Norwich Kitwitches – Molly Dancers

Some Molly Terms

The Kitwitches perform traditional english molly dancing, the dance of the East Anglian farm workers.

Molly Dancing

Molly dancing was the dance of East Anglian ploughboys who danced over the winter when work was in short supply. They went from house to house, danced and begged for money on Plough Monday.

Plough Monday

Plough Monday is the first Monday after Epiphany, or twelfth night. Ploughboys were meant to return to work on this day but went out performing and begging for money instead.

Kitwitch

There is some debate about the origins of the Kitwitches but here are the references we have found:

“In Christmas time, and especially on plough Monday, several Men dresse themselves in Womens Close and goes from House to House a Dancing along with fiddles where they beg for Money. These are called Kitwitches.” 

(NRO Arderon Papers Ms. 555 fol. 242v, dating from the mid 18th century). 

Later, in the same document under  the heading “Local Words or Words and Idiomatical proverbs in or about Norwich” a Kitwitch was described as a Buffoon (fol. 238).

The name Kitwitch was also found in Great Yarmouth, where there was a Kittywitches pub and Kittywitches Row (no 95) which ran from Middlegate to King Street. Enid Porter in ‘The Folk Lore of East Anglia’ reports that at this row 

‘women dressed in men’s clothes and with their faces smeared with blood, rushed from house to house demanding money which they spent on drink.’

It has been suggested that the word Kitty Witch derives from the Dutch kitwijk, a house of bad repute, and that Dutch visitors to the old Yarmouth Free Fair of herring may have given this name to a local public house.

Identity Crisis!

Amusingly the Kitwitches were known as “Shitwitches” for the first ten years of their life as the “K”  from the original mid 18th Century text looked just like an “Sh”.

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