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| Rapper |
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 A Rapper is a strip of flexible steel about 25mm wide and up to 600mm long with a handle or grip at each end. Any suitable strip of metal could be adapted for use as a Rapper sword; filed-down saw blades, bed laths and hoop iron were among the sources of flexible metal strips used to make rappers during the nineteenth century. The popular theory is that the Rapper was an instrument for cleaning dirt from the backs of pit ponies, however, there are no records for such tools being used at that time in the north-east of England where Rapper dances first originated from. It is not known when flexible Rappers were first used but it is unlikely that suitable materials would have been available before 1700 when steel smelting works first moved into the Derwent Valley near the villages of Swalwell and Winlaton. The adoption of flexible swords unleashed the potential for major innovations in both the form and the style of Rapper to the point where it became completely different from other dances like (rigid) Longsword.
There is strong evidence of linked sword dancing on Tyneside through accounts such as Henry Bourne (Antiquitates Vulgares, 1725) and John Brand (Observations on Popular Antiquities, 1777). In 1813 John Leonnard makes reference to sword dancers in his poem Winlaton Hoppings. How the dance evolved over the course of the remainder of the nineteenth century is unknown as no notations or accurate descriptions of the dances have yet been found. By this time Rapper was already associated with the coal mining communities of Northumberland and Durham although the true essence of the dance cannot be appreciated without an understanding of the social realities of the communities in which Rapper developed. |
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