Chapter V: Introduction (1)

Before the year 1905 few people knew that England possessed a traditional folk-dance of her own, and fewer still realised that the national dances were still practised on certain festival occasions in several villages and country towns, for the most part in the Midland and Northern counties. The word “folk” when used to describe a dance may be interpreted in two ways. It may be used to signify a dance (either traditional or not) at one time popular amongst the people, or its meaning may be limited to those dances whose origin is lost in antiquity and which have been passed on from generation to generation by unlettered folk without the aid of written music or written instruction as to steps or evolutions. That this book may be of more use to those who wish either to study the available English dances or to pass them on to the present generation, the wider meaning of the word “folk” will be understood.

But a very marked distinction must be drawn between the two classes of folk-dance, between those recorded in books and still danced by peasant folk as a merely social dance, with no special significance beyond being an occasion for the display of gallantry, coquetry, and the courtesies of social intercourse; and those dances, until lately unrecorded, which are religious in origin and are the expression in rhythm of primitive beliefs and magical ceremonial.

In the former are included the country dances and certain popular court dances. The latter include the Sword dances, Morris dances, the Furry dance, and Horn dance. As the origin of all dancing may be directly or indirectly traced to the ceremonial of primitive religions, it will be well first of all to give some account of those traditional dances still lingering in English villages which give unmistakable signs of their origin.

The primitive forms of the traditional dance can only be guessed at by the student of to-day, for probably every epoch, every generation, and every individual dancer has added to, modified, or taken from the original dance, but enough is still with us to make the study an intensely interesting one both from the archæological and from the social point of view.

The most important surviving traditional dance in England to-day is undoubtedly the Morris dance, both because of the far greater number of Morris dances still in existence and because of the greater differences between the individual dances. But very closely allied to, if not identical with, the Morris is the Sword dance, and again allied to both is the Mummers’ play.

My own experience in talking to country dancers coincides with that of Mr Cecil Sharp, who says that if you ask a sword dancer of Grenoside or Earsdon, he will insist that he is a Morris dancer, and that one is often sent after a Morris dance, only to find traces of a Mummers’ play. He adds, “In due course it will dawn upon him (the collector) that the sword dancer of Northern England, the Morris dancer of the Midlands and the South, and the Mummer of all England and Scotland are in the popular view as one and pass under the same name.” And it is the word “Morris” which gives the clue to the origin and nature of the dance, whatever the precise form which it takes.

With one exception the dictionaries and glossaries I have consulted derive the word “Morris” from “Moorish.” Mr Cecil Sharp says that the weight of testimony must be held to show Morocco as the fount and origin of the dance,[1] but Mr John Graham and Mr Kidson throw doubt on its Moorish origin. The fact that the Morisco, supposed to be the counterpart of the English Morris, was a solo dance performed with castanets, and the fact that amongst Orientals only women danced, whilst the Morris is essentially a man’s dance, seems to me to put the Morris definitely into an entirely different category from the Morisco, although both words are used for the same dance.

[1] Later, I believe, Mr Sharp changed his opinion.

Eventually I found what I believe to be the true derivation of the word in the Glossary of C. Mackay, LL.D., published in 1887. He says that the word “Morris” is probably of Keltic origin, and comes from “Mor,” great, and “uasal,” noble and dignified. The final syllable was dropped in the course of ages, when Mor-uasal and Mor-uiseil became Moruis, great, noble, stately, dignified, solemn. Dr Mackay connects the dance with the Druidical Festival of Beltane (from Bal or Bael, the Sun-god), and he says that all traditions of the Druids show the solemn importance which they attached to May Day, or Beltane. Multitudes of devotees preceded by three orders of the priesthood—priests, bards, and prophets—marched in solemn procession to the top of a high hill to watch the kindling of a fire on May the first by the direct agency of the sun. The solemn and mysterious dance around the fire thus kindled appears to have been the origin of the Morris or Mor-uiseil dance.

Many writers have pointed out the curious resemblance between the dances of the Salii and the English Morris and sword dances, and this resemblance adds to the evidence in favour of our traditional dance having originated in sun worship and nature worship generally.

The following description of the Salii from _The Golden Bough_ will illustrate this point:—“As priests of Mars, the god of Agriculture, the Salii probably had also certain agricultural functions. They were named from the remarkable leaps which they made. Now we have seen that dancing and leaping high are common sympathetic charms to make the crops grow high. Was it one of the functions of the Salii to dance and leap on the fields at the spring or autumn sowing, or at both?

“The dancing procession of the Salii took place in October as well as in March, and the Romans sowed both in spring and autumn. The weapons borne by the Salii, while effective against demons in general, may have been especially directed against the demons who steal the seed corn in the ripe grain. In Western Africa the field labours of tilling and sowing are sometimes accompanied by dances of armed men in the fields.”

In a footnote the author also throws out a suggestion that, as the Salii were said to have been founded by Morrius, King of Veii, and this seems to be etymologically the same as Mamurius and Mars, the word “Morris” may be the same. In answer to a query, however, he does not appear to take this as a really serious suggestion.[2]

[2] L. von Schrœder in _Mysterium und Mimus im Rigveda_ (p. 113) suggests, following A. Kuhn, that the root of the word “Morris” is the same as that of Maruts, the band of dancing warriors attendant upon Indra.

The following are some of the reasons for connecting the Morris dance with primitive religious customs:—

(1) The characteristic of the processional form of the
dance as performed by the living dancers to-day is
a slow, dignified rhythmic movement, which is very
marked in the Bampton (Oxon.) dancers, who have an
unbroken tradition going back some hundreds of years.

The set dances display a much more lively character
and are characterised by wild leaps, twirlings
round, hand-clapping, stick clashing, and the
waving of handkerchiefs, so that we can easily
imagine the present Morris as a descendant of the
solemn processional up the mountain-side to greet
the morning sun, and the scenes of wild joy on the
summit at the appearance of the source of light and
life to his waiting worshippers.

(2) Many of the Morris and Sword dancers have
evolutions which are characteristic of ceremonial
used by savage people in the worship of the sun.
The Abingdon (Berks) dances, a very old tradition,
end with a complete circle. Bean-setting, one
of the Headington (Oxon.) dances, begins with
two half-circles danced in opposite directions.
The Bampton dances have circles, half-circles,
and gypsies, another form of circle. The
Gloucestershire dances have the same. In some
dances the dancers advance and retire into the
centre, forming a widening and narrowing circle
alternately, all of which illustrate by mimetic
action the supposed movements of the sun and the
sun’s rays. All were probably actuated by mimetic
magic, primitive man believing that by imitating
the rising and setting of the sun and by lighting
fires he actually caused the return of the sun to
the earth.

(3) The appearance in different forms of the King
and Queen, the Lord and Lady, the Mayor and
Squire in the ceremonial of the dance. These
figures indubitably link up the dances with those
ceremonies attending the crowning of the King of the
Wood, who, representing the life of the earth’s
vegetation, was yearly slain lest his vigour might wane
and all the green life of earth perish with it. The
slaying of this King and the revels which preceded it
and the crowning of the fresh and younger Monarch were
all still dimly to be traced in many revels and dances
in English villages within quite recent years.

At Abingdon, the story runs, two hundred years ago a great fight took place between the dwellers in Ock Street and the rest of the burghers of the town. The Ock Street people outnumbering the rest of the whole town thought they had the right to appoint a Mayor. A beast was slain in the market-place and roasted whole, a fight took place for the horns, and the winning side then carried the horns in the Morris dancing round the town. The horns are in existence to-day and are carried by the Mayor of the Morris accompanied by the Squire carrying a Sword. There are traces left still of the gold used to tip the horns which are mounted on a bull’s head, with flaming red nostrils, thus making it evident that the beast was regarded as sacred. These ceremonies took place on St John the Baptist’s Eve, celebrating the summer solstice.

(_“The Squire” holding the sword, wooden cup, and collection box, also the pole on which is mounted the bull’s head and horns formerly carried by the “Mayor of the Morris”_)]

At Kirtlington it was customary for the dancers to conduct ceremonially a young maiden from her father’s house early in the morning. She must be of spotless reputation, and dressed in white with floating blue ribbons. She stayed with the dancers until night fell, when she was taken back to her father’s house. During the time she was with the dancers she was regarded as sacred, and anyone who so much as jostled her in the crowd must pay a fine of half a crown. Later a lamb substituted for the maiden was decorated with flowers and ribbons, carried round by the dancers, and at intervals put down while they danced round about it in a circle.

At Kidlington (Oxon.) Blount describes a similar ceremony. “The Monday after Whitsun week a fat lamb was provided, and the maidens of the town having their thumbs tied together were permitted to run after it, and she who with her mouth took hold of the lamb was declared the Lady of the Lamb, which was killed, cleaned, and with the skin hanging on it was carried on a pole before the lady and her companions to the green attended with music and a Morisco dance of men and another of women. The rest of the day was spent in mirth and merry glee. Next day the lamb, partly baked, partly boiled and partly roasted, was served up for the lady’s feast, when she sat majestically at the upper end of the table and her companions, with the music playing during the repast, which having finished the solemnity ended.”

In most places where there are still lingering traces of the Morris there also linger these traces of the ancient sacrifice of the King of the Wood, and of the Worship of the Sun.

Another link with the festivals of ancient religions seems to be the constant use of a mask in the traditional dance, or the disguising of the face with black, white, or red paint. In _The Golden Bough_ Sir James Frazer gives an account of a pagan festival which may possibly account for this survival.

“In Mexico a Woman who represented the Mother of the Gods, the Earth Goddess, after being feasted and entertained by sham fights for some days was beheaded on the shoulders of a man. The body was flayed, and one of the men clothing himself in the skin became the representative of the goddess Toci. The skin of the thigh was removed separately, and the young man who represented the Maize god, the son of the goddess Toci, wrapt it round his face as a mask. Various ceremonies then followed in which the two men clad in the woman’s skin played the parts respectively of god and goddess.”

To-day in England curious hints still survive which show that the simple country folk never altogether lost the feeling that these dances were not quite ordinary, but represented some sort of magic charm with which it would be unsafe to interfere. Mr Sidney O. Addy, in his _Household Tales_, says:—“At Curbar, in Derbyshire, it is said that Morris dancing is really fairy dancing, and that ‘Morris dancing’ means ‘fairy dancing.’ Morris dancers of the present day (1895), it is said, go through the same form of dancing that the fairies go through, except that of course they cannot perform such intricate figures as the fairies can. The figures which the Morris dancers of the present day go through are very elaborate and very difficult to learn. A man said to me ‘that Morris dancing had been taken away from the fairies.’ There is something beautiful and strange in the music to which the Morris dancers dance. If ever music was not of this world it is this. To hear it is to believe that Morris dancing was a religious rite.“

The following extract seems to link up our English Morris dance with the Moorish dance, so that whether we choose to derive the word “Morris” from the Keltic Mor-uiseil, or from the Moorish, or whether we think that the similarity of the two words made a confusion in the popular mind, and so the two kinds of dances came to be known by one name, we can still hold the belief that the English traditional dance which has come to us down the ages was originally a religious dance celebrating the return of the Sun-god and the sowing and the gathering of the crops on which man’s life depended.

Mr Addy asks:—“Has it (the Morris dance) descended to us from a dusky Iberian people, once a distinct caste in England, in whose magical powers and religion the dominant races believed? In his dictionary, Professor Skeat has concluded that a Morris dancer was a Moorish dancer. Assuming that such is the case, we may ask ourselves why these dances were so called. Are we to suppose that English peasants borrowed the dance from the Moors in historical times? Or are we to believe that it was handed down in England from an early period by the remnants of a dark-coloured Iberian people who, according to Tacitus, crossed over from Spain and were, in fact, Moors? In Yorkshire, a rude Christmas play known as the Peace Egg is performed. In that play the chief act is the slaughter by St George of England of a Black Prince of Paladine whom St George stigmatises as a ‘Black Morocco Dog.’ The play seems to represent an old feud between a light-haired and a dark-haired people once inhabiting England: and it may be that in popular speech the dark-haired people were once known as Moors. If this dramatised contest between St George of England and the ‘Black Morocco Dog’ does not point back to a time when conflicts existed in this country between a dusky race of Iberian or Moorish origin and a light-haired people which conquered and enslaved them, to what can we ascribe its origin? We can only say that this play is of historical or literary and not of traditional origin. But the form of the play renders an historical or literary origin impossible, and the whole performance seems to be nothing else but a rude and popular reminiscence of an ancient national feud.

“It seems relevant to mention here an old earthwork, extending for some miles in length near Sheffield, known in one part of its course as Barber Balk. The direction of the earthwork is from south-west to north-east, and the ditch is uniformly on the southern side, as if it had been intended as a defence against attack from that side. Some modern scholars identify the Barbars or Berbers, a people inhabiting the Saracen countries along the north coast of Africa, with the Iberians. Can it be that an invading Celtic people threw up this earthwork as a defence against a dusky Iberian foe coming from the south, and that the ancient name of the earthwork has been handed down from a remote time, thereby preserving its true history? And is it not possible that the Iberians, the Morris or Moor, the ‘Black Morocco Dog’ of the traditional play and the Barber are identical?

“A great authority on early Britain ‘has accepted and employed the theory advanced by ethnologists that the early inhabitants of this country were of Iberian origin.’”

The fact that the Morris dancers sometimes blackened their faces need not necessarily mean that they wish to represent the Moors, but that they were thought to represent Moors because their faces were blackened.

The Morris dance was called in some places the Northern lights and the Aurora Borealis because of its desultory movements, and it may have been this which inspired Milton to write—

“The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove,
Now to the Moon in wavering Morrice move.”

If, as I have tried to show, the traditional dance is part of an ancient religious ceremonial dating from pre-Christian days, we shall not be surprised to find that in Early Christian times the dance still found some place in the ceremonial of worship.

Sir Hubert Parry, in a chapter on dance rhythm in Grove’s _Dictionary of Music_, says:—“Dance rhythm and dance gestures have exerted the most powerful influence on music from prehistoric times until to-day. The analogy of a similar state of things among uncultivated races still existing confirms the inherent probability of the view that definiteness of any kind of music, whether of figure or phrase, was first arrived at through connection with dancing. The beating of some kind of noisy instrument as an accompaniment to gestures in the excitement of actual war or victory or other such exciting cause was the first type of rhythmic music, and the telling of tribal or national stories, of deeds of heroes in the indefinite chant consisting of a monotone slightly varying with occasional cadences which is met with among so many barbarous peoples, was the first type of vocal music.

“This vague approach to musical recitation must have received its first rhythmic arrangement when it came to be accompanied by rhythmic gestures and the two processes were thereby combined, while song and dance went on together as in mediæval times in Europe.

“In Oratorio the importance of dance rhythm is shown by negative as well as positive evidence. In the parts in which composers arrived at pure declamatory music, the result, though often expressive, is hopelessly and inextricably indefinite in form. But in most cases they submitted either openly or covertly to dance rhythm in some part or other of their works.

“In Oratorio the dance influence maintained its place, but not so openly as in Opera.”

In actual Church worship we find that rhythmic ball was played by bishop and priests round the altar, and at the present day on Corpus Christi Day and other festivals in the Cathedral at Seville the choir boys perform a dance.

The fact that to-day the Christian Festival of Whitsuntide is the most usual time for Morris dancing in those places where it still survives is also an indication that the pagan ceremonial dance was transferred to the Christian Church ceremonial in early Christian times.

Several Churchwarden accounts giving items paid for Morris dancers’ clothes, decorations, and regalia also point the same way. One at Kingston-on-Thames reads thus—

1508. For payneing of the Mores garments and
for sarten gret leveres £0 2 4
” For plyts and ¼ of laun for the Mores
garments 0 2 11
” For Orsden for the same 0 0 10
” For bellys for the daunsars 0 0 12
1509-10. For silver paper for the Mores daunsars
the frere, and Mayde Maryan at 1d.
a peyne £0 5 4
1521-22. Eight yards of fustyan for the Mores
daunsars’ coats 0 16 0
” A dozyn of gold skynnes for the Mores 0 0 10
1536-37. Five hats and 4 porses for the daunsars 0 0 4½

But a carol collected in 1833 from a peasant in West Cornwall and included in William Sandys’ collection is the most interesting proof I have yet found of the association between dancing and the Christian religion. Nothing more is known of the Carol in spite of many inquiries which are still being pursued. This is the carol—

[Music: TO-MORROW SHALL BE MY DANCING DAY]

To-morrow shall be my dancing day,
I would my true love did so chance
To see the legend of my play,
To call my true love to my dance.

CHORUS

Sing, oh! my love,
Oh, my love, my love, my love,
This have I done for my true love.

2. “Then was I born of a Virgin pure,
Of her I took fleshly substance:
Then was I knit to man’s nature,
To call my true love to my dance.
Sing oh! etc.

3. “In a manger laid and wrapp’d I was,
So very poor this was my chance,
Betwixt an ox and a silly poor ass,
To call my true love to my dance.
Sing oh! etc.

4. “Then afterwards baptised I was,
The Holy Ghost on me did glance,
My Father’s voice heard from above,
To call my true love to my dance.
Sing oh! etc.

5. “Into the desert I was led,
Where I fasted without substance:
The Devil bade me make stones my bread,
To have me break my true love’s dance.
Sing oh! etc.

6. “The Jews on me they made great suit,
And with me made great variance,
Because they loved darkness rather than light,
To call my true love to the dance.
Sing oh! etc.

7. “For thirty pence Judas me sold,
His covetousness for to advance;
Mark, where I kiss, the same do hold,
The same is he shall lead the dance,
Sing oh! etc.

8. “Before Pilate the Jews me brought,
When Barabbas had deliverance;
They scourg’d me and set me at nought,
Judged me to die to lead the dance.
Sing oh! etc.

9. “When on the cross hanged I was;
When a spear to my heart did glance,
There issued forth both water and blood,
To call my true love to the dance.
Sing oh! etc.

10. “Then down to Hell I took my way,
For my true love’s deliverance,
And rose again on the third day,
Up to my true love and the dance.
Sing oh! etc.

11. “Then up to Heaven I did ascend,
Where now I dwell in sure substance,
On the right hand of God, that man
May come into the general dance.
Sing oh! etc.”

Mr G. R. S. Mead thinks that this carol was originally sung by the mediæval minstrels, jongleurs, and troubadours, who are said to have invented the word carol, meaning a dance in which the performers moved slowly in a circle, singing as they went. The Troubadours are responsible for the preservation of many fragments of old mystery plays, and this carol is probably one such fragment, and as such is a link between the definitely pagan folk-dance and through the Christian Church to those alive in England to-day.

The following tune is taken from Miss A. G. Gilchrist’s Manuscript Collection, and was noted and sent to her by Mr Smith Williamson, bandmaster of Moston, W. Manchester, in 1907. Miss Gilchrist thinks it interesting in connection with the tune of this Carol, as it is called “My love, my love,” and was played as a Morris dance at the Rush-Cart ceremony at Moston up to forty-five or fifty years ago.

[Music: MOSTON RUSH-CART MORRIS TUNE, “MY LOVE, MY LOVE”]

The following account of the sacred all-night dance written by Philo (about A.D. 26) is quoted by Mr Mead in _Quest_, October 1910, and is interesting because the dance described is curiously like the surviving processional dances which have intervals in the processional when a set dance is performed.

“After the banquet they kept the sacred all-night festival. And this is how they keep it. They all stand up in a body, and in the middle of the banqueting-place they first form the Choroi, one of men and the other of women, and a leader and conductor is chosen for each, the one whose reputation is greatest for a knowledge of music: they then chant hymns composed in God’s honour in many metres and melodies, sometimes singing together, sometimes one chorus beating the measure with their hands for the antiphonal chanting of the other, now dancing to the measure and now inspiring it, at times dancing in procession, at times set dances, and then circle-dances right and left.” The latter part of this description might almost have been taken down from some of the Morris dances danced to-day.

In Anglo-Saxon times the sword dance was in great repute, and Saxon nobles kept dancers to amuse their guests. There is mention of Morris dancing in Edward III.’s reign, when John of Gaunt returned from Spain, but few, if any, vestiges of it can be traced in writers beyond the reign of Henry VII.: about which time, and particularly in that of Henry VIII., the Churchwarden’s accounts in several parishes show that the Morris dance made a very considerable figure in the parochial festivals. Some of the accounts of the May Games of Robin Hood include a Morris dance, but it is doubtful if the Morris was an intrinsic part of the Robin Hood pageant, as it was very often danced on separate occasions altogether. I am inclined to think that both are fragments of much older dances and dramas, and that it is almost impossible to say what was their exact relation to one another. By the time of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, when references to the Morris dance are very frequent, all idea of its religious significance had disappeared, and it represented the characteristics of the English peasant in a holiday mood in the days when life was a big adventure, and revelry and sport were rude and boisterous. It is a little difficult to realise, as one watches the few remaining traditional dancers to-day, either that their dancing has represented all that mankind knew of primitive religious aspiration and ceremonial, or later that it embodied all the frolic and revel of the rollicking days of Queen Elizabeth.

Although there is only one written record of steps and figures, there are so many general descriptions of the dances in the writers of that time that it is a little difficult, in the short space at my disposal, to choose which will give the best idea of the dance as then performed. I have chosen a few descriptions which seem best to fulfil this purpose.

But first there are four pictures of Morris dancing which may be here described.

The first is a painted glass window at Betley, in Staffordshire. It exhibits in all probability the most curious as well as the oldest representation of an English May game and Morris dance that is anywhere to be found. The dresses look as if they belong to the reign of Edward IV., but the owner, Tollet, thought they were in the time of Henry VIII.

Another early representation of a Morris dance is a copy of a very scarce engraving on copper by Israhel Van Meckenem (died 1503), so named from the place of his nativity, a German village in the confines of Flanders, in which latter country this artist appears chiefly to have resided, and therefore in most of his prints we may observe the Flemish costume of his time. From the pointed shoes that we see in one of the figures it must have been executed between the years 1460 and 1470, about which latter period the broad-toed shoes came into fashion in France and Flanders. It seems to have been intended as a pattern for goldsmith’s work, probably a cup or tankard.

And thirdly, there is in the old Town Hall at Munich a series of ten figures of Morris dancers, carved in wood by Erasmus Schnitznar in 1480. All these figures have bells, and one has long streamers to his sleeves.

There is a fourth described by Walpole in his _Catalogue of English Engravers_, under the name of Peter Stent. It is a painting at Lord Fitzwilliam’s on Richmond Green, which came out of the old neighbouring palace. It was executed by Vinckenkroom about the end of the reign of James I., and exhibits a view of the above palace. A Morris dance is introduced, consisting of seven figures, viz.:—A fool, hobby-horse, piper, Maid Marian, and three dancers, the rest of the figures being spectators.

In a tract entitled _Plaine Percevall the Peace Maker of England_, 1590, mention is made of a “stranger, which, seeing a quintessence (besides the Foole and Maid Marian) of all the picked youth strained out of a whole endship, footing the Morris about a May-pole, and he, not hearing the ministrelsie for the noise of the tabors, bluntly demanded if they were not all beside themselves that they so lip’d and skip’d without an occasion.”

Stubbes, in his _Anatomie of Abuses_, thus describes a Morris dance under the title of the “Devil’s Daunce.”

_Description of the Lord of Misrule, and attendant Morris_

“First, all the wilde heads of the parish, flocking together, chuse them a graund Captaine (of Mischiefe) whome they innoble with the title of _my Lord of Misrule_, and him they crowne with great solemnitie, and adopt for their King. This king annoynted, chooseth forth twentie, fourtie, three score or a hundred lustie guttes like to himselfe to wait upon his Lordly Majesty, and to guard his noble person. Then everyone of these his men he investeth with his liveries of greene, yellow, or some other light wanton colour. And as though that were not (bawdy) gawdy ynough, I should say, they bedecke themselves with scarffes, ribbons and laces hanged all over with golde ringes, precious stones and other jewels: this done, they tie about either legge twentie or fourtie belles with rich handkerchiefe in their handes and sometimes laide a cross over their shoulders and neckes, borrowed for the most part of their pretie _Mopsies_ and loving _Bessies_, for bussing them in the darke. Thus all things set in order, then have they their hobby-horses, their dragons and other antiques together with their baudie pipers and thundering drummers, to strike up the _Devil’s Daunce_, withall: then martch this heathen company towards the Church and Church-yarde, their pypers pyping, their drummers thundering, their stumpes dauncing, their belles iyngling, their handkercheefes fluttering about their heades like madde men, their hobbie horses and other monsters skirmishing amongst the throng: and in this sorte they goe to the Church (though the Minister be at prayer or preaching), dauncing and swinging their handkercheefes over their heads in the Church like Devils incarnate, with such a confused noise, that no man can heare his owne voyce.”

To come to later times; in a curious story of a Country Squire who turned Methodist and went about the country preaching, called “The Spiritual Quixote or the Summer’s Ramble” of Mr Geoffry Wildgoose, a comic romance (1773), there is an amusing account of a Morris dance.

“In the afternoon when they were got within a few miles of Gloucester at a genteel house near the end of the village they saw almost the whole parish assembled in the Court to see a set of Morrice dancers who (this holiday time), dressed up in bells and ribbands, were performing for the entertainment of the family of some company that had dined there.”

* * * * *

“Those who are acquainted with this sort of Morrice dance (which is still practised in several parts of England) must know that they are usually attended with one character called the Tom fool, who like the clown in the pantomime seems to be a burlesque upon all the rest. His fool’s cap has a fox’s tail depending like a ramillie whip: and instead of the small bells which the others wear on their legs he has a great sheep-bell hung on his back side. Whilst the company therefore were all attention to the preacher this buffoon contrived to slip the fool’s cap upon Tugwell’s head, and to fix the sheep’s bell to his rump. Which Jerry no sooner perceived than his choler arose, and spitting into his hands and clenching his fists he gave the Tom fool a swinging blow in the face. Tugwell pursued with the sheep-bell at his tail. Ended the preaching.”

At Abingdon-on-Thames the date on the regalia of the Morris dances still in existence is 1700, and the Bampton Morris “side” claims an unbroken tradition, so that in these places at any rate we are in touch with the dance as it has come to us from the days when it was an inherent part of country life, and it is from these and other isolated “sides” and individuals that the steps, figures, and tunes have been taken down at the present day. A complete reconstruction of the dance is of course impossible, so is an exact lesson of the way in which it should be danced, but with the general descriptions and the remaining dancers enough can be ascertained to justify the contention that England has a real folk-dance of her own which compares very favourably with that of other nations.

I. THE MORRIS DANCE TO-DAY

Before the revival of Morris dancing in 1905, there was only one description of the steps and evolutions of the dance, and that was in _Orchesographie et Traicte en Forme de Dialogue_, by Thoinot-Arbeau, published in 1588.

This is so interesting that I have had a photograph of it taken from the copy in the British Museum.

The Morris dance may be roughly divided into five kinds—processional, corner, handkerchief, stick dances, and solo jigs.

The corner dances are danced with handkerchiefs and so are the processional and jigs, but there are also others where handkerchiefs take the place of sticks.

Since 1905 Mr Cecil Sharp has published instructions for the Morris dance in a series called the Morris Book, with the tunes as played at the present day. The first two volumes of the series were written in collaboration with Mr H. C. MacIlwaine, and with the help of Miss Florence Warren, of the Espérance Guild of Morris dancers, from whom the steps of most of the dances were taken down as she had learned them from William Kimber, of Headington.

I have also edited, with the help of Mr Clive Carey, Mr Geoffrey Toye, and Miss Florence Warren, two volumes called _The Espérance Morris Book_, and Mr John Graham has collected Midland, Lancashire, and Cheshire dances in two volumes.[3]

It is probable that these books contain complete instructions in the steps and figures of the dance and are a fairly complete collection of the existing dances, and that others still in the Collector’s books, but not yet published, may only be variants. There is a varied and extensive terminology used by the old dancers, and it is often difficult to arrive at the exact meaning of certain expressions, for each set of dancers has its own phraseology, which varies considerably from that of other sets even when they are not many miles apart in locality. The following are some of the terms used:—“Shake up” and “foot up” for the first figure of a dance; “hey up” or “hey sides up,” “back to back,” “hands across,” and “capers.” “Gipsies” must be seen to be understood, and “galley” is a turning round on your own axis with a single or double shake of the leg, which seems to be better done the older and more shaky the dancer is.

[3] Both the first volume of _The Espérance Morris Book_ and the first volume of Mr Sharp’s _Morris Book_ have been revised.

Each village has its own steps and its own evolutions, and the evolutions generally follow the same order in each dance, the particular steps of that dance being done between the evolutions.

This is a very usual order in which the dance is done—

Foot up or Shake up. Special step.
Special step. Back to back.
Hey up. Special step.
Special step. Hey up and All in.
Hands across.

But it would take a whole volume to describe each step done by each “side” of dancers, and by the time this book was in print other variants would have arisen, if any of the “sides” had danced in the meantime.

For practical purposes one has to decide on the most typical step one has seen and adopt it for those to whom one is responsible for teaching the dances.

But the characteristics of all the dances are vigour and virility, and there is nothing in the least like the posturing with pointed toe which characterises the ordinary ball-room and stage dances.

The following is a complete list as far as I know of all the Morris dances collected and published since the revival in 1905:—

Bean-setting.
Laudnum Bunches.
Country Gardens.
Constant Billy.
Trunkles.
Rigs o’ Marlow.
Bluff King Hal.
How d’ye do, Sir?
Shepherds’ Hey.
Blue-eyed Stranger.
Hey diddle Dis.
Hunting the Squirrel.
Getting up Stairs.
Double set Back.
Haste to the Wedding.
Rodney.
Processional Morris.
Jockie to the Fair.
Old Mother Oxford.
Old Woman tossed up in a blanket.
Bacca Pipes jig.
Flowers of Edinburgh.
The Rose.
Field Town Morris.
The Maid of the Mill.
Bobbing Joe.
Glorisheers.
The Gallant Hussar.
Leap Frog.
Shooting.
Brighton Camp.
Green Garters.
Princess Royal.
Lumps of Plum Pudding.
The Fool’s Dance.
Derbyshire Morris.
Derbyshire Morris Reel.
The Cuckoo’s Nest.
The Monk’s March.
Longborough Morris.
Heel and Toe.
Bobby’s Joan.
Banks of the Dee.
Dearest Dicky.
London Pride.
Swaggering Boney.
Young Collins.
All’s for the Best and Richmond Hill.
Step Back.[4]
I’ll go and enlist for a Sailor.
Sherborne Jig.
None so Pretty.
Cross Caper, or Prince’s Royal.
We won’t go home till Morning.
Abraham Brown.
Morris Off.
Long Morris.
Cross Morris.
Three Cans Morris.
Nancy Dawson.
The Boatman’s Song.
The Tight Little Island.
The Girl I left behind Me.
The Rose Tree and The British Grenadiers.
Garryowen.
With a Hundred Pipers.
Ninety-five.
Draw Back.
Bumpus o’ Stretton.
Lively Jig.
Morris On.
Sally Luker.
A Nutting we will go.

[4] As far as I can gather, this is the dance called “Molly Oxford” by the Field Town dancers; it seems that Mr Sharp has substituted this name owing to the fact that it is not danced to the “Molly Oxford” tune. One of the dancers repudiates the title on the ground that the characteristic figure is a spring and not a step back.

In addition to these Mr F. Kidson has also published a set of Country and Morris dance tunes, but without instructions as to the dances.

Although this list gives a very fair idea of the traditional Morris dances still lingering in country places, two things must be borne in mind—first, that many of these dances with different names are practically the same dances; another tune and a very slight alteration in the step is quite enough for a Morris dancer to say he has another dance to show; and secondly, that the collectors have not yet finished their work. I have in my possession quite a long list of people and places as yet unvisited which may yield dances yet unrecorded, and Mr Cecil Sharp has announced many dances and variants collected but not published.

The Folk-dance has been found in the following counties:—

Gloucestershire. Monmouthshire.
Oxfordshire. Yorkshire.
Berkshire. Lancashire.
Northamptonshire. Cheshire.
Lincolnshire. Northumberland.
Derbyshire. Warwickshire.
Nottinghamshire. Worcestershire.
Sussex. Surrey.
Cornwall.

II. TUNES

A word must be said about the tunes played for the dances by country musicians to-day.

These tunes are, of course, of much later date than the Morris and Sword dances, and probably contemporary with the original country dances. The musicians took any tune which was popular at the time and adapted it to the dances, so that the tunes are not by any means all traditional. As an instance of this, I remember that old Mr Trafford, of Headington, told me that one day when he heard a military band playing, he went and listened at the door of the barracks, and that he was so attracted by the tune that he at once hummed it to the Morris dance fiddler and adapted it to a Morris dance. To this day he likes the tune, which he calls “Buffalo Gals,”[5] so much that he wanted Mr Carey to take it down and use it. There is no doubt that at any given time the musicians used to adapt to the dances any popular tune that took their fancy, and I think that probably the name of the dance was altered to fit the tune. Anyway the tune which Mr Trafford liked, called “The Buffalo Girls,” had certainly been taken for the name of a dance. The only dance tune that I have been able to discover which has its dance steps attached to it is the one before mentioned in Arbeau’s book. There is no doubt either that the nature of the tunes changed considerably as the whittle and dub went out of fashion and were superseded by the fiddle and later by the concertina, from which latter instrument the first revived tunes were taken by Mr Sharp from William Kimber. The tunes taken from the violin were more likely to be played in a modal scale; for instance, Kimber played “The Rigs of Marlow” in the modern scale, but Mark Cox, who gave it to us from the fiddle, played it in a modal form.

[5] A Christy minstrel tune, popular some years back.

In the summer of 1912 the fiddler who played for the Morris dancers at “Shakspeare’s England” in a few days played in a modal form a tune which had been given him in the modern scale and was quite unconscious that he had altered it.

Two Morris dance tunes, “Bean-setting” and “Laudnum Bunches,” do not seem to be allied to any other forms of the airs.

In insisting on the traditional nature of the dances it is necessary to admit that the same cannot be said of all, or even most, of the tunes played to-day.

III. MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

In the earliest records of Morris dancing, the pipe and tabor, or whittle and dub, were the musical instruments in use, and the oldest dancers to-day are never tired of lamenting that the pipe and tabor to which they danced in their youth have gone out of fashion.

A Morris dancer in Fleet Street, London, is described in a seventeenth century manuscript in the British Museum (Harleian MS. 3910):

“In Fleet Strete then I heard a shoote:
I putt of my hatt, and I made no staye,
And when I came unto the roote,
Good Lord! I heard a taber play,
For so, God save me, a morrys-daunce.”

In the old play of _Jacke Drums Entertainment_ (1601)—

_The taber and pipe strike up a morrice._
_A shoute within._
_Ed._ Oh, a morrice is come, observe our country sports,
’Tis Whitsun-tyde and we must frolick it.

_Enter the Morrice._

THE SONG

“Skip it and trip it, nimbly, nimbly,
Tickle it, tickle it lustily,
Strike up the taber, for the wenches favour,
Tickle it, tickle it lustily.

Let us be seen in Hygate Greene,
To dance for the honour of Holloway.
Since we are come hither, let’s spare no leather,
To dance for the honour of Holloway.”

Later the fiddle took the place of pipe and tabor, and still more recently the concertina.

The present-day fiddler at Bampton, Mr Wells, and Mr Mark Cox of Headington are well worth a visit from musicians interested in the actual form in which the tunes are played to-day by the musically unlettered.

Mr William Kimber, jun., of Headington, is also in possession of the old tunes, which he plays skilfully on the concertina. Patience will be needed should the tunes be noted, for very few musicians can repeat a phrase, even if it is the very last bar, without going right back to the beginning of the tune. When the phrase is intricate, and has to be often repeated, this means that a considerable amount of time is taken up. The same applies to the dance; the traditional dancer is quite unselfconscious, and if he is pulled up and asked for a repetition of a step, he cannot give it, as a rule, without going back to the beginning of the dance; so that in writing down the steps and evolutions of the dance much patience is needed and understanding of the way in which the minds of simple folk work.

Within the memory of some of the oldest dancers the dancing was always accompanied by singing, and old Master Druce, of Ducklington, told us that the Morris could not be properly danced without singing. He could, however, only remember a few of the words of one dance—“The Lollypop Man.”

The Bampton men gave us a few odd verses of one or two songs, but I am afraid the real song will never be recovered, for, as one old man put it to a friend of mine, “the words are too clumsy for girls.”

Miss Gilchrist gave me the words of a Lancashire Morris which we have often used with very good effect—

“Morris dance is a very pretty tune,
Lads and lassies plenty,
Every lad shall have his lass,
And I’ll have four and twenty.

My new shoone they are so good,
I could dance Morris if I would,
And if hat and coat be dressed,
I will dance Morris with the best.

This is it and that is it,
And this is Morris dancing,
My poor father broke his leg,
And so it was a’chancing.

Bread and cheese and the old cow’s head
Roasted in a lantern,
A bit for me and a bit for you,
And a bit for the Morris dancer.”

Even in this doggerel there are traces of the old sacrificial rite of animal sacrifice in which the head was considered as the most sacred part of the animal and much coveted. It was generally awarded to the victor or victorious side in a fight for its possession.

IV. THE DRESS

The Morris dance dress had two characteristics; it was the holiday attire of the dancers and it had added to that certain special ceremonial features. These were bells, ribbons, sticks or swords, and handkerchiefs.

In the Kingston-on-Thames Churchwardens’ Accounts (1536-37) the dresses of the Morris dancers are thus described:—They consisted of four coats of white fustian spangled, and two green satin coats with garters on which small bells were fastened. In an old tract called “Old Meg of Herefordshire for a Mayde Marian, and Hereford Town for a Morris Daunce” (1609), the musicians and the twelve dancers have “long coats of the old fashion, high sleeves gathered at the elbows, and hanging sleeves behind: the stuff red buffin striped with white, girdles with white stockings, white and red roses to their shoes: the one Six, a white jew’s cap with a jewel and a long red feather: the other a scarlet jew’s cap with a jewel and a white feather.” Scarves, ribbands, and laces hung all over with gold rings, and even precious stones are also mentioned in the time of Elizabeth. Miles, the Miller of Ruddington, in Sampson’s play, “The Vow Breaker, or the Fayre Maid of Clifton” (1636), says he is come to borrow “a few ribbands, bracelets, eare-rings, wyasyters and silke girdle and hand-kerchers for a morris.”

Joe Miller, writing in 1874, gives the following description of the preparations of a Morris dance:—“One Molly o’ Cheetham’s sent specially to London for bows and flowerets to dress her Robin’s hat with, and Jenny of the Warden House Cottage kept her thumb nail strapped up for a month to crimp her Billy’s ruffled shirt. She was so feared of spoiling the edge of the nail: and Phœbe of the Dean Farm, took Billy’s breeches to St Ann’s Square (Manchester) to have them laced with blue ribbons and bows down the side. All the lasses of the village were as busy as bees, making bows, getting up fine shirts, and tying white handkerchiefs with ribbons to dance with.”

The late Mr Alfred Burton, writing in 1891, says:—“The costume worn now and for many years past (colour being left to individual taste, except in the case of the breeches, which are generally of the same colour and material in each band of dancers) consists of shoes with buckles, white stockings, knee breeches tied with ribbons, a brightly coloured scarf or sash round the waist, white shirt trimmed with ribbons and fastened with brooches, and white straw hats decorated with ribbons and rosettes. White handkerchiefs or streamers are tied to the wrist.”

Strutt, in his _Sports and Pastimes of the People of England_ (1810), observes that the garments of the Morris dancers were adorned with bells, which were not placed there merely for the sake of ornament, but were to be sounded as they danced. These bells were of unequal sizes and differently denominated, as the fore-bell, the second-bell, the treble, and the tenor or great bell, and mention is also made of double bells. Sometimes they used trebles only, but these refinements were of later times. At first, these bells were small and numerous and affixed to all parts of the body—the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, knee, and ankle: the wrist, knee, and ankle being, however, the principal places. The number of bells round each leg sometimes amounted to from twenty to forty. They were occasionally jingled by the hands.

The following description of a Morris dancer taken from _Recreations for Ingenious Head Pieces_ (1667) gives a very good idea of his appearance at that date:—

“With a noyse and a din,
Comes the Maurice dancer in,
With a fine linnen shirt, but a buckram skin.
Oh! he treads out such a peale,
From his paire of legs of veale.

The quarters are idols to him.
Nor do those knaves inviron
Their toes with so much iron,
’Twill ruin a smith to shoe him.”

The Morris dancers’ dress has fallen on somewhat evil days of late years. The best they can do is a white suit of duck or flannel with trousers, short knee breeches, or even ordinary dark cloth trousers with a white shirt. The shirt is decorated with ribbons and rosettes, and sometimes a double baldric is worn crossed on the chest and hanging down at the sides. The bells are sewn on to a pad, and a pair which I have is made of long bits of coloured cloth such as a sailor uses to make a hearthrug with, the bells sewn in between. This was got from a pawnshop in Oxford with a pipe and tabor, a pathetic sign of the decay of national gaiety!

The hat is sometimes a box hat, sometimes a bowler, sometimes a cap, but it must be gaily decorated with ribbons and artificial flowers, bits of feather, or anything that comes in handy. Mr Brookes, of Godley Hill, who came to London to teach the Lancashire dances, wore a bowler hat covered tightly with white calico, and over that a mass of flowers, and ribbons hanging down behind.

I confess that this curious mixture of a traditional ceremonial dress and the modern bowler hat does not attract me nor appeal to my sense of the fitness of things, but I think that for present-day performance one must either adopt the least objectionable form of present-day holiday dress, which is usually white flannel, add as much colour as possible in ribbons and sash, and leave it at that, or if any fancy dress is adopted I think it is best to adopt the Elizabethan peasants’ holiday dress and add the bells, ribbons, etc., as it was during her reign that the Morris dance was very usually danced at fairs and festivals.

The only woman’s dress described in old writers is that of Maid Marian, but as the character was taken by a man dressed as a woman, who was very grotesquely dressed, it is better to-day to adopt a very simple dress, such as a cotton frock and a sun bonnet, with a bunch of ribbons at the waist. Every girl should have a different colour, though the general style may be the same.