History

(Soon after Salt Springs got going, the Hounds became a mixed Border side. So much for being the only mixed morris team in Syracuse -- but we were still the only mixed Cotswold team.)

We bestowed the job of fore on Heather; Karin was elected squire and Rich was bag. (Campaign slogan: RICHARD S. HOLMES is an anagram of HELD MORRIS CASH.) We chose to learn the Wheatley tradition. Why? Well, we wanted to be different -- not the umpteenth Fieldtown side in the northeast. As far as we could determine, the nearest sides doing Wheatley were Seattle Morris in Washington and Bristol Morris in England -- not to mention the Wheatley team. (Two of which -- Seattle and Wheatley -- have since gone defunct. Hmm.) Not only is Wheatley done by few teams, its look and feel are different from most of the traditions you do see. It's a straightforward, relatively simple, "primal morris" tradition, in some respects more like border morris than typical Cotswold. There were six dancers and a musician, in theory enough for the usual set of six dancers, but with no spares; instead we decided to adapt the dances for sets of four.

We weren't ready to dance out on May Day, but the next month Thornden had its fifteenth anniversary "Quinceaneras Ale" and by then we had three dances ("Room for the Cuckoo", "Constant Billy", and "Shepherd's Hey" -- also known as "The Hankie Dance", "The Stick Dance", and "The Handclapping Dance") ready. That, then, was the occasion of our debut. A few weeks later we danced out a second time at the Blue Tusk in Syracuse's Armory Square with Thornden.

Then we got sideswiped by reality. Rich's job required him to move temporarily to Virginia -- and Heather went along. At that time, Julia and Bob were also expecting to have to leave town in the near future. (Turns out they didn't.) And also at the same time, Karin got pregnant. As of August, only seven months after starting up, Salt Springs went on indefinite hiatus.

That was the team's status for three years, except for a brief twitch in June 1998 when we did one dance in partial kit at the AffordabAle hosted by the Foggy Bottom Morris Men. Meanwhile Heather and Rich started up Flying Bark Morris in Newport News, Virginia -- Heather was fore, again, and the team did Wheatley and border morris. In 1999 Heather and Rich returned to Syracuse and started asking whether anyone wanted to start Salt Springs up again. Rather to their surprise, all but one of the original team did... and a few more besides!

Heather had had enough of Wheatley, and some of the other dancers were unenthusiastic about it too. Instead, if only to be even more different, we chose to do "our own tradition" -- or, if you prefer, not to do a tradition at all. Using Withington (itself a rather untraditional tradition) as a starting point, we began developing our own set of figures, steps, hand motions, and dances to create a style we jocularly called "Saltington". We made our first appearance in this incarnation on May Day 2000, doing "Young Collins", and a month later did that and "Gallant Hussar" and "The Webley" in our first full-scale danceout in conjuction with the Hounds.

We had ten active members that season and a pretty good danceout schedule. The following Fall, however, several members had to drop out or reduce their activity in the team. Practices became a little spotty, although we did manage to add two dances, "Donkey Riding" and "No Rings", to the repertoire (although we never did dance "No Rings" in public.) We had only five dancers for the 2001 season, and that number dropped to three in early October. We therefore decided to disband the team at that time.