Given to us by  Mr Hedley Martin, Morval Nr Looe (1980) and Mrs Gwen Masters, Blisland (1997).

Hedley Martin was born in Camelford and brought up on a farm near Bude. He saidthat this dance was once known all over North Cornwall and performed at family parties, usually in a kitchen on the slate slabs. Young people would travel from farm to farm during festive seasons, such as Christmas, and drink cider, socialise and perform the dance as entertainment. He could remember the dance being done in fairly heavy clogs with iron scoots, like horseshoes, on the bottom. These were later transferred to hobnail boots which he described as having a plate on the toe end of the sole and a 'U' shape piece over the heel. Ladies buckled shoes were treated similarly, all of which was intended to make them last longer but also increase the noise of step dancing. Hedley would play the harmonica as he danced. The dancers would put their hands on each other’s shoulders in order to ‘hold up’ the musician as they played. Recalling the dances she did as a child, Mrs Gwen Masters from Blisland explained that she also performed some dances where she would stamp her feet, stating that, “There was all this stamping our feet that I remember doing, you know, sort of ended, ‘That’s That”. She said that dances from her moorland area always seemed to end with this double stamp. Although not directly referring to Mr Martin’s Reel, Mrs Masters’ memories do seem to support the popularity of heavy shoed dancing, certainly in North Cornwall. The ‘That’s that’ is reminiscent of the ‘stamp’ which is used in Mr Martin’s Reel to mark the end of each phrase.  Hedley had no name for this dance; thus, the dance became known as ‘Mr Martin’s Reel’. It is important to recognise that “reel” here refers to the dance going around rather than necessarily making the figure of eight shape normally associated with country dances. Similarly, it is not danced to the tune of a reel but a hornpipe with a pronounced double beat at the end of each four-bar phrase.