Skimmingtons occurred can be viewed, not just in the context of the unfortunate subjected man, but in terms of the message that was important to sent to all men. It was meant to convey to men that they were expected to be head of their household or that is how it should seem.

The Skimmington Riders
www.philaprintshop.com/images/synskimmington.jpg

Hudibras Encounters the Skimmington, WILLIAM HOGARTH, c.1828
www.davidsongalleries.com/artists/hogarth/hogarth_hud_enc2.jpg

"The Henpecked Husband" ~ attributed To William Dawes
www.artnet.com/Artists/LotDetailPage.aspx?lot_id=70DDBF16B4C298CB
The painting shows a bare breasted woman in her nightdress hitting her tremulous husband over the head with an iron. The reasons for this act of violence by the wife appears to be that the husband had walked into their bedroom and found her in bed with her lover. The print reinforces the notion of the battered husband being not only dominated and battered by his wife, but cuckolded as well.

And from NorthCarolinahistory.org ~ an online encyclopedia of North Carolina ~ 'Skimmington' was a common custom during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, securing social order. It was also incorporated into colonial political protests.
www.northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/S/alpha