The two articles below were written by Roy Dommett. The seccond challenges many of the myths I have enjoyed over the years. It and other articles can be found at http://www.opread.force9.co.uk/RoyDommet I have included it here to ensure that it is not lost.
dean
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THE COLLECTED BORDER MORRIS
This paper was originally prepared for the ROOTS OF BORDER MORRIS CONFERENCE organised by the Morris Federation at West Malvern on 29thFebruary 1992. The author substituted for Dave Jones who had died not long before the meeting. The objective of the vufoil presentation was to cover some of the earlier historical background to the recovery of the traditional dances and to briefly describe the dances and offer some personal insights.WHERE ARE THE WRITTEN RESOURCESThe existing material on the Border morris is neither very voluminous nor accessible. The first publication of any dance was in Miss Leathers "Folklore of Herefordshire". She and others had led Cecil Sharp to some contacts, the results of which can be found in his MSS and Field notes books of which a microfilm of the former at least is available in the Vaughan Williams Library at Cecil Sharp House, London. There is a typed index that was made by Alex Helm. Most of the contacts with the tradition between the World Wars passed through Maud Karpeles, and since her death her papers have also become available on microfilm in the same library.
The Vaughan Williams Library has a small collection of its own, including some material sent to Douglas Kennedy and other staff members, which includes references to the dances at places such as Dawley and Malvern. Sadly Douglas Kennedy's earlier personal papers were destroyed by the bomb that fell on the corner of Cecil Sharp House during WW11.
Alex Helm and his colleagues made a transcription collection of ritual performance material, from which the geographic index published in the journal of the EFDSS drew, and which is deposited in the FolkLore Society Library at the University of London. His distribution map replaced that pioneered by Joseph Needham in the J EFDSS in the 1930's. Of particular relevance are the extracts found in the Ordish Collection. Unfortunately I have found that Alex Helm was not quite a 100% accurate in transcriptions and identifications of material from Sharp's Field Notebooks. Dr. Cawte, who was one of Helm's team, wrote the first major article on the Border Morris and this was published in the J EFDSS, and included the results of his own investigations and some brief notations.
My own contacts with collectors and collections led to the circulation of a stenciled set of notes in the mid 1960's entitled "Other Morris". With extra material occasioned by later publications, it was collected together by Dr. Tony Barrand and published in Vol. 5 of "Roy Dommet's Morris Notes" by the Country Dance Society of America in 1984. My material has been copied by Dr. Lionel Bacon to be the basis of the Border content of "A Handbook of Morris Dancing" published by the Morris Ring in 1974. About this time the Morris Ring produced an independent compendium of Border Morris source material with interpretations by Dave Jones, which occasioned some correspondence, most of which has been resolved in the last Morris Ring Booklet by Dave Jones which has included the results of his own more recent contacts.
Because there was some dancing in the 1930's, sometimes by children, it is still not too late to make contacts with old dancers. There has still to be a systematic search of newspapers, local collections, especially for photographs, and of local organisation publications, for example by the WI's.WHAT DID THEY COLLECTAlthough Cecil Sharp sometimes went off into the blue yonder to look for the morris, on most occasions he was following up leads provided by friends and local contacts. It must not be forgotten that Cecil Sharp was a nationally known personality who had taught music to the Royal Family and had become a successful touring lecturer on the novelty and beauty of English folk music, complete with concert level musical illustrations. Sharp saw the morris at Brimfield in Fancy Dress and a mixed sex team at Weobley and was given the set of Morris Reels by William Kimber and finally visited Steeple Claydon after WW1. He was struck in these places by the lack of "occasion" when compared to the best of the Cotswold tradition and thought that like the Cotswold survivors it was "degenerate" because it was not as he thought it would have been earlier, and he did not realise that traditions would evolve to meet the needs of the times.
Maud Karpeles had accompanied Sharp since his visits to the USA during WW1 and naturally followed on after his death in 1924 as the leading living authority. She adopted a charming conceit of numbering the pages of her collection following on Sharp's MSS which she had typed out. She went to meet dancers or teams brought to the attention of the EFDS and later EFDSS and dealt with correspondence about dances. Her papers and memories were full of the encounters with the tail end of the old traditions. She met a team at Much Wenlock and dancers from Worcestershire and received letters giving notations.
Miss Karpeles is best remembered now for collecting and publishing the Upton on Severn Stick dance. The team had been discovered by Dr. and Mrs. Kenworthy Schofield and they took a party across from the Cheltenham Summer School to meet them. They must have been overawed because the side had been dancing before and after this event and could not normally have been as bad as the published J EFDSS description suggests.
Until the 1950's there were very few people interested in collecting the dance traditions, after all they had been told that they had disappeared, there were no accessible mss to know what had been found, and no published indications of where it might be profitable to look, and in the case of the West Midlands no local enthusiasts to go searching. The Travelling Morrice's annual tours over the years went through most parts of England and had some success in meeting dancers in places like the Forest of Dean and at Bromsberrow Heath. But such meetings were often just accidents. Where possible such contacts were followed up by Peter Kennedy, in the late 40's and early 50's then recording on a BBC contract, and some of the material is available on his Folktracks cassettes.
Jack Hargreaves met the survivors of the Evesham dance in 1940. In later years he was in a rest home voluntarily with day releases and his odd behaviour made it difficult to get on with him. He wrote to Ralph Vaughan Williams suggesting that he should arrange the Evesham tunes. When he visited the library at Cecil Sharp House he sat and played the piano and terrorised the librarian into asking for a male staff member to sit with them. He came one evening to the OUMM to attempt to teach the dances and after covering many pages with sketches, despite the dances being so simple, and he left them more confused than at the start!
There have been a few other brief contacts. Dr. Cawte visited the dancing areas and wrote up the experiences and I met a few people who remembered dancing and of course Geoffrey Menham met the ex Much Wenlock dancers when at Stretton Westwood in August 1949. It remained for Dave Jones to meet dancers who actually remembered the complexities of the dances.COLLECTORS PROBLEMS WITH SINGLE VISITSThe major concern with most collected dance material is that it was gathered during a single interview period. Cecil Sharp was a master at this but the examination of his mss shows that the material could be very different when the visits were well separated, as for example at Abingdon and Brackley where he first went in 1910 and then again in 1922. The simpler Border dances now appear to have had their form because the sides had few dancers at the time and when more were available the dances were almost automatically more complex. A more recent experience illustrating the difficulties occurred when the Oxford University MM went to meet some male survivors of Sam Bennet's Illmington teams from1906-1912. The side had to interpret what they were told without knowledge of how Sam's sides did the dances, and they were showing Sharp's reconstruction of how he thought they were done as long ago as 1860. Enquiry since has also suggested that the informants may have had less to do with the morris than they claimed.
All the collecting has been in good faith, whatever the inherent weaknesses. When the OUMM competed at Llangollen they went on to tour in the Derbyshire villages. At Winster they met women who had danced the Winster dances and who assured Julian Pilling that they had one using sticks. They taught it quite clearly and it is described in Dr. Bacons book. The more recent Winster revival has uncovered a complex history of changes to their dances, but no stick dance that was ever done by men.
My own experiences were with casual contacts that always proved difficult to exploit. A first contact never seemed the right moment to enquire in depth about the social background and other details that in other circumstances would be considered prying. No one seemed to know of other survivors, which now perhaps is not surprising with the knowledge of the rate of turn over of team memberships. I tried to follow up on other people's contacts but no one I met seemed very knowledgeable. Perhaps it was my technique that was wrong.THE REVIVAL OF THE BORDER DANCESThe Upton on Severn stick dance was the only "Border" dance published and that only because of its structural similarity to Cotswold dances.
I taught the mss material at the Advanced Morris Weekends at Halsway Manor in the mid to late 1960's, but I am not aware that anyone actually took them away to actually dance out. I was invited to an EFDSS staff weekend to pass on the dances which were seen as a possibility for mixed team performance for which a growing need was perceived that could not be met by the Cotswold Morris, at a time when the NW dances were hardly known.
Interest picked up enough to ask me to teach the dances at a first workshop for West Midland teams in Ledbury Town Hall in January 1972 and I went on to teach them at Morris Federation workshops. Later there was for me a fantastic workshop for Open Morris in the Crypt at St. Martins-in-the-Fields. David Robinson also workshopped the dances widely, but he also suggested useful extensions and interpretations. This period coincided with the first publications of articles and notations. Having found some photographs I sent a Brimfield notation to English Dance and Song. Dr. Bacon drafted a section for the Evesham dances but it was excluded from his Handbook at the request of Russel Wortley who had an intention at that time of publishing it first in the then Morris Section of the English Dance and Song Magazine.
Initially the dances were seen as extras to existing repertoires to be used in special circumstances or when there was a need to let off some steam. The Upton dances were occasionally used as the basis from which to develop a whole tradition, when that concept became respectable.
In the mid 1970's there sparked off the modern idea of black faces, rag jackets and the showmanship, including noise and a degree of wildness not previously associated with the morris, led philosophically as much by the Kirkpatricks as anyone, even if they did not intend to set a fashion. Although many dancers were captivated and wanted to capture the unique spirit, most missed the underlying discipline which made the Shropshire Bedlams and the Molly equivalent, The Seven Champions, able to hold their own with teams following the other English traditions.
There are some black face sides with poorly thought through behaviour and costumes. Shouting enhances excitement but does not generate it. Their success appears to lead them to large numbers of performers and impressive street presence but without a comparable growth in dance skills. This can be seen in the Border like entries for the Ritual Dance Competition at the Sidmouth International Folk Arts Festival. Numbers, noise and vigour is used as a substitute for the skill required by the rules on the basis that this was the tradition. The audience cowers unless there is humour as well. But they are not putting themselves into a traditional situation but presenting themselves like a Cotswold display. I also detect a trend towards the ridiculous, self parodying as do the Seven Champions, and to arbitrary choreography like the self proclaimed "Street Dancers". Perhaps this is their reaction to an artificiality in what they do.
The vast growth of the "tradition" in the last decade or so is not the concern of this paper, although there have been major contributions from certain individuals, but the creation of dances in the "style" has enabled me to run annual all-day workshops just for fun, in which I have not had to repeat dances yet!OBVIOUS GENERALITIES ABOUT THE OLDER TRADITIONThe first obvious point is how different the no more than a dozen individual dances are from each other. The variety provides one springboard for developing new dances. There was a large range of costumes between the teams, even between individuals and from year to year. This suggests that it was a tradition on the cheap, and that the public had no particular expectations. The usual implement was an undecorated stick but they varied between teams from 6 to 30 inches long. The music was limited because the dances known to a particular team were so few. They had percussion, often played rather loudly, even at the expense of helping the dancers.
Very little is known of the social background in which the morris fitted. There is a strong presumption of it having been done by people who had seasonal occupations and who were likely to be frozen out during bad winters. This would imply that the annual performance would vary a great deal. The dances do not require much preliminary practice although there is some evidence that occasionally teams worked on them for several weeks. The tours that have been mentioned vary from the odd evening out to quite long trips spread over several days. The latter may not have been very frequent, we have to expect the natural exaggeration of folk retelling. The teams passed the hat for collections, even dancing along streets and knocking on the doors as they passed. The morris appears to have been enjoyed by their public but there is no indication of what were the official attitudes anywhere. That they were not revived for national events such as Coronations and Jubilees suggests that they thought of as begging customs and not as part of acceptable local culture in the 20th century.
Some of the dances were passed through generations, sometimes to daughter sides at other places and occasionally surviving with children. This happened also with the "Johnny Jacks" at Salisbury, Wiltshire. No Revivals have however been based in the villages in Worcestershire or Shropshire.THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS MENTIONED
The Vaughan Williams Library has a small collection of its own, including some material sent to Douglas Kennedy and other staff members, which includes references to the dances at places such as Dawley and Malvern. Sadly Douglas Kennedy's earlier personal papers were destroyed by the bomb that fell on the corner of Cecil Sharp House during WW11.
Alex Helm and his colleagues made a transcription collection of ritual performance material, from which the geographic index published in the journal of the EFDSS drew, and which is deposited in the FolkLore Society Library at the University of London. His distribution map replaced that pioneered by Joseph Needham in the J EFDSS in the 1930's. Of particular relevance are the extracts found in the Ordish Collection. Unfortunately I have found that Alex Helm was not quite a 100% accurate in transcriptions and identifications of material from Sharp's Field Notebooks. Dr. Cawte, who was one of Helm's team, wrote the first major article on the Border Morris and this was published in the J EFDSS, and included the results of his own investigations and some brief notations.
My own contacts with collectors and collections led to the circulation of a stenciled set of notes in the mid 1960's entitled "Other Morris". With extra material occasioned by later publications, it was collected together by Dr. Tony Barrand and published in Vol. 5 of "Roy Dommet's Morris Notes" by the Country Dance Society of America in 1984. My material has been copied by Dr. Lionel Bacon to be the basis of the Border content of "A Handbook of Morris Dancing" published by the Morris Ring in 1974. About this time the Morris Ring produced an independent compendium of Border Morris source material with interpretations by Dave Jones, which occasioned some correspondence, most of which has been resolved in the last Morris Ring Booklet by Dave Jones which has included the results of his own more recent contacts.
Because there was some dancing in the 1930's, sometimes by children, it is still not too late to make contacts with old dancers. There has still to be a systematic search of newspapers, local collections, especially for photographs, and of local organisation publications, for example by the WI's.WHAT DID THEY COLLECTAlthough Cecil Sharp sometimes went off into the blue yonder to look for the morris, on most occasions he was following up leads provided by friends and local contacts. It must not be forgotten that Cecil Sharp was a nationally known personality who had taught music to the Royal Family and had become a successful touring lecturer on the novelty and beauty of English folk music, complete with concert level musical illustrations. Sharp saw the morris at Brimfield in Fancy Dress and a mixed sex team at Weobley and was given the set of Morris Reels by William Kimber and finally visited Steeple Claydon after WW1. He was struck in these places by the lack of "occasion" when compared to the best of the Cotswold tradition and thought that like the Cotswold survivors it was "degenerate" because it was not as he thought it would have been earlier, and he did not realise that traditions would evolve to meet the needs of the times.
Maud Karpeles had accompanied Sharp since his visits to the USA during WW1 and naturally followed on after his death in 1924 as the leading living authority. She adopted a charming conceit of numbering the pages of her collection following on Sharp's MSS which she had typed out. She went to meet dancers or teams brought to the attention of the EFDS and later EFDSS and dealt with correspondence about dances. Her papers and memories were full of the encounters with the tail end of the old traditions. She met a team at Much Wenlock and dancers from Worcestershire and received letters giving notations.
Miss Karpeles is best remembered now for collecting and publishing the Upton on Severn Stick dance. The team had been discovered by Dr. and Mrs. Kenworthy Schofield and they took a party across from the Cheltenham Summer School to meet them. They must have been overawed because the side had been dancing before and after this event and could not normally have been as bad as the published J EFDSS description suggests.
Until the 1950's there were very few people interested in collecting the dance traditions, after all they had been told that they had disappeared, there were no accessible mss to know what had been found, and no published indications of where it might be profitable to look, and in the case of the West Midlands no local enthusiasts to go searching. The Travelling Morrice's annual tours over the years went through most parts of England and had some success in meeting dancers in places like the Forest of Dean and at Bromsberrow Heath. But such meetings were often just accidents. Where possible such contacts were followed up by Peter Kennedy, in the late 40's and early 50's then recording on a BBC contract, and some of the material is available on his Folktracks cassettes.
Jack Hargreaves met the survivors of the Evesham dance in 1940. In later years he was in a rest home voluntarily with day releases and his odd behaviour made it difficult to get on with him. He wrote to Ralph Vaughan Williams suggesting that he should arrange the Evesham tunes. When he visited the library at Cecil Sharp House he sat and played the piano and terrorised the librarian into asking for a male staff member to sit with them. He came one evening to the OUMM to attempt to teach the dances and after covering many pages with sketches, despite the dances being so simple, and he left them more confused than at the start!
There have been a few other brief contacts. Dr. Cawte visited the dancing areas and wrote up the experiences and I met a few people who remembered dancing and of course Geoffrey Menham met the ex Much Wenlock dancers when at Stretton Westwood in August 1949. It remained for Dave Jones to meet dancers who actually remembered the complexities of the dances.COLLECTORS PROBLEMS WITH SINGLE VISITSThe major concern with most collected dance material is that it was gathered during a single interview period. Cecil Sharp was a master at this but the examination of his mss shows that the material could be very different when the visits were well separated, as for example at Abingdon and Brackley where he first went in 1910 and then again in 1922. The simpler Border dances now appear to have had their form because the sides had few dancers at the time and when more were available the dances were almost automatically more complex. A more recent experience illustrating the difficulties occurred when the Oxford University MM went to meet some male survivors of Sam Bennet's Illmington teams from1906-1912. The side had to interpret what they were told without knowledge of how Sam's sides did the dances, and they were showing Sharp's reconstruction of how he thought they were done as long ago as 1860. Enquiry since has also suggested that the informants may have had less to do with the morris than they claimed.
All the collecting has been in good faith, whatever the inherent weaknesses. When the OUMM competed at Llangollen they went on to tour in the Derbyshire villages. At Winster they met women who had danced the Winster dances and who assured Julian Pilling that they had one using sticks. They taught it quite clearly and it is described in Dr. Bacons book. The more recent Winster revival has uncovered a complex history of changes to their dances, but no stick dance that was ever done by men.
My own experiences were with casual contacts that always proved difficult to exploit. A first contact never seemed the right moment to enquire in depth about the social background and other details that in other circumstances would be considered prying. No one seemed to know of other survivors, which now perhaps is not surprising with the knowledge of the rate of turn over of team memberships. I tried to follow up on other people's contacts but no one I met seemed very knowledgeable. Perhaps it was my technique that was wrong.THE REVIVAL OF THE BORDER DANCESThe Upton on Severn stick dance was the only "Border" dance published and that only because of its structural similarity to Cotswold dances.
I taught the mss material at the Advanced Morris Weekends at Halsway Manor in the mid to late 1960's, but I am not aware that anyone actually took them away to actually dance out. I was invited to an EFDSS staff weekend to pass on the dances which were seen as a possibility for mixed team performance for which a growing need was perceived that could not be met by the Cotswold Morris, at a time when the NW dances were hardly known.
Interest picked up enough to ask me to teach the dances at a first workshop for West Midland teams in Ledbury Town Hall in January 1972 and I went on to teach them at Morris Federation workshops. Later there was for me a fantastic workshop for Open Morris in the Crypt at St. Martins-in-the-Fields. David Robinson also workshopped the dances widely, but he also suggested useful extensions and interpretations. This period coincided with the first publications of articles and notations. Having found some photographs I sent a Brimfield notation to English Dance and Song. Dr. Bacon drafted a section for the Evesham dances but it was excluded from his Handbook at the request of Russel Wortley who had an intention at that time of publishing it first in the then Morris Section of the English Dance and Song Magazine.
Initially the dances were seen as extras to existing repertoires to be used in special circumstances or when there was a need to let off some steam. The Upton dances were occasionally used as the basis from which to develop a whole tradition, when that concept became respectable.
In the mid 1970's there sparked off the modern idea of black faces, rag jackets and the showmanship, including noise and a degree of wildness not previously associated with the morris, led philosophically as much by the Kirkpatricks as anyone, even if they did not intend to set a fashion. Although many dancers were captivated and wanted to capture the unique spirit, most missed the underlying discipline which made the Shropshire Bedlams and the Molly equivalent, The Seven Champions, able to hold their own with teams following the other English traditions.
There are some black face sides with poorly thought through behaviour and costumes. Shouting enhances excitement but does not generate it. Their success appears to lead them to large numbers of performers and impressive street presence but without a comparable growth in dance skills. This can be seen in the Border like entries for the Ritual Dance Competition at the Sidmouth International Folk Arts Festival. Numbers, noise and vigour is used as a substitute for the skill required by the rules on the basis that this was the tradition. The audience cowers unless there is humour as well. But they are not putting themselves into a traditional situation but presenting themselves like a Cotswold display. I also detect a trend towards the ridiculous, self parodying as do the Seven Champions, and to arbitrary choreography like the self proclaimed "Street Dancers". Perhaps this is their reaction to an artificiality in what they do.
The vast growth of the "tradition" in the last decade or so is not the concern of this paper, although there have been major contributions from certain individuals, but the creation of dances in the "style" has enabled me to run annual all-day workshops just for fun, in which I have not had to repeat dances yet!OBVIOUS GENERALITIES ABOUT THE OLDER TRADITIONThe first obvious point is how different the no more than a dozen individual dances are from each other. The variety provides one springboard for developing new dances. There was a large range of costumes between the teams, even between individuals and from year to year. This suggests that it was a tradition on the cheap, and that the public had no particular expectations. The usual implement was an undecorated stick but they varied between teams from 6 to 30 inches long. The music was limited because the dances known to a particular team were so few. They had percussion, often played rather loudly, even at the expense of helping the dancers.
Very little is known of the social background in which the morris fitted. There is a strong presumption of it having been done by people who had seasonal occupations and who were likely to be frozen out during bad winters. This would imply that the annual performance would vary a great deal. The dances do not require much preliminary practice although there is some evidence that occasionally teams worked on them for several weeks. The tours that have been mentioned vary from the odd evening out to quite long trips spread over several days. The latter may not have been very frequent, we have to expect the natural exaggeration of folk retelling. The teams passed the hat for collections, even dancing along streets and knocking on the doors as they passed. The morris appears to have been enjoyed by their public but there is no indication of what were the official attitudes anywhere. That they were not revived for national events such as Coronations and Jubilees suggests that they thought of as begging customs and not as part of acceptable local culture in the 20th century.
Some of the dances were passed through generations, sometimes to daughter sides at other places and occasionally surviving with children. This happened also with the "Johnny Jacks" at Salisbury, Wiltshire. No Revivals have however been based in the villages in Worcestershire or Shropshire.THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS MENTIONED
| F I D D L E | C O N C E R T I N A | M E L O D E O N | T I N W H I S T L E | T A M B O U R I N E | T R I A N G L E | B O N E S | |
| ASTON ON CLUN | X | X | X | ||||
| BRIMFIELD | X | X | |||||
| BROMSBERROW | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| DILWYN | X | ||||||
| EVESHAM | X | ||||||
| LEOMINSTER | X | X | X | ||||
| MUCH WENLOCK | X | X | X | X | |||
| ORLETON | X | X | X | ||||
| PEOPLETON | X | X | |||||
| PERSHORE | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| UPTON ON SEVERN | X | X | X | ||||
| WHITE LADIES ASTON | X | X | X | X | X |
There is a common worldwide tradition of wearing face masks, both realistic and representational, which existed in the UK during the Middle Ages but was generally lost or prohibited by Tudor times, although there may have been some local survivors of animal disguises, and this behavior is still around in corners of Europe. Covering the face with a mask, as in the early theatre, is less for the disguise as for the chance to have a different persona for a while. As a disguise it only prevents a person previously unknown from being recognised without the mask. We forget how in the smaller world of the past everyone was known in their neighborhood. Painting the face is a poor man's mask.
Blacking up was done by poachers, and perhaps highwaymen and smugglers, who would be out at night. It was so bad in some parts of the country in the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Woolmer Forest, that the law accepted a blacked face as proof of intent. Hence there still is an association with being up to no good.
The Nigger Minstrel character was created in the early 19th century and was extremely popular as an entertainment for the masses in the UK from the mid 19th century to the start of WW1. It soon became a folk entertainment and replaced or followed the mummers in many places up till WW11, being at its most popular in the 1920's. The show was easy to put on, it had a simple formal structure built around individual rather than group skills, and was easily mobile. It needed a leader and end-men and used songs, solo dances and simple skits. Without more research, it is not clear whether Minstrels were acceptable because they picked up elements of existing Christmas traditions like the morris or if the Border groups had gathered attributes from the Minstrels. There are references to the troupes singing and stepping.
Colouring the face introduce problems. When it is all over or nearly so can be quite frightening to children. Why do people find it disturbing? Clowns have patterned faces. Blacking up can also be seen as racist and some clubs have had difficulties with their local police, hence a number of non-black colour choices.
WHAT HAVE BEEN THE POPULAR DANCESWithin my experience in the earlier days of watching the growth of modern Border Morris, the popular collected dances were Upton on Severn, Brimfield and White Ladies Aston. Note that these were not the simpler ones once thought to be characteristic. Others became popular once a well known tem showed a good interpretation of the dance, and now all of the collected dances can be seen in some form. Availability was the key, as few were confident enough to create their material from scratch, after all what was the tradition?
Of those dances composed more recently that appeared to be popular in my workshops were the various Sheepskin Hey dances, the simple Valiant Soldier (The Paradise Islander's Uncle Ned), the clever Mr. Dolly exploiting an idea (South Downs), the Seven Hand Reel (the core of Hunt the Squirrel) and the Maiden's Prayer because of its vulgar possibilities (Shropshire Bedlams). Some dances go down well in workshops because of their challenging content, such as the Morning Star, The Triumph and the Raddled Tup (all from the Shropshire Bedlams) but these are mostly too difficult for normal club use. I wonder what has been other people's experience?DISCUSSIONThis paper is not a history of the Border Morris tradition. There are a few place names, dancers and dates known, but few anecdotes and they can all be found in the literature, but this is of little help in understanding the why, what and wherefore of the tradition. We know very little about the Border morris and what we do have would be considered heresay in a court, as there is extremely little corroborated evidence! However it is very unlikely that any collector would have tapped what we now recognise as the core and appeal of the tradition. They were not very successful with this in traditions where the information was much greater! We must be careful when comparing across traditions that the Border Morris we have coincides with the Cotswold survivors not its heyday.
There is precious little hard evidence that the way the dances are presented today has any resemblance to the way it was. Probably the concept of a "show" did not exist for static audience that lasted 15-20 minutes, although there is the Malvern description. There are not enough facts to perform generalisations. Was the Border Morris ever as popular as the Cotswold Morris? The other mid winter custom the mummers could be very thick on the ground if there was enough patronage around.
A consideration of the overall variety suggests that, as first observed by Dr. Cawte, there are at least three regional types within the Border traditions, but the evidence is too thin to provide anything more than rough regional generalisations. Such similarities suggest a diffusion mechanism for the spread of the dances, rather than an audience expectation of what "correct". Some of the practical problems of reconciling the diverse elements of the Border tradition have been discussed by John Kirkpatrick in his various talks and writings.
The presentation at the conference included a map of the Border area and known places of performance and a number of illustrations of costumes based on the collected descriptions all taken from Dave Jones work, where they may be found. The variety of costumes was great and apparently included examples of almost all the traditional forms.
The presentation ended with a quick look at the notations of the collected dances, including Dave Jones versions for Much Wenlock and the Pershore Not For Joes, Maud Karpeles Peopleton and the four informants at White Ladies Aston.THE DANCES (1) : MORRIS REELSBy definition half a dances movements are country dance reels or morris heys, there being a subtle difference between them. Possibly the earliest representation of one is the painting of the Thames at Richmond with a line of four morris dancers. Thomas Hardy wrote to the EFDS in the early 1920's to say that the longways country dance arrived in Dorset when he was a teenager and that before that it was all step dancing and reels. Cecil Sharp found morris reels at Steeple Claydon, Bucks, Headington, Oxon and Illmington, Warks, mentioned in the Morris Books. He was given a normal morris set but Schofield was told it was danced in a line of six. There is the reel of three at Upton Snodbury, Worcs, the reel of six at Bromsberrow Heath, Gloucs and the reel of four at Keynsham, Avon. These ring the Cotswold's. I wonder if the norm was the reel and that the morris aquired them, as it did so many other folk activities.
Sharp probably thought of dances in terms of the historical richness published by Playford. A something-&-half-hey-repeated with simple movements interleaved is the typical Cotswold and Worcestershire dance structure, anything else was degenerate. I suspect that the something and reel is the more basic folk form and that the rest is an elaboration.THE DANCES : AS COLLECTEDThe notation that has come down to us was seldom structured but usually it can be assumed that the dance has a core and extra movements that could be added spontaneously or extemporised. Often hints of movements have had to be accepted to pad out a dance to a reasonable length for modern troupes. Dances nee a structure. Dances that come by the yard are not very satisfying for an audience nor, after many repetitions, for the dancers.
Dances done to their full extent, as seems common in the revival of any English dance tradition, can be very long and lose their audiences interest. Modern sides often lack the judgement of when enough is enough.BRIMFIELD
- > than 4 - longways set & leader calls : modern variant - two lines crossed.
| NAPPING | FIGURE EIGHT "ho!" | NAPPING | PAIRS SET |
| NAPPING | FIGURE EIGHT "ho!" | NAPPING | PAIRS ARM |
| NAPPING | FIGURE EIGHT "ho!" | NAPPING | FOUR HANDS ACROSS |
| NAPPING | FIGURE EIGHT "ho!" | NAPPING | PAIRS SWING |
WALK REEL OF 6 "off!", STICKS & PLAIN CAPERS "set", AD LIB SPEEDING UP
"12" passings in 32 steps : modern variant, form a circle so no end problemDILWYNAnd at Leominster & Weobley
NAP CHASSEZ ACROSS & BACK NAP HANDS ACROSS
In 1920's "in a circle they crossed over, bowed, circled & hit sticks". One can add a circle or rounds figure but where do you "bow"?EVESHAM
| STICKS | ON SPOT | STICKS | 1/2 CROSS OVER |
| STICKS | CIRCLE ANTICLOCKWISE sing "Fanny Frail" | STICKS | |
HANDKERCHIEF :
| ON SPOT | CROSS OVER & BACK | WHOLE ROUNDS | AD LIB |
MUCH WENLOCK
TROUPE
| STICKS | TAMBOURINE | TRIANGLE |
| 8 | 4 | 2 | |
7
| 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 6 | 2 | 2 | |
5
| 2 |
1
|
Thus
T
| S | S |
T
| S |
S
| ||||
Top
|
or
|
or
|
bottom
| ||||||
T
| S | S |
T
| S |
S
|
10
| 4 | 2 | 1 + 2 bones |
| M | S | M | S | M |
| M | S | M | S | M |
CROSS OVER ONE STAND & REST CIRCLE HEY FOR CAST ZIG ZAG PROCESSPEOPLETONSame source as White Ladies Aston
STICKS:
| HIT OPPOSITE, NEIGHBOUR, OPPOSITE & PASS |
| FIGURES: | ON SPOT B2B ACROSS CIRCLE IN 4's HANDS ACROSS REEL OF 4 B2B ON SIDE |
| HANDKS: | ON SPOT 4 CAPERS & HOP STEP ACROSS |
PERSHOREEARLY VERSION
| FIGURES: | HALF STICKS & HALF MOVEMENT |
| TOP COUPLE HALF HANDS OR STICK & BOTTOM COUPLE TO TOP | |
| CHANGE SIDES HALF HEY ON SIDES |
"NOT FOR JOES"
CIRCLES SET ROTATES ROUND OPPOSITE 3X LONGING SHANK HANDS ROUND
CROSS DIAGONALS CROSS OVER BYCICLE CHAIN DANCE ACROSS ROUNDS
DIAGONALS CHANGE BACK TO BACK etc.UPTON ON SEVERNThere as been a drift away from the Karpeles description, adding a cross over and large loops, and a variety of stick tappings. Attempts have been made to use a range of hand movements and steps observed in what was a rough performance. It has been the basis of whole new traditions. Emily insisted that the stick dance was for 8. The problem with the direction change halfway through handkerchief dance leads to many solutions.UPTON SNODBURYA three handed reel with heys and stick tapping. Did some kind of stepping throughout the dance. For the stick tapping the middle dancer tapped alternatively with the dancers on either side of them. Dr Cawte found that the reel could be done as a "Sheepskin Hey" around three hats on the ground.WHITE LADIES ASTONDave Jones suggested that each should be considered as a separate dance with many repeats. Originally I suggested taking one as a chorus and using the rest as figures following Glover's more detailed notation. But any of the first three sets could be a core of dance and used as a repeated chorus. Also the hints from Pershore Not For Joes and Malvern suggest, not surprisingly, that the repertoire of other movements could be large.
| 1. | Source STAITE STICK STRAIGHT HEY INSIDE CAST & TURN UNDER | 2. | Source LOWLE STICKS PROCESS DOWN 1/2 ROUNDS TO PLACE PROCESS DOWN 1/2 ROUNDS TO PLACE | 3. | Source RAWLINGS STICKS & CHANGE SIDES STICKS & CHANGE BACK TOP TO BOTTOM & REST STICK STICKS & CHANGE SIDES STICKS & CHANGE BACK TOP TO BOTTOM & REST STICK | 4. | Source GLOVER (16 bars each movement) | CHORUS: | 1/2 HEY & STICKS REPEATED | |||||
| FIGURES: | LINKED HEY PROCESS UP ROUNDS & STICK & BACK PROCESS DOWN CROSS OVER & STICKS & CROSS BACK & STICKS | |||||||||||||
WHAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE MORRIS
What is Morris?The Morris is an event. It involves dressing up together with a performance of dance in public, possibly with simple accoutrements such as bells, handkerchiefs and various length sticks. The term has been used to cover a very wide range of styles, but recognisably having a common spirit. It is traditional in that the form owes little to 2Oth century social or art dance. It is a means of personal expression through organised, practised group movements which make limited, but not insignificant, technical demands on the participants. The historical morris may have been spread initially by an involvement in civic pageantry and then other local festivities, but, because it has an inherent flexibility of use, it later developed a life of its own, dependent only on private patronage and largesse from the public. The history of the morris is a mirror to the changes in society, being peripheral and dependent, reflecting the continual natural adaption to new circumstances. The modem claim of continuity is attractive, although by necessity any link is tenuous, and there is little to connect any aspect of it with the morris of only 150 years ago. Its basic simplicity allowed it to absorb and transmute elements of other customs. The content and the appearance is not prescribed and is now certainly a folk art.
Despite a century of academic searching, there is still no evidence to support a postulated direct link to any ancient pagan or fertility rite. Some people would claim that there must have been something before the morris under another name. What ever it might have been, if it ever existed, its function in society was absorbed by the morris, not the other way round.
This booklet is primarily concerned with the Cotswold form of the morris, but it is not the geologist's definition of the area as this 19th century morris only extended through Oxfordshire north of Oxford, and spilled over into the edges of the neighbouring counties of Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. The southern area, once associated with the forest, particularly Wychwood enclosed and cleared in the middle of the l9th century, contrasted with the emptier stonelands further north, and the styles of the morris appear to have varied as well. The dance form has adapted since World War One to social conditions throughout the British Isles and spread abroad to English speaking communities as well as to Denmark and Holland. Today the creative part of the morris has resurfaced and most teams have unique repertoires and/or interpretations of the common stock.
The performing arts are ephemeral, needing to be constantly recreated to exist. The morris is about its performance not history.
This paper is based on a lifetime's interest and a close following of relevant research.The BeginningThe hard beaten ancient paths around prehistoric monuments and the discovery at Stone Carr in Yorkshire of deer horns modificd so as to be worn are suggestive that dance or some similar organised activity has been with us for a long time. It would appear that its universality is fundamental to human societies. The emotional and subjective side has much in common with other activities that involve practiced movement skills as diverse as the martial arts and the making of music. The difference between the morris and folk-lifesurvivals, such as superstitions and songs, is that the latter depended only on one-to-one transmission, whereas the morris requires a consensus group to perform and another to watch, and its very existence is dependent on acceptance by the local community.
Some things never change. The continued throwing of money into wells or fountains is nearly as old as coinage itself We forget how precious and poorly understood were sources of unpolluted water before the public provision of piped supplies from the end of the 19th century. It has been too easy to see the concern as superstition or even to be religious. Ideas live on as they are adapted to new circumstances, as an extreme example, obligations were once placed on settlements to provide hides in medieval forests to allow the watching of does fawning. These could have inspired the chimney sweeps later for their similarly constructed perambulating Jack-in-the-Greens. The problem in tracing back the contributing threads to the morris is in recognising what has been lost and replaced over time. A difficulty exists when people relate the later performance to the older and probably irrelevant motivations.
The word morris was first used in the 12th century for community celebrations following the stages of reconquest of central and southern Spain from the Arabs, and where the morris or morisco still occurs annually between Christiansand Moors. But these little resemble our morris. However they are now just for fun, unlike the sectarian rituals in Northern Ireland, as unhappily all the Moors were ejected or forcibly converted by the reign of our Henry VIII, during the lifetime of Catherine of Aragon. The earliest surviving mention in England is from the end of the 15th century, occurring before the social changes initiated by Henry VIII, which grew out of the dissolution of the monasteries from 1536. The dancers were sometimes mentioned attached to the Robin Hood Games. These in turn had followed the themed King and then the May Game entertainments, which were simple and often participatory sports similar in spirit to modern fetes, but perhaps less sophisticated and uninhibited with more horseplay and vulgarity. Think of the older Robin Hood stories and the number of times someone falls into water!
England was invaded by the Saxons and then the Vikings and Normans but nothing like the morris survived in their home territories to suggest that they might have brought the morris with them. There is no evidence that such existed in Celtic communities except where introduced later as part of their Anglicisation.
The early form of morris is thought to have come to England via the various involvements with the continent, perhaps from what is now Flanders, Belgium and Holland, once the Spanish Netherlands, where similar sounding words had been used for their equivalents. In those days such places were closer by sailing ship than most of England was to London by horse. England in the late Middle Ages was to be thought of as only an off-shore island and a source of basic commodities, rather like modern ex-colonies. We gained a considerable range of new technologies, many crops, and our modern business methods from Flanders and Holland during their Golden Age, which contributed to our Agricultural Revolution. That part of Flanders now in France has only been French for a limited time. During the last war the Germans saw them as more German than French and ruled them with Belgium. Incidentally a Dutch history of the early morris was written during WW2, but was not allowed to be published by the Nazis because of the mentions of the English!
Another example of the debt to the Netherlands is probably the earliest form of cricket, first mentioned at Guildford in 1598, believed brought by immigrants, along with words like krikets and stomp, which also developed into a singularly English pastime.The Wide DistributionAcross Europe there are males who dance to show off; for socially acceptable boy-meets-girl encounters, for good luck visiting or the feel-good factor. Similarities with aspects of the English morris abound. Recent contacts with the folk performances in Rumania show that most of our folk expressions have an analogue there, without there having been a positive historical link, because both cultures have exploited almost all the things that simple people can easily do. In America the Spanish stopped many unacceptable native ceremonies but soon found it expedient to replace them, therefore they taught them the Spanish morris and the matachin, or stick dances, a separate style in the 16th century and then not part of the morris. These dance forms can still be seen in Arizona and Mexico performed by people of both Spanish and native descent. Troupes of men in northern Nigeria, on the other side of the Sahara from the Moors, still process in late medieval armour organised and looking like the morris. The link may have been two way as there are similarities between the appearance of some west of England hobby-horse customs and their supporters and West African performers. Not all such possible relationships are understood as yet.
We recognise many recent male dances in Spain, Portugal and Southern France as belonging in the morris family. The Basques have some that appear even more like ours. On the losing side in the Spanish Civil War, they then shared their dances between the men and women to help preserve their ethnic culture as they were officially scattered around. This very ancient race, with a language that predates the Indo-European group, consider that they gained their dances from passing peoples. The English kings held Aquitaine, what is now France south of the Loire, from the 12th to the mid 15th centuries, on the pilgrims' route to Santiago de Compestela. English armies or regiments commonly fought as mercenaries in the Reconquest and the other wars in Europe, and some settled in the cleared interior of Spain. But the best connections were in the fishing fleets off Newfoundland and the mountain of very rich iron ore mostly exported to Britain. Commercial and social contacts were not surprising. The best long weapons for the Tudor English infantry were imported as Morris Pikes meaning to a Moorish design. However persuasive past suggestions that the morris was first brought by notables, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, John of Gaunt or even Catherine of Aragon, are not supported by any evidence and the dates would be wrong. But Henry VII was exiled in France before gaining the crown and could have been exposed to a form of the morris there, at least it was performed later at his court in England.
There is no mention anywhere of any ritual significance in the morris at this early or any later period, nor that it was in anyway associated with a survival of an older culture. The then Christianisation of the country is hard to grasp now after centuries of dissent and reformation. Before the Black Death about one in a hundred of the population was in regular, monastic or minor orders, and the church was by far the largest landowner. Supposed survivals were not. The modern view is that what is now called the old religion, wicca or witchcraft, like the masons' stories of the origins of the craft, has mythical roots created from the 17th century onwards, even though they both have a complex set of rituals, performed with great seriousness and guarded with secrecy. That something is not as ancient as is claimed does not invalidate its current form and achievements. Far from being a folk expression the morris was at first also in the repertoires of professional or quasi-professional troupes. The literary evidence indicates that is was first recorded in England in towns where the court would often be, then it spread as a popular entertainment across the country. Something in attitudes changed because it began to meet official hostility and had eventually to depend on private patronage. In any age the cost of newly outfitting a dancer was high and beyond normal pockets when everything was hand made, often representing at least a man's month's income.
During the l9th century the morris was thought of as contemporary with Shakespeare, and only by the turn of it was the idea of older roots hypothesised. A limited amount of morris appeared in the theatre. Until 1840 the morris was regarded as a continuing popular activity, but after it was one that was only remembered.The FormEarly English references are for three formations of the dances, solo, a ring with a central person, and two-by-two. Solo morris dancers were last seen in Surrey, at Puttenham, and in Sussex, near Horsham, but there is no longer any indication of their style and the dances. Dancing in a ring survived in children's games, as did so many other former adult play activities. The early form had an individual, usually a woman, standing in the centre and the rest dancing in an uncoordinated manner around her in a circle. The Basques in their sauts simultaneously perform in a ring complex steps to the demands of their leader. But the form of a circle is so simple and obvious that its common occurrence could arise from independent invention rather than any long term survival.
The two-by-two form is a processional, as at Helston and in the West of England Furry dances, and as once at Shaftesbury and in Parkhurst Forest on the Isle of Wight. It is a natural for any custom involving travelling or visiting, particularly when it is for mixed couples. As a form it was so familiar that early Quakers were accused of going out like Morris dancers because they went in preaching teams of two! This simple format survived in to 20th century ballroom and sequence social dancing. There is suggestive evidence that processional forms grew out of the medieval Guild activities, with their dressing up in a common manner and going to church or chantry in ever grander ways with music and spectacle. The devotional orientation switched to secular forms of expression following the Reformation. The procession with symbolic displays on wagons, today suggestively called floats, is probably as old as the vehicles. In the early Middle Ages the culmination would be a replica ship, the largest and most impressive thing known to the people of the time, and manned, as today, with men and women dressed fantastically, to be known as a ship of fools. The modern style Carnival procession probably dates from the middle of the 19th century, one of the earliest in the south being at Shaftesbury in Dorset, with its tradition of jokey posters in the style of contemporary theatre bills, giving comic names to all the entries. Carnival still pulls a community together and attendance is a social statement of local allegiance. The public visibility and good feeling generated by processions was and still is exploited by club and church walks, and even in the revivals of beating-the-bounds.
From the number of references, the early morris was at a peak by the beginning of the 17th century and was dying away by the Civil War and the following Interregnum. The Puritans did not oppose dance or music, or even maypoles, but did object to its performance intruding into Sundays and to it occurring in the church. The division of the country into supporters of the King and of Parliament appeared to be as much determined by the people who wanted either a serious or a festive approach to life, particularly outside of work and especially on the Sunday so called day of rest. The Puritan legacy of Sunday is only now being eroded under modem circumstances.
The Restoration appears to have deliberately encouraged a revival of older remembered celebrations, including seasonal bonfires and the morris in central England, where the new dioceses formed by Henry VIII appeared not to have prosecuted the morris to extinction, as happened elsewhere.Set dances involving a finite number of dancers, from four to eight, appeared in 17th century social life as Country Dances. They were probably adopted by the morris some when after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, because there are many obvious similarities. The dances of the country people were likely to have been the reels and stepping, as explained by Thomas Hardy. The name Countrywas not a reflection of a folk origin but of its lively contrast with the formal Court dances. Even today we talk of Town and Country!
Social dance is for participation not watching. But there have always been some more elaborate display dances for showing off skills which required both training and practice. As the older dances fell out of fashion they would be remembered only by the elderly and the country folk and were then collected. Many have been recovered and become the stock-in- trade of modern local folk groups all over Europe. In England the Old Time Dance community rather than the English Folk Dance Society preserved many Victorian and Edwardian set and couple dances, such as the Quadrilles, Lancers (1850), Valeta (1900), Military Two Step (1904), Boston Two Step (1908), St Bernard's Waltz (l93) and Gay Gordons (1915), known for years as party dances. They have moved off into modem sequence dances, whereas the folk dance world built on the remembered longwaysdances of Old and New England. Other party dances which have reached a folk status were the Palais Glide (1928), Lambeth Walk (1937) and Knees Up Mother Brown (1938).
Although stick dances are now common, they were not once, appearing to have diffused down from the Midlands, where it may well have been known as the Bedlam Morris. Their modem popularity is due to the undoubted impressiveness linked with only limited demands on the dancers' technique. There has been no connection with sword or other military drills, despite the wide experience of them by country folk, or with the one time English Martial Art of cudgels.A Country Sport and its DeclineThe morris is dependent on the social structure of the communities served. In the middle ages attention was more focused on the church and the vast number of clerical orders with only a small aristocracy. The secularisation led to a growth of minor gentry, and the funding released led to the great rebuilding of houses and farms. The development of a genuine middle class provided a wider base for patronage but also led to the greater separation of classes and more exploitation. Land owners moved into other areas for income and became less concerned over the impact of land exploitation and the consequent depressed conditions for workers. The second half of the 19th century had a series of wet years with bad harvests and with the importing of cheap stable foods it lead to many emigrating, but they did not take their dances with them.
It has been a common experience since the 16th century that native community-involving customs are seldom maintained by immigrants to the new countries.
The Cotswold Morris flourished until the start of the 19th century, supporting events like fund raising Church and Morris Ales, then Village Friendly Society Club Days and similar occasions, as well as having an annual outing in their own locality at the recognised holidays about May Day, Oak Apple Day or at Whitsun. In England this was a slack time of the agricultural year before the first hay making. There were several widely known annual events which had the morris attending, the Cotswold Olympick Games on Dover's Hill by Chipping Campden and Kirtlington's Lamb Ale are examples which still occur. But the Much Wenlock Olympic Games started by Dr Brookes in copy of Dover's Games never had the morris, because for example the local dance tradition was a mid-winter not a mid-summer activity. The morris was noted as present at some major celebrations, such as the laying of the foundation stone at Blenheim Palace and an heir's 21st birthday at Stowe House. Later the growth of improving Victorian alternative activities such as flower and produce shows also provided performance opportunities, although they also drew off potential participants.
It was a period of growth of ideas of independence and self help and the beginning of confrontational politics. It perhaps started with the degradations of the Speenhamland system of Poor Law and included Chartism, the village Friendly Societies, which grew into national organisations, and Trade Unionism, with its eventual spread into the agricultural areas. The Cotswold morris had mostly collapsed by the mid 19th century, although we now know that it faltered on in many places, even up to World War One.
In towns it had became customary for groups from some occupations to parade and dance for gifts or boxes. The chimney sweeps brought out the jack-in-the-green and the milkmaids their garlands, often a tall portable structure decorated with any shiny things. These disappeared for the same reasons as Christmas boxes for tradesmen and now tips for waiters, because of the modern connotation of charity rather than being deserved.
In north western Europe, when looking at the full content of a culture, it always appears to be changing. The loss of customs and other traditional non-essential behaviour is a part of the natural progress of adapting our society to current opportunities. Tradition is a lagging but still a moving window on to any society. The morris is not immutable but a heritage and not to be treated as if it should be in a museum.
At Lichfield in the 19th century the morris led the perambulation by the winning candidate at parliamentary elections. At Banbury they chaired the disadvantaged fool of the Adderbury morris in a protest against the limitations of such elections. Elsewhere, particularly in the towns in the Thames and Kennett valleys, there were regular elections of Mock Mavors, one of which at Abingdon still happens on the Saturday nearest the 19th June, the date of the old horse fair, involving the inhabitants of Ock Street, and organised by the local traditional morris
The 19th century saw the morris as one of the relics of 18th century life, coarse and leading people into disrepute. Those who recorded such comments now appear to have been biased. Others saw them as nostalgic survivals. The 19th century rediscovered chivalry and the developed correctattitudes for gentlemen such as fair play and the value of improving behaviour. The women question exercised them as to the proper place of women as in the home and not in the workplace. It became less acceptable that young or married women appeared in public displays. It is not surprising that there was little reference to women in the morris in the l9th century, although a third of those mentions of the gender of dancers in Tudor and Stuart times implied that they were mixed. However most women in the 19th and early 20th centuries went into service at thirteen, with only half a day off per week, and aimed to be married by twenty one.
In its decline the social background of the dancers fell. At one time farmer's sons were proud to join, but by the end they were mostly farm labourers dancing for the money, and linked by family and workplace rather than dance skill. But the atmosphere had changed and dancers spoke later of giving up because it got like begging. The running costs of a dancer were not trivial, new shoes, bells in dutch metal at 6d a time and a dancer might need thirty six or more, so most were dependent on patronage or inheritance.
We have today some knowledge of only how twenty three teams or traditions danced out of several score that are known to have existed in the Cotswolds. Each was deliberately distinctive with variations on only a maximum of seven steps, which were simple movement sequences, and built around four to six regularly included figures, each with a descriptive title. Those that survived longest were actually associated with what were thought of as small towns rather than villages, for example at Abingdon, Bampton, Brackley and Chipping Campden. The old teams would be linked by name to their current leader and where he lived or could be contacted, thus they could appear to drift around their catchment area.
Most would have been irretrievably lost if it had not been for the local responses to Queen Victoria's Jubilees and later national celebrations.RediscoveryThe morris was not the first of the dance types now considered traditional to be discovered. The old maypole was a tall decorated post which could be danced around as a symbol of rights and licence, not fertility. The plaited ribbon form, familiar now for a hundred years, was, along with garland and other ribbon dances, part of the stock in trade of entertainment arrangers. It diffused into schools via teacher training colleges with the invention about 1880 of May Day with May Queens and other Victorian make belief.
On Boxing Day 1899, a team of dancers from Headington Quarry by Oxford, appearing out of season to raise some money for themselves, went up to a cottage and met Cecil Sharp, who was staying with an aunt. He had taught at the Adelaide Music Conservatoire in Australia for a while and on return had had a post tutoring royal children. He was just starting his monumental collecting, publishing and lecturing about English Folk Song and was soon to become an national celebrity. In 1905 he was approached by Mary Neal, who had founded the Esperance Club for young seamstresses in London and who was teaching them Sharp's folk songs, to ask if there were any dances. He had none but put her in touch with William Kimber, the musician he had noted years before, and she went to visit him and invited him to London to pass on his dances directly. The public displays by the Esperance Club from that December soon led to the teaching of these morris dances throughout the country, but mainly to girls. Many an old lady has remembered learning Beansetting at school.
Sharp started to assist the Club, but Mary Neal and her colleagues had become involved with the Women's Suffrage Movement. She had campaigned against social injustice, the Boer War, food adulteration and the like. Several of her colleagues were involved in the violent WSPU protests. Through a dispute over standards and accuracy of reproduction, Sharp was led to form the separate English Folk Dance Society, based at first at the Chelsea Polytechnic, which amongst other topics trained Physical Education teachers, and he worked hard to have English dance and song included in school activities. But even Sharp had been a theoretical Socialist of the Fabian sort.
Although a great debt is owed to Cecil Sharp for capturing details of the Cotswold Morris of the mid 19th century, he largely ignored dances that were or had been done elsewhere. Other collectors such as Clive Carey and friends of Mary Neal, George Butterworth and Tiddy, colleagues of Sharp who died in WW1, and several men since, particularly Professor Kenworthy Schofield and Dr Russell Wortley, also recorded extensively. Documenting the social background and identifying the 19th century Cotswold performers had to wait until Keith Chandler's recent books. A modern assessment of the origins, growth and decline of such activities are given in the books by Prof Hutton of Bristol University.
The morris was practiced between the World Wars by essentially clubs of professional people and by working people as members of EFDS local evening classes. Skills were judged by the award of certificates and medals. It was the Society's aim to give the dances back to the people but it largely failed because the time was not yet ripe, and the participants were too few. In 1924 the idea of morris tourswas evolved then as well as the modern roles within a club of Squire and Bagman, rather than the more traditional names of Captain and Secretary. Morris dinners with guests became Feasts, and with dancing Ales, reworking old concepts into new usages. By the mid 1930's there were enough mens' sides in England to form the first linking organisation called The Morris Ring.
The revival of morris was exported to the USA, especially to the Appalachians where Sharp had collected so many presumed ancient English songs, but also to Australia and New Zealand. There is a record of a morris visiting America very early in the history of settlement but it did not stay. The establishing of colonies in New England, Virginia and the backlands of the Appalachians occurred in waves, attracting people of different types and drawing on particular regions of the UK. They went as families and not communities, and, despite the attempts in Virginia, did not recreate the old social structures needed to support seasonal visiting, nor were there the need for public exertions for maintaining rights, as was an explanation for some seasonal customs in England.Other Forms of the MorrisThere was another form of morris in the Forest of Dean in west Gloucestershire. It was a summer dance, perhaps related to the Cotswold one, but it died too soon to be recovered. A unique feature was that it was often accompanied by a swordsman with one or two swords which were manipulated to amaze the crowds.
There are other English dance traditions to be seen today, most of which have reappeared in the last twenty five years. What might be older than the Cotswold morris are the long-sword dances surviving in Yorkshire with six or eight dancers in a linked ring, but these are seen infrequently in the south. The sword is a rigid wrought iron bar, not a true sword, of the sort that a blacksmith had carried for centuries as the raw material which could be transformed into whatever was needed, including fighting swords on demand in periods of crisis. Today ceremonial swords are made from steel bars that are initially one foot by one inch by half an inch. More likely to be seen is the short-sword or rapper dance of Durham for only five dancers and one or more comic characters, which is a derivative dating from the availability of flexible spring steel in the 18th century. Sharp found most of the sword dances and his final assistant Maud Karpeles many of the other forms of morris dances after his death in 1924.
Sword dancing was mentioned as long ago as 1389 in Bruges. It has only occurred in northern, western and central Europe. The hey-day of references was the 16th and 17th centuries. In Britain the first was in Edinburgh in 1590. No single region, people, social group or occasion ever appeared to have a monopoly. But early comments did not describe the dancing but sometimes mentioned fencing masters and could easily have been about fighting simulations or dancing over swords on the ground. From 16th to 18th century detailed descriptions it is difficult to tell if linking hilt-to-point in an unbroken circle was an element of the dances. Except for one mention in the Basque country (1660) the first clear mentions of linking anywhere across Europe occurred after 1770. The figures commonly given were a long snaking line, bridges, roses or platforms and fencing. Dancing in a line, as thread-the-needle and other simple forms, is very old and has survived in adult and children's games into living memory.
Common now are the Border Dancers and Molly Dancers who perform in a style derived from the 19th century performances on the English side of the Welsh Border and East Anglia respectively. The collected Molly was essentially country dances of the recent past. The Border used country dance figures interspersed with stick tapping movements. The common feature was that the dances were simple, needing very little practice beforehand, and were usually variable from outing to outing. Once to be found over the twelve days of Christmas, and the related Plough Monday, there were no survivors of old groups to show how it should be done, and most of what appears is a modern invention since the mid 1970's, including the rag jackets, which were once an indication of extreme poverty. Neither form has a history similar to the Cotswold morris and cannot claim any great age, although they do! Some kind of ploughing ceremony existed in 1413 but nothing else is known. The teams have been very creative with their dances and adaptive of ideas from all sources, for example, The East Acton Stick Dance is from an early Tony Hancock ITV broadcast! Few of the eleven Border dances actually collected are in use today. The emphasis is on patterns of movement, not on steps and movement skills, and the participants compensate with yells and lively action.
The most obvious feature of them today is the face painting. Once the wearing of masks were common in entertainment. Blacking Up was always considered exotic, even Henry VIII and James I's Queen had done so, but there is no mention of it with any of the morris, except the sword dance, until well into the 19th century, by then the minstrel troupes were already popular. Disguise to avoid recognition and a full face colouring that was frightening were hardly the way to ensure monetary gifts and repeat invitations. All over face cover is disturbing, which is why clowns have designs, and has been associated with those up to no good such as poachers or with covert operations such as the recent SAS. The 1731 Act and subsequent renewals made blacking or even covering the face sufficient evidence of intent to poach or cause mischief The rather different black face of the sweep was considered lucky, although such are no longer to be seen. Colour prejudice in England fell sharply after the abolition of slavery. Black face is also seen as not politically correct because of 20th century racial sensitivities, largely engendered in the UK by the US attitudes imported during the two World Wars. Before then coloured people were recognised as exotic and servants would be dressed grandly. They and those performers in black face would also be called Ethiopians and Nubians. So popular was minstrelsy by the turn of the century it was the most common form of entertainment available in London. After World War One it became a typical amateur entertainment replacing many older traditions until overtaken by the concert party. However today it does have the advantage that it reduces gender identification in mixed sides and so does not distract from the enjoyment of the dances. Different cultures have other attitudes. Black Peter, not Santa Claus, visits children in Holland and gives presents on 5th December.
Sometimes called morris are the folk plays, which might include an element of singing and dancing. The most common has been the Hero-Combat involving Father Christmas, King George who fights a Turkish Knight or two, a doctor who restores him, and other characters. The plot is minimal, the objective is humour. In the Midlands there was the Wooing Play and in the north a play associated with the sword dance. The evidence is that the Wooing Play existed in its modern form from about 1760. The earliest recorded Hero-Combat was in the 1730's. As the surviving chapbook plays date from 1757 it is suggested that all plays may have had a literary origin. All earlier references to mummers and players do not indicate the nature of the performance. Dr Cawte has shown that "dying out" is one of the main qualifications for any traditional custom! He further showed that customs recorded since 1800 are generally found in different parts of the country from those recorded before.
Then there is the north western morris, mostly in Lancashire and Cheshire but extending into Yorkshire and the Lake District, once a processional dance and at first associated with the annual taking of rushes on carts to church for floor covering. festivities which grew from the middle of the 19th century like Rose Festivals and Knutsford May day provide many new performance opportunities. The dance form grew in popularity during the second half of the 19th century. It suffered great losses of dancers during the first World War and was restarted often with teenagers or children. It is now a well developed folk art with its Carnival Morris Troupes, Jazz Bands and Acrobatic groups. Many of the older dances have been collected in recent years and learnt by adult groups. For many years it has been performed wearing clogs, and for the men breeches, although these were never the common people's dressing-up in its first heyday. But now nostalgia is the mood and performers feel that it is right. There is no recognised English national folk costume, to compare with pearly kings and queens, because the dress of the ordinary folk did not lag sufficiently behind current fashion.AppearanceThe bells are worn below the knee, around the ankle, on the shoe or the sleeves to accent the rhythm of the movements. The skill of the team can be judged by the degree of simultaneity of the jangle. There should be one or two rings to each step, depending on the style pursued. Once bells were more musical, being made of better metals than today's, and could be selected for pitch, so one could tell which dancers were not on the proper foot! Pocket handkerchiefs were invented for Richard II. The morris hankie should be larger, more the size of a neckerchief They are an extension of the hand and arm allowing a greater expression, and probably with less effort! The sticks are nowadays of various woods, although willow is considered best. Once they were normally painted and each dancer provided their own. The distinctive crossed sashes or baldricks were once a common decoration, often in some local colours. They were easy to wear and provided places to attach ribbons and rosettes without damaging their ordinary clothes. Suggestions that such things were to frighten devils, wake up the earth and promote plant growth are fun but unsupportable.
The dancing should be lively, with good springy stepping, not just barely lifted. It is the jumps and capers which are characteristic of the Cotswold Morris, some of which are done in slow time to allow of a greater effort in leaping.The MusicThe oldest instruments used for the morris were the pipe and tabor, being a three hole pipe played with the left hand and a small drum. The pipe or whistle is seldom heard today because its volume does not compete well against modern background noise. Cheap violins did not become available until the middle of the 19th century, and the concertina and other boxes based on Wheatstone's free reed, not until the end. Other instruments are often used now, flute, banjo, accordions, even bagpipes, and various rhythm instruments, such as drums, tambourines and bones.
Playing for the morris is different from anything else. The dancers usually know what they are going to do better than the musicians, and do not need to be led. As the individual steps vary in timing and stress, they need the music to reflect what they do, a mnemonic, not to constrain them. The dance can be brisk, but no more than at four bars in five seconds, which is suitable for the inexperienced or non athletic. More skill does allow of slower speeds, but only at a loss of foot-tapping excitement in the music, and often a lower rate of movement effort. As dancers get older and less athletic, the slower speeds can look pathetic!
The tunes used are mostly in the old rhythms of hornpipes, polkas and double jigs. Only a few, such as Trunkles, Shepherd's Hey and the Morisco, are very old, but many others of the widely known tunes are 100 to 300 years old. Few modem tunes are usable because the main stress in the morris movements are on the strong beats and so much of 20th century popular music emphasises the off-beat. There is also copyright and the Performing Rights Society!The CharactersThere are a number of tasks associated with a public show which may be handled by supernumeries or characters. The necessary one is of leader, announcing to the audience, choosing the next dance, calling the names of the movements to remind the dancers, thus allowing for flexibility and a control of the show. The most obvious will be the fool, dressed differently from the dancers, from a circus clown to a tooth fairy or whatever takes their fancy. This person sort of represents the audience in dealing with the dancers. But they should know it all and be able to step in anywhere. The fool's role is much older than the morris, but is made difficult because they are heirs of all the types of comedy that have been created over the years in circus, pantomime, radio and TV. The traditional gags were more like now unacceptable horseplay. Likely to be missed are the collector who works through the audience, but who can be talked to at length, and the ragman who discretely looks after the coats and equipment.
Today another character, the hobby-horse or other animal, is likely to be met, although they have had no part in the morris of former years since Tudor times. They were reintroduced to the morris at the end of the 19th century by antiquarians. These are representatives of the class of beautifuls, meant to be admired as much as causing fun or mayhem. They are also much older than the morris. The English tradition has at least three forms, the two legged tourney horse which has a simulated rider with dummy dangling legs, the stick animalwith a person underneath a cloth holding the head for manipulation on a short pole, and a similar design with a longer pole that can rest on the ground so that the carrier becomes its back. None was like the child's toy leg across riding cock-horse. Sometimes tourney horses had heads and jaws that could be worked by strings. Today you might see one designed to appear as a camel or ostrich, with a flexible neck that can be steered. Beginning to appear again are giants, once common on their own, only that at Salisbury survives, but they are still common in Flanders. Of the modern ones there are two in Alton.
There are Horses which have never be associated with the morris, at Padstow, Minehead, Combe Martin, the Hooden Horses in Kent, the Mari Llywd in Glamorgan, the Old Tupin Derbyshire, and the Ooser with a bull's head in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.TodayThe morris is no longer just another working class way of supplementing income. It has to attract attention by the quality of the performance and not assume that audience respect is due because of some inherent antiquarian value.
History shows a continual reuse of old activities. The occasions for performance have changed markedly. In most of the English traditions a team learnt a single dance which was enough for all performance opportunities such as they were. Now the teams are clubs meeting regularly throughout the year and wanting a wider repertoire for which they draw widely. Few of them dance for the money, but give the surplus to charity after paying for necessary expenses such as the rehearsal hall.
The morris may appear in competitions and art festivals but it is essentially non-competitive. There are a few other activities which provide similar social situations involving peer groups such as bell-ringing and choirs.
In the past the dances were transmitted orally and were therefore rather localised. Invention was a significant part of all the traditions although that was forgotten by academic folklorists. The middle aged leaders, Kimber, Wells and Bennett, were always trying to introduce new material to their teams. Today communications, travel and freedom allow international contact and good dance ideas can spread quickly around the world.
The morris is an art that exists only in performance and has to be continually recreated. Natural spontaneity ensures that it never exactly repeats. As a group activity it should reflect a consensus of those actually dancing rather than some absolute standard.
A major challenge is that the older caring attitudes about the morris are being lost by the practitioners for whom it is no longer a source of pride or an expression of prized individuality. The same problems exist for the traditionalists in martial arts when contrasted with the modern combative element. The growth of sport as leisure and a business has emphasised new attitudes, a new motivation for the seeking of excellence but also a trivialisation of the activities) reflecting changing degrees of commitment.
The major problem facing the morris and many charity raising organisations and other such activities is the relative lack of young people and the growth of the number of fortysomethings. Young people are now too busy with too many demands on them, besides the generation gap in attitudes. It is the older person, with lessening family responsibilities, more time and money, and fitness who finds expression through the moms.
At one time everywhere in England was within reach of some annual or regular event which allowed them to relax and enjoy themselves, either as participants or onlookers. Today it can be difficult to find a morris side dancing out, as few of the clubs have regular annual spots where they can be found on some easy to work out date ever year. However there are many festivals which bring groups together from all over if there is an interest in just seeing a variety.
The dancers enjoy clinging to myths and love to tell the tale. The spiel is to be enjoyed but not believed! The worst aspect of claiming pagan roots is that modern practicing pagans actually believe them!
Under the right circumstances the morris is magical! The dancers get a lift, the audiences feel good, and the morris is often welcome at weddings, parties and fetes. It needs to be intimate and not lost in remote spaces far from the watchers.Women and the MorrisThere is an estimate that there are about 10,000 people in the British Isles performing the morris, which makes it comparable with many other active hobbies. The limitation is determined by the density of practicing clubs and the overlapping of catchment areas, which has greatly increased with the widespread availability of so many of what were once very local traditional styles with their different performer appeals. Women started dancing morris forms regularly in public from the mid 1970's when suddenly it was realised that it was acceptable, although for a while they only did dances not used by the men, and yet still met considerable hostility, now mostly gone. Many such deeply held views are Victorian and need reevaluation. A consequence was the growth of other morris associations, the Morris Federation which was begun to represent women's morris and is now open to all, and Open Morris which was reaction to the apparent conflicts between the first two organisations. The cooperation between them all now is close and they do continue to reflect the different needs of clubs.
No one will deny that there are some physical differences between men and women. Sex was a discovery made long ago by single cell animals from which all subsequent evolution became possible. For The two articles below were written by Roy Dommett. The seccond challenges many of the myths I have enjoyed over the years. It and other articles can be found at http://www.opread.force9.co.uk/RoyDommet I have included it here to ensure that it is not lost.
Despite a century of academic searching, there is still no evidence to support a postulated direct link to any ancient pagan or fertility rite. Some people would claim that there must have been something before the morris under another name. What ever it might have been, if it ever existed, its function in society was absorbed by the morris, not the other way round.
This booklet is primarily concerned with the Cotswold form of the morris, but it is not the geologist's definition of the area as this 19th century morris only extended through Oxfordshire north of Oxford, and spilled over into the edges of the neighbouring counties of Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. The southern area, once associated with the forest, particularly Wychwood enclosed and cleared in the middle of the l9th century, contrasted with the emptier stonelands further north, and the styles of the morris appear to have varied as well. The dance form has adapted since World War One to social conditions throughout the British Isles and spread abroad to English speaking communities as well as to Denmark and Holland. Today the creative part of the morris has resurfaced and most teams have unique repertoires and/or interpretations of the common stock.
The performing arts are ephemeral, needing to be constantly recreated to exist. The morris is about its performance not history.
This paper is based on a lifetime's interest and a close following of relevant research.The BeginningThe hard beaten ancient paths around prehistoric monuments and the discovery at Stone Carr in Yorkshire of deer horns modificd so as to be worn are suggestive that dance or some similar organised activity has been with us for a long time. It would appear that its universality is fundamental to human societies. The emotional and subjective side has much in common with other activities that involve practiced movement skills as diverse as the martial arts and the making of music. The difference between the morris and folk-lifesurvivals, such as superstitions and songs, is that the latter depended only on one-to-one transmission, whereas the morris requires a consensus group to perform and another to watch, and its very existence is dependent on acceptance by the local community.
Some things never change. The continued throwing of money into wells or fountains is nearly as old as coinage itself We forget how precious and poorly understood were sources of unpolluted water before the public provision of piped supplies from the end of the 19th century. It has been too easy to see the concern as superstition or even to be religious. Ideas live on as they are adapted to new circumstances, as an extreme example, obligations were once placed on settlements to provide hides in medieval forests to allow the watching of does fawning. These could have inspired the chimney sweeps later for their similarly constructed perambulating Jack-in-the-Greens. The problem in tracing back the contributing threads to the morris is in recognising what has been lost and replaced over time. A difficulty exists when people relate the later performance to the older and probably irrelevant motivations.
The word morris was first used in the 12th century for community celebrations following the stages of reconquest of central and southern Spain from the Arabs, and where the morris or morisco still occurs annually between Christiansand Moors. But these little resemble our morris. However they are now just for fun, unlike the sectarian rituals in Northern Ireland, as unhappily all the Moors were ejected or forcibly converted by the reign of our Henry VIII, during the lifetime of Catherine of Aragon. The earliest surviving mention in England is from the end of the 15th century, occurring before the social changes initiated by Henry VIII, which grew out of the dissolution of the monasteries from 1536. The dancers were sometimes mentioned attached to the Robin Hood Games. These in turn had followed the themed King and then the May Game entertainments, which were simple and often participatory sports similar in spirit to modern fetes, but perhaps less sophisticated and uninhibited with more horseplay and vulgarity. Think of the older Robin Hood stories and the number of times someone falls into water!
England was invaded by the Saxons and then the Vikings and Normans but nothing like the morris survived in their home territories to suggest that they might have brought the morris with them. There is no evidence that such existed in Celtic communities except where introduced later as part of their Anglicisation.
The early form of morris is thought to have come to England via the various involvements with the continent, perhaps from what is now Flanders, Belgium and Holland, once the Spanish Netherlands, where similar sounding words had been used for their equivalents. In those days such places were closer by sailing ship than most of England was to London by horse. England in the late Middle Ages was to be thought of as only an off-shore island and a source of basic commodities, rather like modern ex-colonies. We gained a considerable range of new technologies, many crops, and our modern business methods from Flanders and Holland during their Golden Age, which contributed to our Agricultural Revolution. That part of Flanders now in France has only been French for a limited time. During the last war the Germans saw them as more German than French and ruled them with Belgium. Incidentally a Dutch history of the early morris was written during WW2, but was not allowed to be published by the Nazis because of the mentions of the English!
Another example of the debt to the Netherlands is probably the earliest form of cricket, first mentioned at Guildford in 1598, believed brought by immigrants, along with words like krikets and stomp, which also developed into a singularly English pastime.The Wide DistributionAcross Europe there are males who dance to show off; for socially acceptable boy-meets-girl encounters, for good luck visiting or the feel-good factor. Similarities with aspects of the English morris abound. Recent contacts with the folk performances in Rumania show that most of our folk expressions have an analogue there, without there having been a positive historical link, because both cultures have exploited almost all the things that simple people can easily do. In America the Spanish stopped many unacceptable native ceremonies but soon found it expedient to replace them, therefore they taught them the Spanish morris and the matachin, or stick dances, a separate style in the 16th century and then not part of the morris. These dance forms can still be seen in Arizona and Mexico performed by people of both Spanish and native descent. Troupes of men in northern Nigeria, on the other side of the Sahara from the Moors, still process in late medieval armour organised and looking like the morris. The link may have been two way as there are similarities between the appearance of some west of England hobby-horse customs and their supporters and West African performers. Not all such possible relationships are understood as yet.
We recognise many recent male dances in Spain, Portugal and Southern France as belonging in the morris family. The Basques have some that appear even more like ours. On the losing side in the Spanish Civil War, they then shared their dances between the men and women to help preserve their ethnic culture as they were officially scattered around. This very ancient race, with a language that predates the Indo-European group, consider that they gained their dances from passing peoples. The English kings held Aquitaine, what is now France south of the Loire, from the 12th to the mid 15th centuries, on the pilgrims' route to Santiago de Compestela. English armies or regiments commonly fought as mercenaries in the Reconquest and the other wars in Europe, and some settled in the cleared interior of Spain. But the best connections were in the fishing fleets off Newfoundland and the mountain of very rich iron ore mostly exported to Britain. Commercial and social contacts were not surprising. The best long weapons for the Tudor English infantry were imported as Morris Pikes meaning to a Moorish design. However persuasive past suggestions that the morris was first brought by notables, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, John of Gaunt or even Catherine of Aragon, are not supported by any evidence and the dates would be wrong. But Henry VII was exiled in France before gaining the crown and could have been exposed to a form of the morris there, at least it was performed later at his court in England.
There is no mention anywhere of any ritual significance in the morris at this early or any later period, nor that it was in anyway associated with a survival of an older culture. The then Christianisation of the country is hard to grasp now after centuries of dissent and reformation. Before the Black Death about one in a hundred of the population was in regular, monastic or minor orders, and the church was by far the largest landowner. Supposed survivals were not. The modern view is that what is now called the old religion, wicca or witchcraft, like the masons' stories of the origins of the craft, has mythical roots created from the 17th century onwards, even though they both have a complex set of rituals, performed with great seriousness and guarded with secrecy. That something is not as ancient as is claimed does not invalidate its current form and achievements. Far from being a folk expression the morris was at first also in the repertoires of professional or quasi-professional troupes. The literary evidence indicates that is was first recorded in England in towns where the court would often be, then it spread as a popular entertainment across the country. Something in attitudes changed because it began to meet official hostility and had eventually to depend on private patronage. In any age the cost of newly outfitting a dancer was high and beyond normal pockets when everything was hand made, often representing at least a man's month's income.
During the l9th century the morris was thought of as contemporary with Shakespeare, and only by the turn of it was the idea of older roots hypothesised. A limited amount of morris appeared in the theatre. Until 1840 the morris was regarded as a continuing popular activity, but after it was one that was only remembered.The FormEarly English references are for three formations of the dances, solo, a ring with a central person, and two-by-two. Solo morris dancers were last seen in Surrey, at Puttenham, and in Sussex, near Horsham, but there is no longer any indication of their style and the dances. Dancing in a ring survived in children's games, as did so many other former adult play activities. The early form had an individual, usually a woman, standing in the centre and the rest dancing in an uncoordinated manner around her in a circle. The Basques in their sauts simultaneously perform in a ring complex steps to the demands of their leader. But the form of a circle is so simple and obvious that its common occurrence could arise from independent invention rather than any long term survival.
The two-by-two form is a processional, as at Helston and in the West of England Furry dances, and as once at Shaftesbury and in Parkhurst Forest on the Isle of Wight. It is a natural for any custom involving travelling or visiting, particularly when it is for mixed couples. As a form it was so familiar that early Quakers were accused of going out like Morris dancers because they went in preaching teams of two! This simple format survived in to 20th century ballroom and sequence social dancing. There is suggestive evidence that processional forms grew out of the medieval Guild activities, with their dressing up in a common manner and going to church or chantry in ever grander ways with music and spectacle. The devotional orientation switched to secular forms of expression following the Reformation. The procession with symbolic displays on wagons, today suggestively called floats, is probably as old as the vehicles. In the early Middle Ages the culmination would be a replica ship, the largest and most impressive thing known to the people of the time, and manned, as today, with men and women dressed fantastically, to be known as a ship of fools. The modern style Carnival procession probably dates from the middle of the 19th century, one of the earliest in the south being at Shaftesbury in Dorset, with its tradition of jokey posters in the style of contemporary theatre bills, giving comic names to all the entries. Carnival still pulls a community together and attendance is a social statement of local allegiance. The public visibility and good feeling generated by processions was and still is exploited by club and church walks, and even in the revivals of beating-the-bounds.
From the number of references, the early morris was at a peak by the beginning of the 17th century and was dying away by the Civil War and the following Interregnum. The Puritans did not oppose dance or music, or even maypoles, but did object to its performance intruding into Sundays and to it occurring in the church. The division of the country into supporters of the King and of Parliament appeared to be as much determined by the people who wanted either a serious or a festive approach to life, particularly outside of work and especially on the Sunday so called day of rest. The Puritan legacy of Sunday is only now being eroded under modem circumstances.
The Restoration appears to have deliberately encouraged a revival of older remembered celebrations, including seasonal bonfires and the morris in central England, where the new dioceses formed by Henry VIII appeared not to have prosecuted the morris to extinction, as happened elsewhere.Set dances involving a finite number of dancers, from four to eight, appeared in 17th century social life as Country Dances. They were probably adopted by the morris some when after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, because there are many obvious similarities. The dances of the country people were likely to have been the reels and stepping, as explained by Thomas Hardy. The name Countrywas not a reflection of a folk origin but of its lively contrast with the formal Court dances. Even today we talk of Town and Country!
Social dance is for participation not watching. But there have always been some more elaborate display dances for showing off skills which required both training and practice. As the older dances fell out of fashion they would be remembered only by the elderly and the country folk and were then collected. Many have been recovered and become the stock-in- trade of modern local folk groups all over Europe. In England the Old Time Dance community rather than the English Folk Dance Society preserved many Victorian and Edwardian set and couple dances, such as the Quadrilles, Lancers (1850), Valeta (1900), Military Two Step (1904), Boston Two Step (1908), St Bernard's Waltz (l93) and Gay Gordons (1915), known for years as party dances. They have moved off into modem sequence dances, whereas the folk dance world built on the remembered longwaysdances of Old and New England. Other party dances which have reached a folk status were the Palais Glide (1928), Lambeth Walk (1937) and Knees Up Mother Brown (1938).
Although stick dances are now common, they were not once, appearing to have diffused down from the Midlands, where it may well have been known as the Bedlam Morris. Their modem popularity is due to the undoubted impressiveness linked with only limited demands on the dancers' technique. There has been no connection with sword or other military drills, despite the wide experience of them by country folk, or with the one time English Martial Art of cudgels.A Country Sport and its DeclineThe morris is dependent on the social structure of the communities served. In the middle ages attention was more focused on the church and the vast number of clerical orders with only a small aristocracy. The secularisation led to a growth of minor gentry, and the funding released led to the great rebuilding of houses and farms. The development of a genuine middle class provided a wider base for patronage but also led to the greater separation of classes and more exploitation. Land owners moved into other areas for income and became less concerned over the impact of land exploitation and the consequent depressed conditions for workers. The second half of the 19th century had a series of wet years with bad harvests and with the importing of cheap stable foods it lead to many emigrating, but they did not take their dances with them.
It has been a common experience since the 16th century that native community-involving customs are seldom maintained by immigrants to the new countries.
The Cotswold Morris flourished until the start of the 19th century, supporting events like fund raising Church and Morris Ales, then Village Friendly Society Club Days and similar occasions, as well as having an annual outing in their own locality at the recognised holidays about May Day, Oak Apple Day or at Whitsun. In England this was a slack time of the agricultural year before the first hay making. There were several widely known annual events which had the morris attending, the Cotswold Olympick Games on Dover's Hill by Chipping Campden and Kirtlington's Lamb Ale are examples which still occur. But the Much Wenlock Olympic Games started by Dr Brookes in copy of Dover's Games never had the morris, because for example the local dance tradition was a mid-winter not a mid-summer activity. The morris was noted as present at some major celebrations, such as the laying of the foundation stone at Blenheim Palace and an heir's 21st birthday at Stowe House. Later the growth of improving Victorian alternative activities such as flower and produce shows also provided performance opportunities, although they also drew off potential participants.
It was a period of growth of ideas of independence and self help and the beginning of confrontational politics. It perhaps started with the degradations of the Speenhamland system of Poor Law and included Chartism, the village Friendly Societies, which grew into national organisations, and Trade Unionism, with its eventual spread into the agricultural areas. The Cotswold morris had mostly collapsed by the mid 19th century, although we now know that it faltered on in many places, even up to World War One.
In towns it had became customary for groups from some occupations to parade and dance for gifts or boxes. The chimney sweeps brought out the jack-in-the-green and the milkmaids their garlands, often a tall portable structure decorated with any shiny things. These disappeared for the same reasons as Christmas boxes for tradesmen and now tips for waiters, because of the modern connotation of charity rather than being deserved.
In north western Europe, when looking at the full content of a culture, it always appears to be changing. The loss of customs and other traditional non-essential behaviour is a part of the natural progress of adapting our society to current opportunities. Tradition is a lagging but still a moving window on to any society. The morris is not immutable but a heritage and not to be treated as if it should be in a museum.
At Lichfield in the 19th century the morris led the perambulation by the winning candidate at parliamentary elections. At Banbury they chaired the disadvantaged fool of the Adderbury morris in a protest against the limitations of such elections. Elsewhere, particularly in the towns in the Thames and Kennett valleys, there were regular elections of Mock Mavors, one of which at Abingdon still happens on the Saturday nearest the 19th June, the date of the old horse fair, involving the inhabitants of Ock Street, and organised by the local traditional morris
The 19th century saw the morris as one of the relics of 18th century life, coarse and leading people into disrepute. Those who recorded such comments now appear to have been biased. Others saw them as nostalgic survivals. The 19th century rediscovered chivalry and the developed correctattitudes for gentlemen such as fair play and the value of improving behaviour. The women question exercised them as to the proper place of women as in the home and not in the workplace. It became less acceptable that young or married women appeared in public displays. It is not surprising that there was little reference to women in the morris in the l9th century, although a third of those mentions of the gender of dancers in Tudor and Stuart times implied that they were mixed. However most women in the 19th and early 20th centuries went into service at thirteen, with only half a day off per week, and aimed to be married by twenty one.
In its decline the social background of the dancers fell. At one time farmer's sons were proud to join, but by the end they were mostly farm labourers dancing for the money, and linked by family and workplace rather than dance skill. But the atmosphere had changed and dancers spoke later of giving up because it got like begging. The running costs of a dancer were not trivial, new shoes, bells in dutch metal at 6d a time and a dancer might need thirty six or more, so most were dependent on patronage or inheritance.
We have today some knowledge of only how twenty three teams or traditions danced out of several score that are known to have existed in the Cotswolds. Each was deliberately distinctive with variations on only a maximum of seven steps, which were simple movement sequences, and built around four to six regularly included figures, each with a descriptive title. Those that survived longest were actually associated with what were thought of as small towns rather than villages, for example at Abingdon, Bampton, Brackley and Chipping Campden. The old teams would be linked by name to their current leader and where he lived or could be contacted, thus they could appear to drift around their catchment area.
Most would have been irretrievably lost if it had not been for the local responses to Queen Victoria's Jubilees and later national celebrations.RediscoveryThe morris was not the first of the dance types now considered traditional to be discovered. The old maypole was a tall decorated post which could be danced around as a symbol of rights and licence, not fertility. The plaited ribbon form, familiar now for a hundred years, was, along with garland and other ribbon dances, part of the stock in trade of entertainment arrangers. It diffused into schools via teacher training colleges with the invention about 1880 of May Day with May Queens and other Victorian make belief.
On Boxing Day 1899, a team of dancers from Headington Quarry by Oxford, appearing out of season to raise some money for themselves, went up to a cottage and met Cecil Sharp, who was staying with an aunt. He had taught at the Adelaide Music Conservatoire in Australia for a while and on return had had a post tutoring royal children. He was just starting his monumental collecting, publishing and lecturing about English Folk Song and was soon to become an national celebrity. In 1905 he was approached by Mary Neal, who had founded the Esperance Club for young seamstresses in London and who was teaching them Sharp's folk songs, to ask if there were any dances. He had none but put her in touch with William Kimber, the musician he had noted years before, and she went to visit him and invited him to London to pass on his dances directly. The public displays by the Esperance Club from that December soon led to the teaching of these morris dances throughout the country, but mainly to girls. Many an old lady has remembered learning Beansetting at school.
Sharp started to assist the Club, but Mary Neal and her colleagues had become involved with the Women's Suffrage Movement. She had campaigned against social injustice, the Boer War, food adulteration and the like. Several of her colleagues were involved in the violent WSPU protests. Through a dispute over standards and accuracy of reproduction, Sharp was led to form the separate English Folk Dance Society, based at first at the Chelsea Polytechnic, which amongst other topics trained Physical Education teachers, and he worked hard to have English dance and song included in school activities. But even Sharp had been a theoretical Socialist of the Fabian sort.
Although a great debt is owed to Cecil Sharp for capturing details of the Cotswold Morris of the mid 19th century, he largely ignored dances that were or had been done elsewhere. Other collectors such as Clive Carey and friends of Mary Neal, George Butterworth and Tiddy, colleagues of Sharp who died in WW1, and several men since, particularly Professor Kenworthy Schofield and Dr Russell Wortley, also recorded extensively. Documenting the social background and identifying the 19th century Cotswold performers had to wait until Keith Chandler's recent books. A modern assessment of the origins, growth and decline of such activities are given in the books by Prof Hutton of Bristol University.
The morris was practiced between the World Wars by essentially clubs of professional people and by working people as members of EFDS local evening classes. Skills were judged by the award of certificates and medals. It was the Society's aim to give the dances back to the people but it largely failed because the time was not yet ripe, and the participants were too few. In 1924 the idea of morris tourswas evolved then as well as the modern roles within a club of Squire and Bagman, rather than the more traditional names of Captain and Secretary. Morris dinners with guests became Feasts, and with dancing Ales, reworking old concepts into new usages. By the mid 1930's there were enough mens' sides in England to form the first linking organisation called The Morris Ring.
The revival of morris was exported to the USA, especially to the Appalachians where Sharp had collected so many presumed ancient English songs, but also to Australia and New Zealand. There is a record of a morris visiting America very early in the history of settlement but it did not stay. The establishing of colonies in New England, Virginia and the backlands of the Appalachians occurred in waves, attracting people of different types and drawing on particular regions of the UK. They went as families and not communities, and, despite the attempts in Virginia, did not recreate the old social structures needed to support seasonal visiting, nor were there the need for public exertions for maintaining rights, as was an explanation for some seasonal customs in England.Other Forms of the MorrisThere was another form of morris in the Forest of Dean in west Gloucestershire. It was a summer dance, perhaps related to the Cotswold one, but it died too soon to be recovered. A unique feature was that it was often accompanied by a swordsman with one or two swords which were manipulated to amaze the crowds.
There are other English dance traditions to be seen today, most of which have reappeared in the last twenty five years. What might be older than the Cotswold morris are the long-sword dances surviving in Yorkshire with six or eight dancers in a linked ring, but these are seen infrequently in the south. The sword is a rigid wrought iron bar, not a true sword, of the sort that a blacksmith had carried for centuries as the raw material which could be transformed into whatever was needed, including fighting swords on demand in periods of crisis. Today ceremonial swords are made from steel bars that are initially one foot by one inch by half an inch. More likely to be seen is the short-sword or rapper dance of Durham for only five dancers and one or more comic characters, which is a derivative dating from the availability of flexible spring steel in the 18th century. Sharp found most of the sword dances and his final assistant Maud Karpeles many of the other forms of morris dances after his death in 1924.
Sword dancing was mentioned as long ago as 1389 in Bruges. It has only occurred in northern, western and central Europe. The hey-day of references was the 16th and 17th centuries. In Britain the first was in Edinburgh in 1590. No single region, people, social group or occasion ever appeared to have a monopoly. But early comments did not describe the dancing but sometimes mentioned fencing masters and could easily have been about fighting simulations or dancing over swords on the ground. From 16th to 18th century detailed descriptions it is difficult to tell if linking hilt-to-point in an unbroken circle was an element of the dances. Except for one mention in the Basque country (1660) the first clear mentions of linking anywhere across Europe occurred after 1770. The figures commonly given were a long snaking line, bridges, roses or platforms and fencing. Dancing in a line, as thread-the-needle and other simple forms, is very old and has survived in adult and children's games into living memory.
Common now are the Border Dancers and Molly Dancers who perform in a style derived from the 19th century performances on the English side of the Welsh Border and East Anglia respectively. The collected Molly was essentially country dances of the recent past. The Border used country dance figures interspersed with stick tapping movements. The common feature was that the dances were simple, needing very little practice beforehand, and were usually variable from outing to outing. Once to be found over the twelve days of Christmas, and the related Plough Monday, there were no survivors of old groups to show how it should be done, and most of what appears is a modern invention since the mid 1970's, including the rag jackets, which were once an indication of extreme poverty. Neither form has a history similar to the Cotswold morris and cannot claim any great age, although they do! Some kind of ploughing ceremony existed in 1413 but nothing else is known. The teams have been very creative with their dances and adaptive of ideas from all sources, for example, The East Acton Stick Dance is from an early Tony Hancock ITV broadcast! Few of the eleven Border dances actually collected are in use today. The emphasis is on patterns of movement, not on steps and movement skills, and the participants compensate with yells and lively action.
The most obvious feature of them today is the face painting. Once the wearing of masks were common in entertainment. Blacking Up was always considered exotic, even Henry VIII and James I's Queen had done so, but there is no mention of it with any of the morris, except the sword dance, until well into the 19th century, by then the minstrel troupes were already popular. Disguise to avoid recognition and a full face colouring that was frightening were hardly the way to ensure monetary gifts and repeat invitations. All over face cover is disturbing, which is why clowns have designs, and has been associated with those up to no good such as poachers or with covert operations such as the recent SAS. The 1731 Act and subsequent renewals made blacking or even covering the face sufficient evidence of intent to poach or cause mischief The rather different black face of the sweep was considered lucky, although such are no longer to be seen. Colour prejudice in England fell sharply after the abolition of slavery. Black face is also seen as not politically correct because of 20th century racial sensitivities, largely engendered in the UK by the US attitudes imported during the two World Wars. Before then coloured people were recognised as exotic and servants would be dressed grandly. They and those performers in black face would also be called Ethiopians and Nubians. So popular was minstrelsy by the turn of the century it was the most common form of entertainment available in London. After World War One it became a typical amateur entertainment replacing many older traditions until overtaken by the concert party. However today it does have the advantage that it reduces gender identification in mixed sides and so does not distract from the enjoyment of the dances. Different cultures have other attitudes. Black Peter, not Santa Claus, visits children in Holland and gives presents on 5th December.
Sometimes called morris are the folk plays, which might include an element of singing and dancing. The most common has been the Hero-Combat involving Father Christmas, King George who fights a Turkish Knight or two, a doctor who restores him, and other characters. The plot is minimal, the objective is humour. In the Midlands there was the Wooing Play and in the north a play associated with the sword dance. The evidence is that the Wooing Play existed in its modern form from about 1760. The earliest recorded Hero-Combat was in the 1730's. As the surviving chapbook plays date from 1757 it is suggested that all plays may have had a literary origin. All earlier references to mummers and players do not indicate the nature of the performance. Dr Cawte has shown that "dying out" is one of the main qualifications for any traditional custom! He further showed that customs recorded since 1800 are generally found in different parts of the country from those recorded before.
Then there is the north western morris, mostly in Lancashire and Cheshire but extending into Yorkshire and the Lake District, once a processional dance and at first associated with the annual taking of rushes on carts to church for floor covering. festivities which grew from the middle of the 19th century like Rose Festivals and Knutsford May day provide many new performance opportunities. The dance form grew in popularity during the second half of the 19th century. It suffered great losses of dancers during the first World War and was restarted often with teenagers or children. It is now a well developed folk art with its Carnival Morris Troupes, Jazz Bands and Acrobatic groups. Many of the older dances have been collected in recent years and learnt by adult groups. For many years it has been performed wearing clogs, and for the men breeches, although these were never the common people's dressing-up in its first heyday. But now nostalgia is the mood and performers feel that it is right. There is no recognised English national folk costume, to compare with pearly kings and queens, because the dress of the ordinary folk did not lag sufficiently behind current fashion.AppearanceThe bells are worn below the knee, around the ankle, on the shoe or the sleeves to accent the rhythm of the movements. The skill of the team can be judged by the degree of simultaneity of the jangle. There should be one or two rings to each step, depending on the style pursued. Once bells were more musical, being made of better metals than today's, and could be selected for pitch, so one could tell which dancers were not on the proper foot! Pocket handkerchiefs were invented for Richard II. The morris hankie should be larger, more the size of a neckerchief They are an extension of the hand and arm allowing a greater expression, and probably with less effort! The sticks are nowadays of various woods, although willow is considered best. Once they were normally painted and each dancer provided their own. The distinctive crossed sashes or baldricks were once a common decoration, often in some local colours. They were easy to wear and provided places to attach ribbons and rosettes without damaging their ordinary clothes. Suggestions that such things were to frighten devils, wake up the earth and promote plant growth are fun but unsupportable.
The dancing should be lively, with good springy stepping, not just barely lifted. It is the jumps and capers which are characteristic of the Cotswold Morris, some of which are done in slow time to allow of a greater effort in leaping.The MusicThe oldest instruments used for the morris were the pipe and tabor, being a three hole pipe played with the left hand and a small drum. The pipe or whistle is seldom heard today because its volume does not compete well against modern background noise. Cheap violins did not become available until the middle of the 19th century, and the concertina and other boxes based on Wheatstone's free reed, not until the end. Other instruments are often used now, flute, banjo, accordions, even bagpipes, and various rhythm instruments, such as drums, tambourines and bones.
Playing for the morris is different from anything else. The dancers usually know what they are going to do better than the musicians, and do not need to be led. As the individual steps vary in timing and stress, they need the music to reflect what they do, a mnemonic, not to constrain them. The dance can be brisk, but no more than at four bars in five seconds, which is suitable for the inexperienced or non athletic. More skill does allow of slower speeds, but only at a loss of foot-tapping excitement in the music, and often a lower rate of movement effort. As dancers get older and less athletic, the slower speeds can look pathetic!
The tunes used are mostly in the old rhythms of hornpipes, polkas and double jigs. Only a few, such as Trunkles, Shepherd's Hey and the Morisco, are very old, but many others of the widely known tunes are 100 to 300 years old. Few modem tunes are usable because the main stress in the morris movements are on the strong beats and so much of 20th century popular music emphasises the off-beat. There is also copyright and the Performing Rights Society!The CharactersThere are a number of tasks associated with a public show which may be handled by supernumeries or characters. The necessary one is of leader, announcing to the audience, choosing the next dance, calling the names of the movements to remind the dancers, thus allowing for flexibility and a control of the show. The most obvious will be the fool, dressed differently from the dancers, from a circus clown to a tooth fairy or whatever takes their fancy. This person sort of represents the audience in dealing with the dancers. But they should know it all and be able to step in anywhere. The fool's role is much older than the morris, but is made difficult because they are heirs of all the types of comedy that have been created over the years in circus, pantomime, radio and TV. The traditional gags were more like now unacceptable horseplay. Likely to be missed are the collector who works through the audience, but who can be talked to at length, and the ragman who discretely looks after the coats and equipment.
Today another character, the hobby-horse or other animal, is likely to be met, although they have had no part in the morris of former years since Tudor times. They were reintroduced to the morris at the end of the 19th century by antiquarians. These are representatives of the class of beautifuls, meant to be admired as much as causing fun or mayhem. They are also much older than the morris. The English tradition has at least three forms, the two legged tourney horse which has a simulated rider with dummy dangling legs, the stick animalwith a person underneath a cloth holding the head for manipulation on a short pole, and a similar design with a longer pole that can rest on the ground so that the carrier becomes its back. None was like the child's toy leg across riding cock-horse. Sometimes tourney horses had heads and jaws that could be worked by strings. Today you might see one designed to appear as a camel or ostrich, with a flexible neck that can be steered. Beginning to appear again are giants, once common on their own, only that at Salisbury survives, but they are still common in Flanders. Of the modern ones there are two in Alton.
There are Horses which have never be associated with the morris, at Padstow, Minehead, Combe Martin, the Hooden Horses in Kent, the Mari Llywd in Glamorgan, the Old Tupin Derbyshire, and the Ooser with a bull's head in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.TodayThe morris is no longer just another working class way of supplementing income. It has to attract attention by the quality of the performance and not assume that audience respect is due because of some inherent antiquarian value.
History shows a continual reuse of old activities. The occasions for performance have changed markedly. In most of the English traditions a team learnt a single dance which was enough for all performance opportunities such as they were. Now the teams are clubs meeting regularly throughout the year and wanting a wider repertoire for which they draw widely. Few of them dance for the money, but give the surplus to charity after paying for necessary expenses such as the rehearsal hall.
The morris may appear in competitions and art festivals but it is essentially non-competitive. There are a few other activities which provide similar social situations involving peer groups such as bell-ringing and choirs.
In the past the dances were transmitted orally and were therefore rather localised. Invention was a significant part of all the traditions although that was forgotten by academic folklorists. The middle aged leaders, Kimber, Wells and Bennett, were always trying to introduce new material to their teams. Today communications, travel and freedom allow international contact and good dance ideas can spread quickly around the world.
The morris is an art that exists only in performance and has to be continually recreated. Natural spontaneity ensures that it never exactly repeats. As a group activity it should reflect a consensus of those actually dancing rather than some absolute standard.
A major challenge is that the older caring attitudes about the morris are being lost by the practitioners for whom it is no longer a source of pride or an expression of prized individuality. The same problems exist for the traditionalists in martial arts when contrasted with the modern combative element. The growth of sport as leisure and a business has emphasised new attitudes, a new motivation for the seeking of excellence but also a trivialisation of the activities) reflecting changing degrees of commitment.
The major problem facing the morris and many charity raising organisations and other such activities is the relative lack of young people and the growth of the number of fortysomethings. Young people are now too busy with too many demands on them, besides the generation gap in attitudes. It is the older person, with lessening family responsibilities, more time and money, and fitness who finds expression through the moms.
At one time everywhere in England was within reach of some annual or regular event which allowed them to relax and enjoy themselves, either as participants or onlookers. Today it can be difficult to find a morris side dancing out, as few of the clubs have regular annual spots where they can be found on some easy to work out date ever year. However there are many festivals which bring groups together from all over if there is an interest in just seeing a variety.
The dancers enjoy clinging to myths and love to tell the tale. The spiel is to be enjoyed but not believed! The worst aspect of claiming pagan roots is that modern practicing pagans actually believe them!
Under the right circumstances the morris is magical! The dancers get a lift, the audiences feel good, and the morris is often welcome at weddings, parties and fetes. It needs to be intimate and not lost in remote spaces far from the watchers.Women and the MorrisThere is an estimate that there are about 10,000 people in the British Isles performing the morris, which makes it comparable with many other active hobbies. The limitation is determined by the density of practicing clubs and the overlapping of catchment areas, which has greatly increased with the widespread availability of so many of what were once very local traditional styles with their different performer appeals. Women started dancing morris forms regularly in public from the mid 1970's when suddenly it was realised that it was acceptable, although for a while they only did dances not used by the men, and yet still met considerable hostility, now mostly gone. Many such deeply held views are Victorian and need reevaluation. A consequence was the growth of other morris associations, the Morris Federation which was begun to represent women's morris and is now open to all, and Open Morris which was reaction to the apparent conflicts between the first two organisations. The cooperation between them all now is close and they do continue to reflect the different needs of clubs.
No one will deny that there are some physical differences between men and women. Sex was a discovery made long ago by single cell animals from which all subsequent evolution became possible. For The two articles below were written by Roy Dommett. The seccond challenges many of the myths I have enjoyed over the years. It and other articles can be found at http://www.opread.force9.co.uk/RoyDommet I have included it here to ensure that it is not lost.
dean
THE COLLECTED BORDER MORRIS
This paper was originally prepared for the ROOTS OF BORDER MORRIS CONFERENCE organised by the Morris Federation at West Malvern on 29thFebruary 1992. The author substituted for Dave Jones who had died not long before the meeting. The objective of the vufoil presentation was to cover some of the earlier historical background to the recovery of the traditional dances and to briefly describe the dances and offer some personal insights.WHERE ARE THE WRITTEN RESOURCESThe existing material on the Border morris is neither very voluminous nor accessible. The first publication of any dance was in Miss Leathers "Folklore of Herefordshire". She and others had led Cecil Sharp to some contacts, the results of which can be found in his MSS and Field notes books of which a microfilm of the former at least is available in the Vaughan Williams Library at Cecil Sharp House, London. There is a typed index that was made by Alex Helm. Most of the contacts with the tradition between the World Wars passed through Maud Karpeles, and since her death her papers have also become available on microfilm in the same library.
The Vaughan Williams Library has a small collection of its own, including some material sent to Douglas Kennedy and other staff members, which includes references to the dances at places such as Dawley and Malvern. Sadly Douglas Kennedy's earlier personal papers were destroyed by the bomb that fell on the corner of Cecil Sharp House during WW11.
Alex Helm and his colleagues made a transcription collection of ritual performance material, from which the geographic index published in the journal of the EFDSS drew, and which is deposited in the FolkLore Society Library at the University of London. His distribution map replaced that pioneered by Joseph Needham in the J EFDSS in the 1930's. Of particular relevance are the extracts found in the Ordish Collection. Unfortunately I have found that Alex Helm was not quite a 100% accurate in transcriptions and identifications of material from Sharp's Field Notebooks. Dr. Cawte, who was one of Helm's team, wrote the first major article on the Border Morris and this was published in the J EFDSS, and included the results of his own investigations and some brief notations.
My own contacts with collectors and collections led to the circulation of a stenciled set of notes in the mid 1960's entitled "Other Morris". With extra material occasioned by later publications, it was collected together by Dr. Tony Barrand and published in Vol. 5 of "Roy Dommet's Morris Notes" by the Country Dance Society of America in 1984. My material has been copied by Dr. Lionel Bacon to be the basis of the Border content of "A Handbook of Morris Dancing" published by the Morris Ring in 1974. About this time the Morris Ring produced an independent compendium of Border Morris source material with interpretations by Dave Jones, which occasioned some correspondence, most of which has been resolved in the last Morris Ring Booklet by Dave Jones which has included the results of his own more recent contacts.
Because there was some dancing in the 1930's, sometimes by children, it is still not too late to make contacts with old dancers. There has still to be a systematic search of newspapers, local collections, especially for photographs, and of local organisation publications, for example by the WI's.WHAT DID THEY COLLECTAlthough Cecil Sharp sometimes went off into the blue yonder to look for the morris, on most occasions he was following up leads provided by friends and local contacts. It must not be forgotten that Cecil Sharp was a nationally known personality who had taught music to the Royal Family and had become a successful touring lecturer on the novelty and beauty of English folk music, complete with concert level musical illustrations. Sharp saw the morris at Brimfield in Fancy Dress and a mixed sex team at Weobley and was given the set of Morris Reels by William Kimber and finally visited Steeple Claydon after WW1. He was struck in these places by the lack of "occasion" when compared to the best of the Cotswold tradition and thought that like the Cotswold survivors it was "degenerate" because it was not as he thought it would have been earlier, and he did not realise that traditions would evolve to meet the needs of the times.
Maud Karpeles had accompanied Sharp since his visits to the USA during WW1 and naturally followed on after his death in 1924 as the leading living authority. She adopted a charming conceit of numbering the pages of her collection following on Sharp's MSS which she had typed out. She went to meet dancers or teams brought to the attention of the EFDS and later EFDSS and dealt with correspondence about dances. Her papers and memories were full of the encounters with the tail end of the old traditions. She met a team at Much Wenlock and dancers from Worcestershire and received letters giving notations.
Miss Karpeles is best remembered now for collecting and publishing the Upton on Severn Stick dance. The team had been discovered by Dr. and Mrs. Kenworthy Schofield and they took a party across from the Cheltenham Summer School to meet them. They must have been overawed because the side had been dancing before and after this event and could not normally have been as bad as the published J EFDSS description suggests.
Until the 1950's there were very few people interested in collecting the dance traditions, after all they had been told that they had disappeared, there were no accessible mss to know what had been found, and no published indications of where it might be profitable to look, and in the case of the West Midlands no local enthusiasts to go searching. The Travelling Morrice's annual tours over the years went through most parts of England and had some success in meeting dancers in places like the Forest of Dean and at Bromsberrow Heath. But such meetings were often just accidents. Where possible such contacts were followed up by Peter Kennedy, in the late 40's and early 50's then recording on a BBC contract, and some of the material is available on his Folktracks cassettes.
Jack Hargreaves met the survivors of the Evesham dance in 1940. In later years he was in a rest home voluntarily with day releases and his odd behaviour made it difficult to get on with him. He wrote to Ralph Vaughan Williams suggesting that he should arrange the Evesham tunes. When he visited the library at Cecil Sharp House he sat and played the piano and terrorised the librarian into asking for a male staff member to sit with them. He came one evening to the OUMM to attempt to teach the dances and after covering many pages with sketches, despite the dances being so simple, and he left them more confused than at the start!
There have been a few other brief contacts. Dr. Cawte visited the dancing areas and wrote up the experiences and I met a few people who remembered dancing and of course Geoffrey Menham met the ex Much Wenlock dancers when at Stretton Westwood in August 1949. It remained for Dave Jones to meet dancers who actually remembered the complexities of the dances.COLLECTORS PROBLEMS WITH SINGLE VISITSThe major concern with most collected dance material is that it was gathered during a single interview period. Cecil Sharp was a master at this but the examination of his mss shows that the material could be very different when the visits were well separated, as for example at Abingdon and Brackley where he first went in 1910 and then again in 1922. The simpler Border dances now appear to have had their form because the sides had few dancers at the time and when more were available the dances were almost automatically more complex. A more recent experience illustrating the difficulties occurred when the Oxford University MM went to meet some male survivors of Sam Bennet's Illmington teams from1906-1912. The side had to interpret what they were told without knowledge of how Sam's sides did the dances, and they were showing Sharp's reconstruction of how he thought they were done as long ago as 1860. Enquiry since has also suggested that the informants may have had less to do with the morris than they claimed.
All the collecting has been in good faith, whatever the inherent weaknesses. When the OUMM competed at Llangollen they went on to tour in the Derbyshire villages. At Winster they met women who had danced the Winster dances and who assured Julian Pilling that they had one using sticks. They taught it quite clearly and it is described in Dr. Bacons book. The more recent Winster revival has uncovered a complex history of changes to their dances, but no stick dance that was ever done by men.
My own experiences were with casual contacts that always proved difficult to exploit. A first contact never seemed the right moment to enquire in depth about the social background and other details that in other circumstances would be considered prying. No one seemed to know of other survivors, which now perhaps is not surprising with the knowledge of the rate of turn over of team memberships. I tried to follow up on other people's contacts but no one I met seemed very knowledgeable. Perhaps it was my technique that was wrong.THE REVIVAL OF THE BORDER DANCESThe Upton on Severn stick dance was the only "Border" dance published and that only because of its structural similarity to Cotswold dances.
I taught the mss material at the Advanced Morris Weekends at Halsway Manor in the mid to late 1960's, but I am not aware that anyone actually took them away to actually dance out. I was invited to an EFDSS staff weekend to pass on the dances which were seen as a possibility for mixed team performance for which a growing need was perceived that could not be met by the Cotswold Morris, at a time when the NW dances were hardly known.
Interest picked up enough to ask me to teach the dances at a first workshop for West Midland teams in Ledbury Town Hall in January 1972 and I went on to teach them at Morris Federation workshops. Later there was for me a fantastic workshop for Open Morris in the Crypt at St. Martins-in-the-Fields. David Robinson also workshopped the dances widely, but he also suggested useful extensions and interpretations. This period coincided with the first publications of articles and notations. Having found some photographs I sent a Brimfield notation to English Dance and Song. Dr. Bacon drafted a section for the Evesham dances but it was excluded from his Handbook at the request of Russel Wortley who had an intention at that time of publishing it first in the then Morris Section of the English Dance and Song Magazine.
Initially the dances were seen as extras to existing repertoires to be used in special circumstances or when there was a need to let off some steam. The Upton dances were occasionally used as the basis from which to develop a whole tradition, when that concept became respectable.
In the mid 1970's there sparked off the modern idea of black faces, rag jackets and the showmanship, including noise and a degree of wildness not previously associated with the morris, led philosophically as much by the Kirkpatricks as anyone, even if they did not intend to set a fashion. Although many dancers were captivated and wanted to capture the unique spirit, most missed the underlying discipline which made the Shropshire Bedlams and the Molly equivalent, The Seven Champions, able to hold their own with teams following the other English traditions.
There are some black face sides with poorly thought through behaviour and costumes. Shouting enhances excitement but does not generate it. Their success appears to lead them to large numbers of performers and impressive street presence but without a comparable growth in dance skills. This can be seen in the Border like entries for the Ritual Dance Competition at the Sidmouth International Folk Arts Festival. Numbers, noise and vigour is used as a substitute for the skill required by the rules on the basis that this was the tradition. The audience cowers unless there is humour as well. But they are not putting themselves into a traditional situation but presenting themselves like a Cotswold display. I also detect a trend towards the ridiculous, self parodying as do the Seven Champions, and to arbitrary choreography like the self proclaimed "Street Dancers". Perhaps this is their reaction to an artificiality in what they do.
The vast growth of the "tradition" in the last decade or so is not the concern of this paper, although there have been major contributions from certain individuals, but the creation of dances in the "style" has enabled me to run annual all-day workshops just for fun, in which I have not had to repeat dances yet!OBVIOUS GENERALITIES ABOUT THE OLDER TRADITIONThe first obvious point is how different the no more than a dozen individual dances are from each other. The variety provides one springboard for developing new dances. There was a large range of costumes between the teams, even between individuals and from year to year. This suggests that it was a tradition on the cheap, and that the public had no particular expectations. The usual implement was an undecorated stick but they varied between teams from 6 to 30 inches long. The music was limited because the dances known to a particular team were so few. They had percussion, often played rather loudly, even at the expense of helping the dancers.
Very little is known of the social background in which the morris fitted. There is a strong presumption of it having been done by people who had seasonal occupations and who were likely to be frozen out during bad winters. This would imply that the annual performance would vary a great deal. The dances do not require much preliminary practice although there is some evidence that occasionally teams worked on them for several weeks. The tours that have been mentioned vary from the odd evening out to quite long trips spread over several days. The latter may not have been very frequent, we have to expect the natural exaggeration of folk retelling. The teams passed the hat for collections, even dancing along streets and knocking on the doors as they passed. The morris appears to have been enjoyed by their public but there is no indication of what were the official attitudes anywhere. That they were not revived for national events such as Coronations and Jubilees suggests that they thought of as begging customs and not as part of acceptable local culture in the 20th century.
Some of the dances were passed through generations, sometimes to daughter sides at other places and occasionally surviving with children. This happened also with the "Johnny Jacks" at Salisbury, Wiltshire. No Revivals have however been based in the villages in Worcestershire or Shropshire.THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS MENTIONED
The Vaughan Williams Library has a small collection of its own, including some material sent to Douglas Kennedy and other staff members, which includes references to the dances at places such as Dawley and Malvern. Sadly Douglas Kennedy's earlier personal papers were destroyed by the bomb that fell on the corner of Cecil Sharp House during WW11.
Alex Helm and his colleagues made a transcription collection of ritual performance material, from which the geographic index published in the journal of the EFDSS drew, and which is deposited in the FolkLore Society Library at the University of London. His distribution map replaced that pioneered by Joseph Needham in the J EFDSS in the 1930's. Of particular relevance are the extracts found in the Ordish Collection. Unfortunately I have found that Alex Helm was not quite a 100% accurate in transcriptions and identifications of material from Sharp's Field Notebooks. Dr. Cawte, who was one of Helm's team, wrote the first major article on the Border Morris and this was published in the J EFDSS, and included the results of his own investigations and some brief notations.
My own contacts with collectors and collections led to the circulation of a stenciled set of notes in the mid 1960's entitled "Other Morris". With extra material occasioned by later publications, it was collected together by Dr. Tony Barrand and published in Vol. 5 of "Roy Dommet's Morris Notes" by the Country Dance Society of America in 1984. My material has been copied by Dr. Lionel Bacon to be the basis of the Border content of "A Handbook of Morris Dancing" published by the Morris Ring in 1974. About this time the Morris Ring produced an independent compendium of Border Morris source material with interpretations by Dave Jones, which occasioned some correspondence, most of which has been resolved in the last Morris Ring Booklet by Dave Jones which has included the results of his own more recent contacts.
Because there was some dancing in the 1930's, sometimes by children, it is still not too late to make contacts with old dancers. There has still to be a systematic search of newspapers, local collections, especially for photographs, and of local organisation publications, for example by the WI's.WHAT DID THEY COLLECTAlthough Cecil Sharp sometimes went off into the blue yonder to look for the morris, on most occasions he was following up leads provided by friends and local contacts. It must not be forgotten that Cecil Sharp was a nationally known personality who had taught music to the Royal Family and had become a successful touring lecturer on the novelty and beauty of English folk music, complete with concert level musical illustrations. Sharp saw the morris at Brimfield in Fancy Dress and a mixed sex team at Weobley and was given the set of Morris Reels by William Kimber and finally visited Steeple Claydon after WW1. He was struck in these places by the lack of "occasion" when compared to the best of the Cotswold tradition and thought that like the Cotswold survivors it was "degenerate" because it was not as he thought it would have been earlier, and he did not realise that traditions would evolve to meet the needs of the times.
Maud Karpeles had accompanied Sharp since his visits to the USA during WW1 and naturally followed on after his death in 1924 as the leading living authority. She adopted a charming conceit of numbering the pages of her collection following on Sharp's MSS which she had typed out. She went to meet dancers or teams brought to the attention of the EFDS and later EFDSS and dealt with correspondence about dances. Her papers and memories were full of the encounters with the tail end of the old traditions. She met a team at Much Wenlock and dancers from Worcestershire and received letters giving notations.
Miss Karpeles is best remembered now for collecting and publishing the Upton on Severn Stick dance. The team had been discovered by Dr. and Mrs. Kenworthy Schofield and they took a party across from the Cheltenham Summer School to meet them. They must have been overawed because the side had been dancing before and after this event and could not normally have been as bad as the published J EFDSS description suggests.
Until the 1950's there were very few people interested in collecting the dance traditions, after all they had been told that they had disappeared, there were no accessible mss to know what had been found, and no published indications of where it might be profitable to look, and in the case of the West Midlands no local enthusiasts to go searching. The Travelling Morrice's annual tours over the years went through most parts of England and had some success in meeting dancers in places like the Forest of Dean and at Bromsberrow Heath. But such meetings were often just accidents. Where possible such contacts were followed up by Peter Kennedy, in the late 40's and early 50's then recording on a BBC contract, and some of the material is available on his Folktracks cassettes.
Jack Hargreaves met the survivors of the Evesham dance in 1940. In later years he was in a rest home voluntarily with day releases and his odd behaviour made it difficult to get on with him. He wrote to Ralph Vaughan Williams suggesting that he should arrange the Evesham tunes. When he visited the library at Cecil Sharp House he sat and played the piano and terrorised the librarian into asking for a male staff member to sit with them. He came one evening to the OUMM to attempt to teach the dances and after covering many pages with sketches, despite the dances being so simple, and he left them more confused than at the start!
There have been a few other brief contacts. Dr. Cawte visited the dancing areas and wrote up the experiences and I met a few people who remembered dancing and of course Geoffrey Menham met the ex Much Wenlock dancers when at Stretton Westwood in August 1949. It remained for Dave Jones to meet dancers who actually remembered the complexities of the dances.COLLECTORS PROBLEMS WITH SINGLE VISITSThe major concern with most collected dance material is that it was gathered during a single interview period. Cecil Sharp was a master at this but the examination of his mss shows that the material could be very different when the visits were well separated, as for example at Abingdon and Brackley where he first went in 1910 and then again in 1922. The simpler Border dances now appear to have had their form because the sides had few dancers at the time and when more were available the dances were almost automatically more complex. A more recent experience illustrating the difficulties occurred when the Oxford University MM went to meet some male survivors of Sam Bennet's Illmington teams from1906-1912. The side had to interpret what they were told without knowledge of how Sam's sides did the dances, and they were showing Sharp's reconstruction of how he thought they were done as long ago as 1860. Enquiry since has also suggested that the informants may have had less to do with the morris than they claimed.
All the collecting has been in good faith, whatever the inherent weaknesses. When the OUMM competed at Llangollen they went on to tour in the Derbyshire villages. At Winster they met women who had danced the Winster dances and who assured Julian Pilling that they had one using sticks. They taught it quite clearly and it is described in Dr. Bacons book. The more recent Winster revival has uncovered a complex history of changes to their dances, but no stick dance that was ever done by men.
My own experiences were with casual contacts that always proved difficult to exploit. A first contact never seemed the right moment to enquire in depth about the social background and other details that in other circumstances would be considered prying. No one seemed to know of other survivors, which now perhaps is not surprising with the knowledge of the rate of turn over of team memberships. I tried to follow up on other people's contacts but no one I met seemed very knowledgeable. Perhaps it was my technique that was wrong.THE REVIVAL OF THE BORDER DANCESThe Upton on Severn stick dance was the only "Border" dance published and that only because of its structural similarity to Cotswold dances.
I taught the mss material at the Advanced Morris Weekends at Halsway Manor in the mid to late 1960's, but I am not aware that anyone actually took them away to actually dance out. I was invited to an EFDSS staff weekend to pass on the dances which were seen as a possibility for mixed team performance for which a growing need was perceived that could not be met by the Cotswold Morris, at a time when the NW dances were hardly known.
Interest picked up enough to ask me to teach the dances at a first workshop for West Midland teams in Ledbury Town Hall in January 1972 and I went on to teach them at Morris Federation workshops. Later there was for me a fantastic workshop for Open Morris in the Crypt at St. Martins-in-the-Fields. David Robinson also workshopped the dances widely, but he also suggested useful extensions and interpretations. This period coincided with the first publications of articles and notations. Having found some photographs I sent a Brimfield notation to English Dance and Song. Dr. Bacon drafted a section for the Evesham dances but it was excluded from his Handbook at the request of Russel Wortley who had an intention at that time of publishing it first in the then Morris Section of the English Dance and Song Magazine.
Initially the dances were seen as extras to existing repertoires to be used in special circumstances or when there was a need to let off some steam. The Upton dances were occasionally used as the basis from which to develop a whole tradition, when that concept became respectable.
In the mid 1970's there sparked off the modern idea of black faces, rag jackets and the showmanship, including noise and a degree of wildness not previously associated with the morris, led philosophically as much by the Kirkpatricks as anyone, even if they did not intend to set a fashion. Although many dancers were captivated and wanted to capture the unique spirit, most missed the underlying discipline which made the Shropshire Bedlams and the Molly equivalent, The Seven Champions, able to hold their own with teams following the other English traditions.
There are some black face sides with poorly thought through behaviour and costumes. Shouting enhances excitement but does not generate it. Their success appears to lead them to large numbers of performers and impressive street presence but without a comparable growth in dance skills. This can be seen in the Border like entries for the Ritual Dance Competition at the Sidmouth International Folk Arts Festival. Numbers, noise and vigour is used as a substitute for the skill required by the rules on the basis that this was the tradition. The audience cowers unless there is humour as well. But they are not putting themselves into a traditional situation but presenting themselves like a Cotswold display. I also detect a trend towards the ridiculous, self parodying as do the Seven Champions, and to arbitrary choreography like the self proclaimed "Street Dancers". Perhaps this is their reaction to an artificiality in what they do.
The vast growth of the "tradition" in the last decade or so is not the concern of this paper, although there have been major contributions from certain individuals, but the creation of dances in the "style" has enabled me to run annual all-day workshops just for fun, in which I have not had to repeat dances yet!OBVIOUS GENERALITIES ABOUT THE OLDER TRADITIONThe first obvious point is how different the no more than a dozen individual dances are from each other. The variety provides one springboard for developing new dances. There was a large range of costumes between the teams, even between individuals and from year to year. This suggests that it was a tradition on the cheap, and that the public had no particular expectations. The usual implement was an undecorated stick but they varied between teams from 6 to 30 inches long. The music was limited because the dances known to a particular team were so few. They had percussion, often played rather loudly, even at the expense of helping the dancers.
Very little is known of the social background in which the morris fitted. There is a strong presumption of it having been done by people who had seasonal occupations and who were likely to be frozen out during bad winters. This would imply that the annual performance would vary a great deal. The dances do not require much preliminary practice although there is some evidence that occasionally teams worked on them for several weeks. The tours that have been mentioned vary from the odd evening out to quite long trips spread over several days. The latter may not have been very frequent, we have to expect the natural exaggeration of folk retelling. The teams passed the hat for collections, even dancing along streets and knocking on the doors as they passed. The morris appears to have been enjoyed by their public but there is no indication of what were the official attitudes anywhere. That they were not revived for national events such as Coronations and Jubilees suggests that they thought of as begging customs and not as part of acceptable local culture in the 20th century.
Some of the dances were passed through generations, sometimes to daughter sides at other places and occasionally surviving with children. This happened also with the "Johnny Jacks" at Salisbury, Wiltshire. No Revivals have however been based in the villages in Worcestershire or Shropshire.THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS MENTIONED
| F I D D L E | C O N C E R T I N A | M E L O D E O N | T I N W H I S T L E | T A M B O U R I N E | T R I A N G L E | B O N E S | |
| ASTON ON CLUN | X | X | X | ||||
| BRIMFIELD | X | X | |||||
| BROMSBERROW | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| DILWYN | X | ||||||
| EVESHAM | X | ||||||
| LEOMINSTER | X | X | X | ||||
| MUCH WENLOCK | X | X | X | X | |||
| ORLETON | X | X | X | ||||
| PEOPLETON | X | X | |||||
| PERSHORE | X | X | X | X | X | X | |
| UPTON ON SEVERN | X | X | X | ||||
| WHITE LADIES ASTON | X | X | X | X | X |
There is a common worldwide tradition of wearing face masks, both realistic and representational, which existed in the UK during the Middle Ages but was generally lost or prohibited by Tudor times, although there may have been some local survivors of animal disguises, and this behavior is still around in corners of Europe. Covering the face with a mask, as in the early theatre, is less for the disguise as for the chance to have a different persona for a while. As a disguise it only prevents a person previously unknown from being recognised without the mask. We forget how in the smaller world of the past everyone was known in their neighborhood. Painting the face is a poor man's mask.
Blacking up was done by poachers, and perhaps highwaymen and smugglers, who would be out at night. It was so bad in some parts of the country in the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Woolmer Forest, that the law accepted a blacked face as proof of intent. Hence there still is an association with being up to no good.
The Nigger Minstrel character was created in the early 19th century and was extremely popular as an entertainment for the masses in the UK from the mid 19th century to the start of WW1. It soon became a folk entertainment and replaced or followed the mummers in many places up till WW11, being at its most popular in the 1920's. The show was easy to put on, it had a simple formal structure built around individual rather than group skills, and was easily mobile. It needed a leader and end-men and used songs, solo dances and simple skits. Without more research, it is not clear whether Minstrels were acceptable because they picked up elements of existing Christmas traditions like the morris or if the Border groups had gathered attributes from the Minstrels. There are references to the troupes singing and stepping.
Colouring the face introduce problems. When it is all over or nearly so can be quite frightening to children. Why do people find it disturbing? Clowns have patterned faces. Blacking up can also be seen as racist and some clubs have had difficulties with their local police, hence a number of non-black colour choices.
WHAT HAVE BEEN THE POPULAR DANCESWithin my experience in the earlier days of watching the growth of modern Border Morris, the popular collected dances were Upton on Severn, Brimfield and White Ladies Aston. Note that these were not the simpler ones once thought to be characteristic. Others became popular once a well known tem showed a good interpretation of the dance, and now all of the collected dances can be seen in some form. Availability was the key, as few were confident enough to create their material from scratch, after all what was the tradition?
Of those dances composed more recently that appeared to be popular in my workshops were the various Sheepskin Hey dances, the simple Valiant Soldier (The Paradise Islander's Uncle Ned), the clever Mr. Dolly exploiting an idea (South Downs), the Seven Hand Reel (the core of Hunt the Squirrel) and the Maiden's Prayer because of its vulgar possibilities (Shropshire Bedlams). Some dances go down well in workshops because of their challenging content, such as the Morning Star, The Triumph and the Raddled Tup (all from the Shropshire Bedlams) but these are mostly too difficult for normal club use. I wonder what has been other people's experience?DISCUSSIONThis paper is not a history of the Border Morris tradition. There are a few place names, dancers and dates known, but few anecdotes and they can all be found in the literature, but this is of little help in understanding the why, what and wherefore of the tradition. We know very little about the Border morris and what we do have would be considered heresay in a court, as there is extremely little corroborated evidence! However it is very unlikely that any collector would have tapped what we now recognise as the core and appeal of the tradition. They were not very successful with this in traditions where the information was much greater! We must be careful when comparing across traditions that the Border Morris we have coincides with the Cotswold survivors not its heyday.
There is precious little hard evidence that the way the dances are presented today has any resemblance to the way it was. Probably the concept of a "show" did not exist for static audience that lasted 15-20 minutes, although there is the Malvern description. There are not enough facts to perform generalisations. Was the Border Morris ever as popular as the Cotswold Morris? The other mid winter custom the mummers could be very thick on the ground if there was enough patronage around.
A consideration of the overall variety suggests that, as first observed by Dr. Cawte, there are at least three regional types within the Border traditions, but the evidence is too thin to provide anything more than rough regional generalisations. Such similarities suggest a diffusion mechanism for the spread of the dances, rather than an audience expectation of what "correct". Some of the practical problems of reconciling the diverse elements of the Border tradition have been discussed by John Kirkpatrick in his various talks and writings.
The presentation at the conference included a map of the Border area and known places of performance and a number of illustrations of costumes based on the collected descriptions all taken from Dave Jones work, where they may be found. The variety of costumes was great and apparently included examples of almost all the traditional forms.
The presentation ended with a quick look at the notations of the collected dances, including Dave Jones versions for Much Wenlock and the Pershore Not For Joes, Maud Karpeles Peopleton and the four informants at White Ladies Aston.THE DANCES (1) : MORRIS REELSBy definition half a dances movements are country dance reels or morris heys, there being a subtle difference between them. Possibly the earliest representation of one is the painting of the Thames at Richmond with a line of four morris dancers. Thomas Hardy wrote to the EFDS in the early 1920's to say that the longways country dance arrived in Dorset when he was a teenager and that before that it was all step dancing and reels. Cecil Sharp found morris reels at Steeple Claydon, Bucks, Headington, Oxon and Illmington, Warks, mentioned in the Morris Books. He was given a normal morris set but Schofield was told it was danced in a line of six. There is the reel of three at Upton Snodbury, Worcs, the reel of six at Bromsberrow Heath, Gloucs and the reel of four at Keynsham, Avon. These ring the Cotswold's. I wonder if the norm was the reel and that the morris aquired them, as it did so many other folk activities.
Sharp probably thought of dances in terms of the historical richness published by Playford. A something-&-half-hey-repeated with simple movements interleaved is the typical Cotswold and Worcestershire dance structure, anything else was degenerate. I suspect that the something and reel is the more basic folk form and that the rest is an elaboration.THE DANCES : AS COLLECTEDThe notation that has come down to us was seldom structured but usually it can be assumed that the dance has a core and extra movements that could be added spontaneously or extemporised. Often hints of movements have had to be accepted to pad out a dance to a reasonable length for modern troupes. Dances nee a structure. Dances that come by the yard are not very satisfying for an audience nor, after many repetitions, for the dancers.
Dances done to their full extent, as seems common in the revival of any English dance tradition, can be very long and lose their audiences interest. Modern sides often lack the judgement of when enough is enough.BRIMFIELD
- > than 4 - longways set & leader calls : modern variant - two lines crossed.
| NAPPING | FIGURE EIGHT "ho!" | NAPPING | PAIRS SET |
| NAPPING | FIGURE EIGHT "ho!" | NAPPING | PAIRS ARM |
| NAPPING | FIGURE EIGHT "ho!" | NAPPING | FOUR HANDS ACROSS |
| NAPPING | FIGURE EIGHT "ho!" | NAPPING | PAIRS SWING |
WALK REEL OF 6 "off!", STICKS & PLAIN CAPERS "set", AD LIB SPEEDING UP
"12" passings in 32 steps : modern variant, form a circle so no end problemDILWYNAnd at Leominster & Weobley
NAP CHASSEZ ACROSS & BACK NAP HANDS ACROSS
In 1920's "in a circle they crossed over, bowed, circled & hit sticks". One can add a circle or rounds figure but where do you "bow"?EVESHAM
| STICKS | ON SPOT | STICKS | 1/2 CROSS OVER |
| STICKS | CIRCLE ANTICLOCKWISE sing "Fanny Frail" | STICKS | |
HANDKERCHIEF :
| ON SPOT | CROSS OVER & BACK | WHOLE ROUNDS | AD LIB |
MUCH WENLOCK
TROUPE
| STICKS | TAMBOURINE | TRIANGLE |
| 8 | 4 | 2 | |
7
| 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 6 | 2 | 2 | |
5
| 2 |
1
|
Thus
T
| S | S |
T
| S |
S
| ||||
Top
|
or
|
or
|
bottom
| ||||||
T
| S | S |
T
| S |
S
|
10
| 4 | 2 | 1 + 2 bones |
| M | S | M | S | M |
| M | S | M | S | M |
CROSS OVER ONE STAND & REST CIRCLE HEY FOR CAST ZIG ZAG PROCESSPEOPLETONSame source as White Ladies Aston
STICKS:
| HIT OPPOSITE, NEIGHBOUR, OPPOSITE & PASS |
| FIGURES: | ON SPOT B2B ACROSS CIRCLE IN 4's HANDS ACROSS REEL OF 4 B2B ON SIDE |
| HANDKS: | ON SPOT 4 CAPERS & HOP STEP ACROSS |
PERSHOREEARLY VERSION
| FIGURES: | HALF STICKS & HALF MOVEMENT |
| TOP COUPLE HALF HANDS OR STICK & BOTTOM COUPLE TO TOP | |
| CHANGE SIDES HALF HEY ON SIDES |
"NOT FOR JOES"
CIRCLES SET ROTATES ROUND OPPOSITE 3X LONGING SHANK HANDS ROUND
CROSS DIAGONALS CROSS OVER BYCICLE CHAIN DANCE ACROSS ROUNDS
DIAGONALS CHANGE BACK TO BACK etc.UPTON ON SEVERNThere as been a drift away from the Karpeles description, adding a cross over and large loops, and a variety of stick tappings. Attempts have been made to use a range of hand movements and steps observed in what was a rough performance. It has been the basis of whole new traditions. Emily insisted that the stick dance was for 8. The problem with the direction change halfway through handkerchief dance leads to many solutions.UPTON SNODBURYA three handed reel with heys and stick tapping. Did some kind of stepping throughout the dance. For the stick tapping the middle dancer tapped alternatively with the dancers on either side of them. Dr Cawte found that the reel could be done as a "Sheepskin Hey" around three hats on the ground.WHITE LADIES ASTONDave Jones suggested that each should be considered as a separate dance with many repeats. Originally I suggested taking one as a chorus and using the rest as figures following Glover's more detailed notation. But any of the first three sets could be a core of dance and used as a repeated chorus. Also the hints from Pershore Not For Joes and Malvern suggest, not surprisingly, that the repertoire of other movements could be large.
| 1. | Source STAITE STICK STRAIGHT HEY INSIDE CAST & TURN UNDER | 2. | Source LOWLE STICKS PROCESS DOWN 1/2 ROUNDS TO PLACE PROCESS DOWN 1/2 ROUNDS TO PLACE | 3. | Source RAWLINGS STICKS & CHANGE SIDES STICKS & CHANGE BACK TOP TO BOTTOM & REST STICK STICKS & CHANGE SIDES STICKS & CHANGE BACK TOP TO BOTTOM & REST STICK | 4. | Source GLOVER (16 bars each movement) | CHORUS: | 1/2 HEY & STICKS REPEATED | |||||
| FIGURES: | LINKED HEY PROCESS UP ROUNDS & STICK & BACK PROCESS DOWN CROSS OVER & STICKS & CROSS BACK & STICKS | |||||||||||||
WHAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THE MORRIS
What is Morris?The Morris is an event. It involves dressing up together with a performance of dance in public, possibly with simple accoutrements such as bells, handkerchiefs and various length sticks. The term has been used to cover a very wide range of styles, but recognisably having a common spirit. It is traditional in that the form owes little to 2Oth century social or art dance. It is a means of personal expression through organised, practised group movements which make limited, but not insignificant, technical demands on the participants. The historical morris may have been spread initially by an involvement in civic pageantry and then other local festivities, but, because it has an inherent flexibility of use, it later developed a life of its own, dependent only on private patronage and largesse from the public. The history of the morris is a mirror to the changes in society, being peripheral and dependent, reflecting the continual natural adaption to new circumstances. The modem claim of continuity is attractive, although by necessity any link is tenuous, and there is little to connect any aspect of it with the morris of only 150 years ago. Its basic simplicity allowed it to absorb and transmute elements of other customs. The content and the appearance is not prescribed and is now certainly a folk art.
Despite a century of academic searching, there is still no evidence to support a postulated direct link to any ancient pagan or fertility rite. Some people would claim that there must have been something before the morris under another name. What ever it might have been, if it ever existed, its function in society was absorbed by the morris, not the other way round.
This booklet is primarily concerned with the Cotswold form of the morris, but it is not the geologist's definition of the area as this 19th century morris only extended through Oxfordshire north of Oxford, and spilled over into the edges of the neighbouring counties of Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. The southern area, once associated with the forest, particularly Wychwood enclosed and cleared in the middle of the l9th century, contrasted with the emptier stonelands further north, and the styles of the morris appear to have varied as well. The dance form has adapted since World War One to social conditions throughout the British Isles and spread abroad to English speaking communities as well as to Denmark and Holland. Today the creative part of the morris has resurfaced and most teams have unique repertoires and/or interpretations of the common stock.
The performing arts are ephemeral, needing to be constantly recreated to exist. The morris is about its performance not history.
This paper is based on a lifetime's interest and a close following of relevant research.The BeginningThe hard beaten ancient paths around prehistoric monuments and the discovery at Stone Carr in Yorkshire of deer horns modificd so as to be worn are suggestive that dance or some similar organised activity has been with us for a long time. It would appear that its universality is fundamental to human societies. The emotional and subjective side has much in common with other activities that involve practiced movement skills as diverse as the martial arts and the making of music. The difference between the morris and folk-lifesurvivals, such as superstitions and songs, is that the latter depended only on one-to-one transmission, whereas the morris requires a consensus group to perform and another to watch, and its very existence is dependent on acceptance by the local community.
Some things never change. The continued throwing of money into wells or fountains is nearly as old as coinage itself We forget how precious and poorly understood were sources of unpolluted water before the public provision of piped supplies from the end of the 19th century. It has been too easy to see the concern as superstition or even to be religious. Ideas live on as they are adapted to new circumstances, as an extreme example, obligations were once placed on settlements to provide hides in medieval forests to allow the watching of does fawning. These could have inspired the chimney sweeps later for their similarly constructed perambulating Jack-in-the-Greens. The problem in tracing back the contributing threads to the morris is in recognising what has been lost and replaced over time. A difficulty exists when people relate the later performance to the older and probably irrelevant motivations.
The word morris was first used in the 12th century for community celebrations following the stages of reconquest of central and southern Spain from the Arabs, and where the morris or morisco still occurs annually between Christiansand Moors. But these little resemble our morris. However they are now just for fun, unlike the sectarian rituals in Northern Ireland, as unhappily all the Moors were ejected or forcibly converted by the reign of our Henry VIII, during the lifetime of Catherine of Aragon. The earliest surviving mention in England is from the end of the 15th century, occurring before the social changes initiated by Henry VIII, which grew out of the dissolution of the monasteries from 1536. The dancers were sometimes mentioned attached to the Robin Hood Games. These in turn had followed the themed King and then the May Game entertainments, which were simple and often participatory sports similar in spirit to modern fetes, but perhaps less sophisticated and uninhibited with more horseplay and vulgarity. Think of the older Robin Hood stories and the number of times someone falls into water!
England was invaded by the Saxons and then the Vikings and Normans but nothing like the morris survived in their home territories to suggest that they might have brought the morris with them. There is no evidence that such existed in Celtic communities except where introduced later as part of their Anglicisation.
The early form of morris is thought to have come to England via the various involvements with the continent, perhaps from what is now Flanders, Belgium and Holland, once the Spanish Netherlands, where similar sounding words had been used for their equivalents. In those days such places were closer by sailing ship than most of England was to London by horse. England in the late Middle Ages was to be thought of as only an off-shore island and a source of basic commodities, rather like modern ex-colonies. We gained a considerable range of new technologies, many crops, and our modern business methods from Flanders and Holland during their Golden Age, which contributed to our Agricultural Revolution. That part of Flanders now in France has only been French for a limited time. During the last war the Germans saw them as more German than French and ruled them with Belgium. Incidentally a Dutch history of the early morris was written during WW2, but was not allowed to be published by the Nazis because of the mentions of the English!
Another example of the debt to the Netherlands is probably the earliest form of cricket, first mentioned at Guildford in 1598, believed brought by immigrants, along with words like krikets and stomp, which also developed into a singularly English pastime.The Wide DistributionAcross Europe there are males who dance to show off; for socially acceptable boy-meets-girl encounters, for good luck visiting or the feel-good factor. Similarities with aspects of the English morris abound. Recent contacts with the folk performances in Rumania show that most of our folk expressions have an analogue there, without there having been a positive historical link, because both cultures have exploited almost all the things that simple people can easily do. In America the Spanish stopped many unacceptable native ceremonies but soon found it expedient to replace them, therefore they taught them the Spanish morris and the matachin, or stick dances, a separate style in the 16th century and then not part of the morris. These dance forms can still be seen in Arizona and Mexico performed by people of both Spanish and native descent. Troupes of men in northern Nigeria, on the other side of the Sahara from the Moors, still process in late medieval armour organised and looking like the morris. The link may have been two way as there are similarities between the appearance of some west of England hobby-horse customs and their supporters and West African performers. Not all such possible relationships are understood as yet.
We recognise many recent male dances in Spain, Portugal and Southern France as belonging in the morris family. The Basques have some that appear even more like ours. On the losing side in the Spanish Civil War, they then shared their dances between the men and women to help preserve their ethnic culture as they were officially scattered around. This very ancient race, with a language that predates the Indo-European group, consider that they gained their dances from passing peoples. The English kings held Aquitaine, what is now France south of the Loire, from the 12th to the mid 15th centuries, on the pilgrims' route to Santiago de Compestela. English armies or regiments commonly fought as mercenaries in the Reconquest and the other wars in Europe, and some settled in the cleared interior of Spain. But the best connections were in the fishing fleets off Newfoundland and the mountain of very rich iron ore mostly exported to Britain. Commercial and social contacts were not surprising. The best long weapons for the Tudor English infantry were imported as Morris Pikes meaning to a Moorish design. However persuasive past suggestions that the morris was first brought by notables, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, John of Gaunt or even Catherine of Aragon, are not supported by any evidence and the dates would be wrong. But Henry VII was exiled in France before gaining the crown and could have been exposed to a form of the morris there, at least it was performed later at his court in England.
There is no mention anywhere of any ritual significance in the morris at this early or any later period, nor that it was in anyway associated with a survival of an older culture. The then Christianisation of the country is hard to grasp now after centuries of dissent and reformation. Before the Black Death about one in a hundred of the population was in regular, monastic or minor orders, and the church was by far the largest landowner. Supposed survivals were not. The modern view is that what is now called the old religion, wicca or witchcraft, like the masons' stories of the origins of the craft, has mythical roots created from the 17th century onwards, even though they both have a complex set of rituals, performed with great seriousness and guarded with secrecy. That something is not as ancient as is claimed does not invalidate its current form and achievements. Far from being a folk expression the morris was at first also in the repertoires of professional or quasi-professional troupes. The literary evidence indicates that is was first recorded in England in towns where the court would often be, then it spread as a popular entertainment across the country. Something in attitudes changed because it began to meet official hostility and had eventually to depend on private patronage. In any age the cost of newly outfitting a dancer was high and beyond normal pockets when everything was hand made, often representing at least a man's month's income.
During the l9th century the morris was thought of as contemporary with Shakespeare, and only by the turn of it was the idea of older roots hypothesised. A limited amount of morris appeared in the theatre. Until 1840 the morris was regarded as a continuing popular activity, but after it was one that was only remembered.The FormEarly English references are for three formations of the dances, solo, a ring with a central person, and two-by-two. Solo morris dancers were last seen in Surrey, at Puttenham, and in Sussex, near Horsham, but there is no longer any indication of their style and the dances. Dancing in a ring survived in children's games, as did so many other former adult play activities. The early form had an individual, usually a woman, standing in the centre and the rest dancing in an uncoordinated manner around her in a circle. The Basques in their sauts simultaneously perform in a ring complex steps to the demands of their leader. But the form of a circle is so simple and obvious that its common occurrence could arise from independent invention rather than any long term survival.
The two-by-two form is a processional, as at Helston and in the West of England Furry dances, and as once at Shaftesbury and in Parkhurst Forest on the Isle of Wight. It is a natural for any custom involving travelling or visiting, particularly when it is for mixed couples. As a form it was so familiar that early Quakers were accused of going out like Morris dancers because they went in preaching teams of two! This simple format survived in to 20th century ballroom and sequence social dancing. There is suggestive evidence that processional forms grew out of the medieval Guild activities, with their dressing up in a common manner and going to church or chantry in ever grander ways with music and spectacle. The devotional orientation switched to secular forms of expression following the Reformation. The procession with symbolic displays on wagons, today suggestively called floats, is probably as old as the vehicles. In the early Middle Ages the culmination would be a replica ship, the largest and most impressive thing known to the people of the time, and manned, as today, with men and women dressed fantastically, to be known as a ship of fools. The modern style Carnival procession probably dates from the middle of the 19th century, one of the earliest in the south being at Shaftesbury in Dorset, with its tradition of jokey posters in the style of contemporary theatre bills, giving comic names to all the entries. Carnival still pulls a community together and attendance is a social statement of local allegiance. The public visibility and good feeling generated by processions was and still is exploited by club and church walks, and even in the revivals of beating-the-bounds.
From the number of references, the early morris was at a peak by the beginning of the 17th century and was dying away by the Civil War and the following Interregnum. The Puritans did not oppose dance or music, or even maypoles, but did object to its performance intruding into Sundays and to it occurring in the church. The division of the country into supporters of the King and of Parliament appeared to be as much determined by the people who wanted either a serious or a festive approach to life, particularly outside of work and especially on the Sunday so called day of rest. The Puritan legacy of Sunday is only now being eroded under modem circumstances.
The Restoration appears to have deliberately encouraged a revival of older remembered celebrations, including seasonal bonfires and the morris in central England, where the new dioceses formed by Henry VIII appeared not to have prosecuted the morris to extinction, as happened elsewhere.Set dances involving a finite number of dancers, from four to eight, appeared in 17th century social life as Country Dances. They were probably adopted by the morris some when after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, because there are many obvious similarities. The dances of the country people were likely to have been the reels and stepping, as explained by Thomas Hardy. The name Countrywas not a reflection of a folk origin but of its lively contrast with the formal Court dances. Even today we talk of Town and Country!
Social dance is for participation not watching. But there have always been some more elaborate display dances for showing off skills which required both training and practice. As the older dances fell out of fashion they would be remembered only by the elderly and the country folk and were then collected. Many have been recovered and become the stock-in- trade of modern local folk groups all over Europe. In England the Old Time Dance community rather than the English Folk Dance Society preserved many Victorian and Edwardian set and couple dances, such as the Quadrilles, Lancers (1850), Valeta (1900), Military Two Step (1904), Boston Two Step (1908), St Bernard's Waltz (l93) and Gay Gordons (1915), known for years as party dances. They have moved off into modem sequence dances, whereas the folk dance world built on the remembered longwaysdances of Old and New England. Other party dances which have reached a folk status were the Palais Glide (1928), Lambeth Walk (1937) and Knees Up Mother Brown (1938).
Although stick dances are now common, they were not once, appearing to have diffused down from the Midlands, where it may well have been known as the Bedlam Morris. Their modem popularity is due to the undoubted impressiveness linked with only limited demands on the dancers' technique. There has been no connection with sword or other military drills, despite the wide experience of them by country folk, or with the one time English Martial Art of cudgels.A Country Sport and its DeclineThe morris is dependent on the social structure of the communities served. In the middle ages attention was more focused on the church and the vast number of clerical orders with only a small aristocracy. The secularisation led to a growth of minor gentry, and the funding released led to the great rebuilding of houses and farms. The development of a genuine middle class provided a wider base for patronage but also led to the greater separation of classes and more exploitation. Land owners moved into other areas for income and became less concerned over the impact of land exploitation and the consequent depressed conditions for workers. The second half of the 19th century had a series of wet years with bad harvests and with the importing of cheap stable foods it lead to many emigrating, but they did not take their dances with them.
It has been a common experience since the 16th century that native community-involving customs are seldom maintained by immigrants to the new countries.
The Cotswold Morris flourished until the start of the 19th century, supporting events like fund raising Church and Morris Ales, then Village Friendly Society Club Days and similar occasions, as well as having an annual outing in their own locality at the recognised holidays about May Day, Oak Apple Day or at Whitsun. In England this was a slack time of the agricultural year before the first hay making. There were several widely known annual events which had the morris attending, the Cotswold Olympick Games on Dover's Hill by Chipping Campden and Kirtlington's Lamb Ale are examples which still occur. But the Much Wenlock Olympic Games started by Dr Brookes in copy of Dover's Games never had the morris, because for example the local dance tradition was a mid-winter not a mid-summer activity. The morris was noted as present at some major celebrations, such as the laying of the foundation stone at Blenheim Palace and an heir's 21st birthday at Stowe House. Later the growth of improving Victorian alternative activities such as flower and produce shows also provided performance opportunities, although they also drew off potential participants.
It was a period of growth of ideas of independence and self help and the beginning of confrontational politics. It perhaps started with the degradations of the Speenhamland system of Poor Law and included Chartism, the village Friendly Societies, which grew into national organisations, and Trade Unionism, with its eventual spread into the agricultural areas. The Cotswold morris had mostly collapsed by the mid 19th century, although we now know that it faltered on in many places, even up to World War One.
In towns it had became customary for groups from some occupations to parade and dance for gifts or boxes. The chimney sweeps brought out the jack-in-the-green and the milkmaids their garlands, often a tall portable structure decorated with any shiny things. These disappeared for the same reasons as Christmas boxes for tradesmen and now tips for waiters, because of the modern connotation of charity rather than being deserved.
In north western Europe, when looking at the full content of a culture, it always appears to be changing. The loss of customs and other traditional non-essential behaviour is a part of the natural progress of adapting our society to current opportunities. Tradition is a lagging but still a moving window on to any society. The morris is not immutable but a heritage and not to be treated as if it should be in a museum.
At Lichfield in the 19th century the morris led the perambulation by the winning candidate at parliamentary elections. At Banbury they chaired the disadvantaged fool of the Adderbury morris in a protest against the limitations of such elections. Elsewhere, particularly in the towns in the Thames and Kennett valleys, there were regular elections of Mock Mavors, one of which at Abingdon still happens on the Saturday nearest the 19th June, the date of the old horse fair, involving the inhabitants of Ock Street, and organised by the local traditional morris
The 19th century saw the morris as one of the relics of 18th century life, coarse and leading people into disrepute. Those who recorded such comments now appear to have been biased. Others saw them as nostalgic survivals. The 19th century rediscovered chivalry and the developed correctattitudes for gentlemen such as fair play and the value of improving behaviour. The women question exercised them as to the proper place of women as in the home and not in the workplace. It became less acceptable that young or married women appeared in public displays. It is not surprising that there was little reference to women in the morris in the l9th century, although a third of those mentions of the gender of dancers in Tudor and Stuart times implied that they were mixed. However most women in the 19th and early 20th centuries went into service at thirteen, with only half a day off per week, and aimed to be married by twenty one.
In its decline the social background of the dancers fell. At one time farmer's sons were proud to join, but by the end they were mostly farm labourers dancing for the money, and linked by family and workplace rather than dance skill. But the atmosphere had changed and dancers spoke later of giving up because it got like begging. The running costs of a dancer were not trivial, new shoes, bells in dutch metal at 6d a time and a dancer might need thirty six or more, so most were dependent on patronage or inheritance.
We have today some knowledge of only how twenty three teams or traditions danced out of several score that are known to have existed in the Cotswolds. Each was deliberately distinctive with variations on only a maximum of seven steps, which were simple movement sequences, and built around four to six regularly included figures, each with a descriptive title. Those that survived longest were actually associated with what were thought of as small towns rather than villages, for example at Abingdon, Bampton, Brackley and Chipping Campden. The old teams would be linked by name to their current leader and where he lived or could be contacted, thus they could appear to drift around their catchment area.
Most would have been irretrievably lost if it had not been for the local responses to Queen Victoria's Jubilees and later national celebrations.RediscoveryThe morris was not the first of the dance types now considered traditional to be discovered. The old maypole was a tall decorated post which could be danced around as a symbol of rights and licence, not fertility. The plaited ribbon form, familiar now for a hundred years, was, along with garland and other ribbon dances, part of the stock in trade of entertainment arrangers. It diffused into schools via teacher training colleges with the invention about 1880 of May Day with May Queens and other Victorian make belief.
On Boxing Day 1899, a team of dancers from Headington Quarry by Oxford, appearing out of season to raise some money for themselves, went up to a cottage and met Cecil Sharp, who was staying with an aunt. He had taught at the Adelaide Music Conservatoire in Australia for a while and on return had had a post tutoring royal children. He was just starting his monumental collecting, publishing and lecturing about English Folk Song and was soon to become an national celebrity. In 1905 he was approached by Mary Neal, who had founded the Esperance Club for young seamstresses in London and who was teaching them Sharp's folk songs, to ask if there were any dances. He had none but put her in touch with William Kimber, the musician he had noted years before, and she went to visit him and invited him to London to pass on his dances directly. The public displays by the Esperance Club from that December soon led to the teaching of these morris dances throughout the country, but mainly to girls. Many an old lady has remembered learning Beansetting at school.
Sharp started to assist the Club, but Mary Neal and her colleagues had become involved with the Women's Suffrage Movement. She had campaigned against social injustice, the Boer War, food adulteration and the like. Several of her colleagues were involved in the violent WSPU protests. Through a dispute over standards and accuracy of reproduction, Sharp was led to form the separate English Folk Dance Society, based at first at the Chelsea Polytechnic, which amongst other topics trained Physical Education teachers, and he worked hard to have English dance and song included in school activities. But even Sharp had been a theoretical Socialist of the Fabian sort.
Although a great debt is owed to Cecil Sharp for capturing details of the Cotswold Morris of the mid 19th century, he largely ignored dances that were or had been done elsewhere. Other collectors such as Clive Carey and friends of Mary Neal, George Butterworth and Tiddy, colleagues of Sharp who died in WW1, and several men since, particularly Professor Kenworthy Schofield and Dr Russell Wortley, also recorded extensively. Documenting the social background and identifying the 19th century Cotswold performers had to wait until Keith Chandler's recent books. A modern assessment of the origins, growth and decline of such activities are given in the books by Prof Hutton of Bristol University.
The morris was practiced between the World Wars by essentially clubs of professional people and by working people as members of EFDS local evening classes. Skills were judged by the award of certificates and medals. It was the Society's aim to give the dances back to the people but it largely failed because the time was not yet ripe, and the participants were too few. In 1924 the idea of morris tourswas evolved then as well as the modern roles within a club of Squire and Bagman, rather than the more traditional names of Captain and Secretary. Morris dinners with guests became Feasts, and with dancing Ales, reworking old concepts into new usages. By the mid 1930's there were enough mens' sides in England to form the first linking organisation called The Morris Ring.
The revival of morris was exported to the USA, especially to the Appalachians where Sharp had collected so many presumed ancient English songs, but also to Australia and New Zealand. There is a record of a morris visiting America very early in the history of settlement but it did not stay. The establishing of colonies in New England, Virginia and the backlands of the Appalachians occurred in waves, attracting people of different types and drawing on particular regions of the UK. They went as families and not communities, and, despite the attempts in Virginia, did not recreate the old social structures needed to support seasonal visiting, nor were there the need for public exertions for maintaining rights, as was an explanation for some seasonal customs in England.Other Forms of the MorrisThere was another form of morris in the Forest of Dean in west Gloucestershire. It was a summer dance, perhaps related to the Cotswold one, but it died too soon to be recovered. A unique feature was that it was often accompanied by a swordsman with one or two swords which were manipulated to amaze the crowds.
There are other English dance traditions to be seen today, most of which have reappeared in the last twenty five years. What might be older than the Cotswold morris are the long-sword dances surviving in Yorkshire with six or eight dancers in a linked ring, but these are seen infrequently in the south. The sword is a rigid wrought iron bar, not a true sword, of the sort that a blacksmith had carried for centuries as the raw material which could be transformed into whatever was needed, including fighting swords on demand in periods of crisis. Today ceremonial swords are made from steel bars that are initially one foot by one inch by half an inch. More likely to be seen is the short-sword or rapper dance of Durham for only five dancers and one or more comic characters, which is a derivative dating from the availability of flexible spring steel in the 18th century. Sharp found most of the sword dances and his final assistant Maud Karpeles many of the other forms of morris dances after his death in 1924.
Sword dancing was mentioned as long ago as 1389 in Bruges. It has only occurred in northern, western and central Europe. The hey-day of references was the 16th and 17th centuries. In Britain the first was in Edinburgh in 1590. No single region, people, social group or occasion ever appeared to have a monopoly. But early comments did not describe the dancing but sometimes mentioned fencing masters and could easily have been about fighting simulations or dancing over swords on the ground. From 16th to 18th century detailed descriptions it is difficult to tell if linking hilt-to-point in an unbroken circle was an element of the dances. Except for one mention in the Basque country (1660) the first clear mentions of linking anywhere across Europe occurred after 1770. The figures commonly given were a long snaking line, bridges, roses or platforms and fencing. Dancing in a line, as thread-the-needle and other simple forms, is very old and has survived in adult and children's games into living memory.
Common now are the Border Dancers and Molly Dancers who perform in a style derived from the 19th century performances on the English side of the Welsh Border and East Anglia respectively. The collected Molly was essentially country dances of the recent past. The Border used country dance figures interspersed with stick tapping movements. The common feature was that the dances were simple, needing very little practice beforehand, and were usually variable from outing to outing. Once to be found over the twelve days of Christmas, and the related Plough Monday, there were no survivors of old groups to show how it should be done, and most of what appears is a modern invention since the mid 1970's, including the rag jackets, which were once an indication of extreme poverty. Neither form has a history similar to the Cotswold morris and cannot claim any great age, although they do! Some kind of ploughing ceremony existed in 1413 but nothing else is known. The teams have been very creative with their dances and adaptive of ideas from all sources, for example, The East Acton Stick Dance is from an early Tony Hancock ITV broadcast! Few of the eleven Border dances actually collected are in use today. The emphasis is on patterns of movement, not on steps and movement skills, and the participants compensate with yells and lively action.
The most obvious feature of them today is the face painting. Once the wearing of masks were common in entertainment. Blacking Up was always considered exotic, even Henry VIII and James I's Queen had done so, but there is no mention of it with any of the morris, except the sword dance, until well into the 19th century, by then the minstrel troupes were already popular. Disguise to avoid recognition and a full face colouring that was frightening were hardly the way to ensure monetary gifts and repeat invitations. All over face cover is disturbing, which is why clowns have designs, and has been associated with those up to no good such as poachers or with covert operations such as the recent SAS. The 1731 Act and subsequent renewals made blacking or even covering the face sufficient evidence of intent to poach or cause mischief The rather different black face of the sweep was considered lucky, although such are no longer to be seen. Colour prejudice in England fell sharply after the abolition of slavery. Black face is also seen as not politically correct because of 20th century racial sensitivities, largely engendered in the UK by the US attitudes imported during the two World Wars. Before then coloured people were recognised as exotic and servants would be dressed grandly. They and those performers in black face would also be called Ethiopians and Nubians. So popular was minstrelsy by the turn of the century it was the most common form of entertainment available in London. After World War One it became a typical amateur entertainment replacing many older traditions until overtaken by the concert party. However today it does have the advantage that it reduces gender identification in mixed sides and so does not distract from the enjoyment of the dances. Different cultures have other attitudes. Black Peter, not Santa Claus, visits children in Holland and gives presents on 5th December.
Sometimes called morris are the folk plays, which might include an element of singing and dancing. The most common has been the Hero-Combat involving Father Christmas, King George who fights a Turkish Knight or two, a doctor who restores him, and other characters. The plot is minimal, the objective is humour. In the Midlands there was the Wooing Play and in the north a play associated with the sword dance. The evidence is that the Wooing Play existed in its modern form from about 1760. The earliest recorded Hero-Combat was in the 1730's. As the surviving chapbook plays date from 1757 it is suggested that all plays may have had a literary origin. All earlier references to mummers and players do not indicate the nature of the performance. Dr Cawte has shown that "dying out" is one of the main qualifications for any traditional custom! He further showed that customs recorded since 1800 are generally found in different parts of the country from those recorded before.
Then there is the north western morris, mostly in Lancashire and Cheshire but extending into Yorkshire and the Lake District, once a processional dance and at first associated with the annual taking of rushes on carts to church for floor covering. festivities which grew from the middle of the 19th century like Rose Festivals and Knutsford May day provide many new performance opportunities. The dance form grew in popularity during the second half of the 19th century. It suffered great losses of dancers during the first World War and was restarted often with teenagers or children. It is now a well developed folk art with its Carnival Morris Troupes, Jazz Bands and Acrobatic groups. Many of the older dances have been collected in recent years and learnt by adult groups. For many years it has been performed wearing clogs, and for the men breeches, although these were never the common people's dressing-up in its first heyday. But now nostalgia is the mood and performers feel that it is right. There is no recognised English national folk costume, to compare with pearly kings and queens, because the dress of the ordinary folk did not lag sufficiently behind current fashion.AppearanceThe bells are worn below the knee, around the ankle, on the shoe or the sleeves to accent the rhythm of the movements. The skill of the team can be judged by the degree of simultaneity of the jangle. There should be one or two rings to each step, depending on the style pursued. Once bells were more musical, being made of better metals than today's, and could be selected for pitch, so one could tell which dancers were not on the proper foot! Pocket handkerchiefs were invented for Richard II. The morris hankie should be larger, more the size of a neckerchief They are an extension of the hand and arm allowing a greater expression, and probably with less effort! The sticks are nowadays of various woods, although willow is considered best. Once they were normally painted and each dancer provided their own. The distinctive crossed sashes or baldricks were once a common decoration, often in some local colours. They were easy to wear and provided places to attach ribbons and rosettes without damaging their ordinary clothes. Suggestions that such things were to frighten devils, wake up the earth and promote plant growth are fun but unsupportable.
The dancing should be lively, with good springy stepping, not just barely lifted. It is the jumps and capers which are characteristic of the Cotswold Morris, some of which are done in slow time to allow of a greater effort in leaping.The MusicThe oldest instruments used for the morris were the pipe and tabor, being a three hole pipe played with the left hand and a small drum. The pipe or whistle is seldom heard today because its volume does not compete well against modern background noise. Cheap violins did not become available until the middle of the 19th century, and the concertina and other boxes based on Wheatstone's free reed, not until the end. Other instruments are often used now, flute, banjo, accordions, even bagpipes, and various rhythm instruments, such as drums, tambourines and bones.
Playing for the morris is different from anything else. The dancers usually know what they are going to do better than the musicians, and do not need to be led. As the individual steps vary in timing and stress, they need the music to reflect what they do, a mnemonic, not to constrain them. The dance can be brisk, but no more than at four bars in five seconds, which is suitable for the inexperienced or non athletic. More skill does allow of slower speeds, but only at a loss of foot-tapping excitement in the music, and often a lower rate of movement effort. As dancers get older and less athletic, the slower speeds can look pathetic!
The tunes used are mostly in the old rhythms of hornpipes, polkas and double jigs. Only a few, such as Trunkles, Shepherd's Hey and the Morisco, are very old, but many others of the widely known tunes are 100 to 300 years old. Few modem tunes are usable because the main stress in the morris movements are on the strong beats and so much of 20th century popular music emphasises the off-beat. There is also copyright and the Performing Rights Society!The CharactersThere are a number of tasks associated with a public show which may be handled by supernumeries or characters. The necessary one is of leader, announcing to the audience, choosing the next dance, calling the names of the movements to remind the dancers, thus allowing for flexibility and a control of the show. The most obvious will be the fool, dressed differently from the dancers, from a circus clown to a tooth fairy or whatever takes their fancy. This person sort of represents the audience in dealing with the dancers. But they should know it all and be able to step in anywhere. The fool's role is much older than the morris, but is made difficult because they are heirs of all the types of comedy that have been created over the years in circus, pantomime, radio and TV. The traditional gags were more like now unacceptable horseplay. Likely to be missed are the collector who works through the audience, but who can be talked to at length, and the ragman who discretely looks after the coats and equipment.
Today another character, the hobby-horse or other animal, is likely to be met, although they have had no part in the morris of former years since Tudor times. They were reintroduced to the morris at the end of the 19th century by antiquarians. These are representatives of the class of beautifuls, meant to be admired as much as causing fun or mayhem. They are also much older than the morris. The English tradition has at least three forms, the two legged tourney horse which has a simulated rider with dummy dangling legs, the stick animalwith a person underneath a cloth holding the head for manipulation on a short pole, and a similar design with a longer pole that can rest on the ground so that the carrier becomes its back. None was like the child's toy leg across riding cock-horse. Sometimes tourney horses had heads and jaws that could be worked by strings. Today you might see one designed to appear as a camel or ostrich, with a flexible neck that can be steered. Beginning to appear again are giants, once common on their own, only that at Salisbury survives, but they are still common in Flanders. Of the modern ones there are two in Alton.
There are Horses which have never be associated with the morris, at Padstow, Minehead, Combe Martin, the Hooden Horses in Kent, the Mari Llywd in Glamorgan, the Old Tupin Derbyshire, and the Ooser with a bull's head in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.TodayThe morris is no longer just another working class way of supplementing income. It has to attract attention by the quality of the performance and not assume that audience respect is due because of some inherent antiquarian value.
History shows a continual reuse of old activities. The occasions for performance have changed markedly. In most of the English traditions a team learnt a single dance which was enough for all performance opportunities such as they were. Now the teams are clubs meeting regularly throughout the year and wanting a wider repertoire for which they draw widely. Few of them dance for the money, but give the surplus to charity after paying for necessary expenses such as the rehearsal hall.
The morris may appear in competitions and art festivals but it is essentially non-competitive. There are a few other activities which provide similar social situations involving peer groups such as bell-ringing and choirs.
In the past the dances were transmitted orally and were therefore rather localised. Invention was a significant part of all the traditions although that was forgotten by academic folklorists. The middle aged leaders, Kimber, Wells and Bennett, were always trying to introduce new material to their teams. Today communications, travel and freedom allow international contact and good dance ideas can spread quickly around the world.
The morris is an art that exists only in performance and has to be continually recreated. Natural spontaneity ensures that it never exactly repeats. As a group activity it should reflect a consensus of those actually dancing rather than some absolute standard.
A major challenge is that the older caring attitudes about the morris are being lost by the practitioners for whom it is no longer a source of pride or an expression of prized individuality. The same problems exist for the traditionalists in martial arts when contrasted with the modern combative element. The growth of sport as leisure and a business has emphasised new attitudes, a new motivation for the seeking of excellence but also a trivialisation of the activities) reflecting changing degrees of commitment.
The major problem facing the morris and many charity raising organisations and other such activities is the relative lack of young people and the growth of the number of fortysomethings. Young people are now too busy with too many demands on them, besides the generation gap in attitudes. It is the older person, with lessening family responsibilities, more time and money, and fitness who finds expression through the moms.
At one time everywhere in England was within reach of some annual or regular event which allowed them to relax and enjoy themselves, either as participants or onlookers. Today it can be difficult to find a morris side dancing out, as few of the clubs have regular annual spots where they can be found on some easy to work out date ever year. However there are many festivals which bring groups together from all over if there is an interest in just seeing a variety.
The dancers enjoy clinging to myths and love to tell the tale. The spiel is to be enjoyed but not believed! The worst aspect of claiming pagan roots is that modern practicing pagans actually believe them!
Under the right circumstances the morris is magical! The dancers get a lift, the audiences feel good, and the morris is often welcome at weddings, parties and fetes. It needs to be intimate and not lost in remote spaces far from the watchers.Women and the MorrisThere is an estimate that there are about 10,000 people in the British Isles performing the morris, which makes it comparable with many other active hobbies. The limitation is determined by the density of practicing clubs and the overlapping of catchment areas, which has greatly increased with the widespread availability of so many of what were once very local traditional styles with their different performer appeals. Women started dancing morris forms regularly in public from the mid 1970's when suddenly it was realised that it was acceptable, although for a while they only did dances not used by the men, and yet still met considerable hostility, now mostly gone. Many such deeply held views are Victorian and need reevaluation. A consequence was the growth of other morris associations, the Morris Federation which was begun to represent women's morris and is now open to all, and Open Morris which was reaction to the apparent conflicts between the first two organisations. The cooperation between them all now is close and they do continue to reflect the different needs of clubs.
No one will deny that there are some physical differences between men and women. Sex was a discovery made long ago by single cell animals from which all subsequent evolution became possible. For various reasons there are no surviving indications of traditional dances which were considered the property of or characteristic of women, so the known dances and their modern derivatives are shared. But the differences in height, build, strength and cultural ideas of what are suitable forms of movement ensure a different end product. There have been many indications of what men thought women's dances should be like, mostly ladylike! But women often work together better as a group, and can move around quickly and can seem to fly through the air on capers, if their choice of costume allows it, so that it is not worse but an alternative. In England women usually opt for a skirt whose extra movements can be eye catching. However it is difficult to produce a costume that dances well and can suit a variety of sizes and shapes.WarningUnfortunately morris dancers are no more socially skilled that any other, often appear to be less, and will unwittingly show bad manners by standing in front of their audience, imagining they are invisible because they are in costume, turning up late compared to the postered advice, indulging in in-jokes, being more interested in talking than dancing, etc. Large bands will stand in a long line in front of the dancers and the audience being danced to! These are all the habits arising from the way in which they practice, forgetting to do it then as they would intend to do it out. Spectators should remind them of good manners, in return for the courtesy of not moving around or off during individual dances and disturbing those that are watching. Standing in front of people, especially the less mobile elderly, to take photographs, or just to be closer, also gives offence to many.Towards a Theory of MorrisHuman behaviour is inordinately complex, but a satisfactory theory for the morris has to answer three key questions.
Despite a century of academic searching, there is still no evidence to support a postulated direct link to any ancient pagan or fertility rite. Some people would claim that there must have been something before the morris under another name. What ever it might have been, if it ever existed, its function in society was absorbed by the morris, not the other way round.
This booklet is primarily concerned with the Cotswold form of the morris, but it is not the geologist's definition of the area as this 19th century morris only extended through Oxfordshire north of Oxford, and spilled over into the edges of the neighbouring counties of Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. The southern area, once associated with the forest, particularly Wychwood enclosed and cleared in the middle of the l9th century, contrasted with the emptier stonelands further north, and the styles of the morris appear to have varied as well. The dance form has adapted since World War One to social conditions throughout the British Isles and spread abroad to English speaking communities as well as to Denmark and Holland. Today the creative part of the morris has resurfaced and most teams have unique repertoires and/or interpretations of the common stock.
The performing arts are ephemeral, needing to be constantly recreated to exist. The morris is about its performance not history.
This paper is based on a lifetime's interest and a close following of relevant research.The BeginningThe hard beaten ancient paths around prehistoric monuments and the discovery at Stone Carr in Yorkshire of deer horns modificd so as to be worn are suggestive that dance or some similar organised activity has been with us for a long time. It would appear that its universality is fundamental to human societies. The emotional and subjective side has much in common with other activities that involve practiced movement skills as diverse as the martial arts and the making of music. The difference between the morris and folk-lifesurvivals, such as superstitions and songs, is that the latter depended only on one-to-one transmission, whereas the morris requires a consensus group to perform and another to watch, and its very existence is dependent on acceptance by the local community.
Some things never change. The continued throwing of money into wells or fountains is nearly as old as coinage itself We forget how precious and poorly understood were sources of unpolluted water before the public provision of piped supplies from the end of the 19th century. It has been too easy to see the concern as superstition or even to be religious. Ideas live on as they are adapted to new circumstances, as an extreme example, obligations were once placed on settlements to provide hides in medieval forests to allow the watching of does fawning. These could have inspired the chimney sweeps later for their similarly constructed perambulating Jack-in-the-Greens. The problem in tracing back the contributing threads to the morris is in recognising what has been lost and replaced over time. A difficulty exists when people relate the later performance to the older and probably irrelevant motivations.
The word morris was first used in the 12th century for community celebrations following the stages of reconquest of central and southern Spain from the Arabs, and where the morris or morisco still occurs annually between Christiansand Moors. But these little resemble our morris. However they are now just for fun, unlike the sectarian rituals in Northern Ireland, as unhappily all the Moors were ejected or forcibly converted by the reign of our Henry VIII, during the lifetime of Catherine of Aragon. The earliest surviving mention in England is from the end of the 15th century, occurring before the social changes initiated by Henry VIII, which grew out of the dissolution of the monasteries from 1536. The dancers were sometimes mentioned attached to the Robin Hood Games. These in turn had followed the themed King and then the May Game entertainments, which were simple and often participatory sports similar in spirit to modern fetes, but perhaps less sophisticated and uninhibited with more horseplay and vulgarity. Think of the older Robin Hood stories and the number of times someone falls into water!
England was invaded by the Saxons and then the Vikings and Normans but nothing like the morris survived in their home territories to suggest that they might have brought the morris with them. There is no evidence that such existed in Celtic communities except where introduced later as part of their Anglicisation.
The early form of morris is thought to have come to England via the various involvements with the continent, perhaps from what is now Flanders, Belgium and Holland, once the Spanish Netherlands, where similar sounding words had been used for their equivalents. In those days such places were closer by sailing ship than most of England was to London by horse. England in the late Middle Ages was to be thought of as only an off-shore island and a source of basic commodities, rather like modern ex-colonies. We gained a considerable range of new technologies, many crops, and our modern business methods from Flanders and Holland during their Golden Age, which contributed to our Agricultural Revolution. That part of Flanders now in France has only been French for a limited time. During the last war the Germans saw them as more German than French and ruled them with Belgium. Incidentally a Dutch history of the early morris was written during WW2, but was not allowed to be published by the Nazis because of the mentions of the English!
Another example of the debt to the Netherlands is probably the earliest form of cricket, first mentioned at Guildford in 1598, believed brought by immigrants, along with words like krikets and stomp, which also developed into a singularly English pastime.The Wide DistributionAcross Europe there are males who dance to show off; for socially acceptable boy-meets-girl encounters, for good luck visiting or the feel-good factor. Similarities with aspects of the English morris abound. Recent contacts with the folk performances in Rumania show that most of our folk expressions have an analogue there, without there having been a positive historical link, because both cultures have exploited almost all the things that simple people can easily do. In America the Spanish stopped many unacceptable native ceremonies but soon found it expedient to replace them, therefore they taught them the Spanish morris and the matachin, or stick dances, a separate style in the 16th century and then not part of the morris. These dance forms can still be seen in Arizona and Mexico performed by people of both Spanish and native descent. Troupes of men in northern Nigeria, on the other side of the Sahara from the Moors, still process in late medieval armour organised and looking like the morris. The link may have been two way as there are similarities between the appearance of some west of England hobby-horse customs and their supporters and West African performers. Not all such possible relationships are understood as yet.
We recognise many recent male dances in Spain, Portugal and Southern France as belonging in the morris family. The Basques have some that appear even more like ours. On the losing side in the Spanish Civil War, they then shared their dances between the men and women to help preserve their ethnic culture as they were officially scattered around. This very ancient race, with a language that predates the Indo-European group, consider that they gained their dances from passing peoples. The English kings held Aquitaine, what is now France south of the Loire, from the 12th to the mid 15th centuries, on the pilgrims' route to Santiago de Compestela. English armies or regiments commonly fought as mercenaries in the Reconquest and the other wars in Europe, and some settled in the cleared interior of Spain. But the best connections were in the fishing fleets off Newfoundland and the mountain of very rich iron ore mostly exported to Britain. Commercial and social contacts were not surprising. The best long weapons for the Tudor English infantry were imported as Morris Pikes meaning to a Moorish design. However persuasive past suggestions that the morris was first brought by notables, such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, John of Gaunt or even Catherine of Aragon, are not supported by any evidence and the dates would be wrong. But Henry VII was exiled in France before gaining the crown and could have been exposed to a form of the morris there, at least it was performed later at his court in England.
There is no mention anywhere of any ritual significance in the morris at this early or any later period, nor that it was in anyway associated with a survival of an older culture. The then Christianisation of the country is hard to grasp now after centuries of dissent and reformation. Before the Black Death about one in a hundred of the population was in regular, monastic or minor orders, and the church was by far the largest landowner. Supposed survivals were not. The modern view is that what is now called the old religion, wicca or witchcraft, like the masons' stories of the origins of the craft, has mythical roots created from the 17th century onwards, even though they both have a complex set of rituals, performed with great seriousness and guarded with secrecy. That something is not as ancient as is claimed does not invalidate its current form and achievements. Far from being a folk expression the morris was at first also in the repertoires of professional or quasi-professional troupes. The literary evidence indicates that is was first recorded in England in towns where the court would often be, then it spread as a popular entertainment across the country. Something in attitudes changed because it began to meet official hostility and had eventually to depend on private patronage. In any age the cost of newly outfitting a dancer was high and beyond normal pockets when everything was hand made, often representing at least a man's month's income.
During the l9th century the morris was thought of as contemporary with Shakespeare, and only by the turn of it was the idea of older roots hypothesised. A limited amount of morris appeared in the theatre. Until 1840 the morris was regarded as a continuing popular activity, but after it was one that was only remembered.The FormEarly English references are for three formations of the dances, solo, a ring with a central person, and two-by-two. Solo morris dancers were last seen in Surrey, at Puttenham, and in Sussex, near Horsham, but there is no longer any indication of their style and the dances. Dancing in a ring survived in children's games, as did so many other former adult play activities. The early form had an individual, usually a woman, standing in the centre and the rest dancing in an uncoordinated manner around her in a circle. The Basques in their sauts simultaneously perform in a ring complex steps to the demands of their leader. But the form of a circle is so simple and obvious that its common occurrence could arise from independent invention rather than any long term survival.
The two-by-two form is a processional, as at Helston and in the West of England Furry dances, and as once at Shaftesbury and in Parkhurst Forest on the Isle of Wight. It is a natural for any custom involving travelling or visiting, particularly when it is for mixed couples. As a form it was so familiar that early Quakers were accused of going out like Morris dancers because they went in preaching teams of two! This simple format survived in to 20th century ballroom and sequence social dancing. There is suggestive evidence that processional forms grew out of the medieval Guild activities, with their dressing up in a common manner and going to church or chantry in ever grander ways with music and spectacle. The devotional orientation switched to secular forms of expression following the Reformation. The procession with symbolic displays on wagons, today suggestively called floats, is probably as old as the vehicles. In the early Middle Ages the culmination would be a replica ship, the largest and most impressive thing known to the people of the time, and manned, as today, with men and women dressed fantastically, to be known as a ship of fools. The modern style Carnival procession probably dates from the middle of the 19th century, one of the earliest in the south being at Shaftesbury in Dorset, with its tradition of jokey posters in the style of contemporary theatre bills, giving comic names to all the entries. Carnival still pulls a community together and attendance is a social statement of local allegiance. The public visibility and good feeling generated by processions was and still is exploited by club and church walks, and even in the revivals of beating-the-bounds.
From the number of references, the early morris was at a peak by the beginning of the 17th century and was dying away by the Civil War and the following Interregnum. The Puritans did not oppose dance or music, or even maypoles, but did object to its performance intruding into Sundays and to it occurring in the church. The division of the country into supporters of the King and of Parliament appeared to be as much determined by the people who wanted either a serious or a festive approach to life, particularly outside of work and especially on the Sunday so called day of rest. The Puritan legacy of Sunday is only now being eroded under modem circumstances.
The Restoration appears to have deliberately encouraged a revival of older remembered celebrations, including seasonal bonfires and the morris in central England, where the new dioceses formed by Henry VIII appeared not to have prosecuted the morris to extinction, as happened elsewhere.Set dances involving a finite number of dancers, from four to eight, appeared in 17th century social life as Country Dances. They were probably adopted by the morris some when after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, because there are many obvious similarities. The dances of the country people were likely to have been the reels and stepping, as explained by Thomas Hardy. The name Countrywas not a reflection of a folk origin but of its lively contrast with the formal Court dances. Even today we talk of Town and Country!
Social dance is for participation not watching. But there have always been some more elaborate display dances for showing off skills which required both training and practice. As the older dances fell out of fashion they would be remembered only by the elderly and the country folk and were then collected. Many have been recovered and become the stock-in- trade of modern local folk groups all over Europe. In England the Old Time Dance community rather than the English Folk Dance Society preserved many Victorian and Edwardian set and couple dances, such as the Quadrilles, Lancers (1850), Valeta (1900), Military Two Step (1904), Boston Two Step (1908), St Bernard's Waltz (l93) and Gay Gordons (1915), known for years as party dances. They have moved off into modem sequence dances, whereas the folk dance world built on the remembered longwaysdances of Old and New England. Other party dances which have reached a folk status were the Palais Glide (1928), Lambeth Walk (1937) and Knees Up Mother Brown (1938).
Although stick dances are now common, they were not once, appearing to have diffused down from the Midlands, where it may well have been known as the Bedlam Morris. Their modem popularity is due to the undoubted impressiveness linked with only limited demands on the dancers' technique. There has been no connection with sword or other military drills, despite the wide experience of them by country folk, or with the one time English Martial Art of cudgels.A Country Sport and its DeclineThe morris is dependent on the social structure of the communities served. In the middle ages attention was more focused on the church and the vast number of clerical orders with only a small aristocracy. The secularisation led to a growth of minor gentry, and the funding released led to the great rebuilding of houses and farms. The development of a genuine middle class provided a wider base for patronage but also led to the greater separation of classes and more exploitation. Land owners moved into other areas for income and became less concerned over the impact of land exploitation and the consequent depressed conditions for workers. The second half of the 19th century had a series of wet years with bad harvests and with the importing of cheap stable foods it lead to many emigrating, but they did not take their dances with them.
It has been a common experience since the 16th century that native community-involving customs are seldom maintained by immigrants to the new countries.
The Cotswold Morris flourished until the start of the 19th century, supporting events like fund raising Church and Morris Ales, then Village Friendly Society Club Days and similar occasions, as well as having an annual outing in their own locality at the recognised holidays about May Day, Oak Apple Day or at Whitsun. In England this was a slack time of the agricultural year before the first hay making. There were several widely known annual events which had the morris attending, the Cotswold Olympick Games on Dover's Hill by Chipping Campden and Kirtlington's Lamb Ale are examples which still occur. But the Much Wenlock Olympic Games started by Dr Brookes in copy of Dover's Games never had the morris, because for example the local dance tradition was a mid-winter not a mid-summer activity. The morris was noted as present at some major celebrations, such as the laying of the foundation stone at Blenheim Palace and an heir's 21st birthday at Stowe House. Later the growth of improving Victorian alternative activities such as flower and produce shows also provided performance opportunities, although they also drew off potential participants.
It was a period of growth of ideas of independence and self help and the beginning of confrontational politics. It perhaps started with the degradations of the Speenhamland system of Poor Law and included Chartism, the village Friendly Societies, which grew into national organisations, and Trade Unionism, with its eventual spread into the agricultural areas. The Cotswold morris had mostly collapsed by the mid 19th century, although we now know that it faltered on in many places, even up to World War One.
In towns it had became customary for groups from some occupations to parade and dance for gifts or boxes. The chimney sweeps brought out the jack-in-the-green and the milkmaids their garlands, often a tall portable structure decorated with any shiny things. These disappeared for the same reasons as Christmas boxes for tradesmen and now tips for waiters, because of the modern connotation of charity rather than being deserved.
In north western Europe, when looking at the full content of a culture, it always appears to be changing. The loss of customs and other traditional non-essential behaviour is a part of the natural progress of adapting our society to current opportunities. Tradition is a lagging but still a moving window on to any society. The morris is not immutable but a heritage and not to be treated as if it should be in a museum.
At Lichfield in the 19th century the morris led the perambulation by the winning candidate at parliamentary elections. At Banbury they chaired the disadvantaged fool of the Adderbury morris in a protest against the limitations of such elections. Elsewhere, particularly in the towns in the Thames and Kennett valleys, there were regular elections of Mock Mavors, one of which at Abingdon still happens on the Saturday nearest the 19th June, the date of the old horse fair, involving the inhabitants of Ock Street, and organised by the local traditional morris
The 19th century saw the morris as one of the relics of 18th century life, coarse and leading people into disrepute. Those who recorded such comments now appear to have been biased. Others saw them as nostalgic survivals. The 19th century rediscovered chivalry and the developed correctattitudes for gentlemen such as fair play and the value of improving behaviour. The women question exercised them as to the proper place of women as in the home and not in the workplace. It became less acceptable that young or married women appeared in public displays. It is not surprising that there was little reference to women in the morris in the l9th century, although a third of those mentions of the gender of dancers in Tudor and Stuart times implied that they were mixed. However most women in the 19th and early 20th centuries went into service at thirteen, with only half a day off per week, and aimed to be married by twenty one.
In its decline the social background of the dancers fell. At one time farmer's sons were proud to join, but by the end they were mostly farm labourers dancing for the money, and linked by family and workplace rather than dance skill. But the atmosphere had changed and dancers spoke later of giving up because it got like begging. The running costs of a dancer were not trivial, new shoes, bells in dutch metal at 6d a time and a dancer might need thirty six or more, so most were dependent on patronage or inheritance.
We have today some knowledge of only how twenty three teams or traditions danced out of several score that are known to have existed in the Cotswolds. Each was deliberately distinctive with variations on only a maximum of seven steps, which were simple movement sequences, and built around four to six regularly included figures, each with a descriptive title. Those that survived longest were actually associated with what were thought of as small towns rather than villages, for example at Abingdon, Bampton, Brackley and Chipping Campden. The old teams would be linked by name to their current leader and where he lived or could be contacted, thus they could appear to drift around their catchment area.
Most would have been irretrievably lost if it had not been for the local responses to Queen Victoria's Jubilees and later national celebrations.RediscoveryThe morris was not the first of the dance types now considered traditional to be discovered. The old maypole was a tall decorated post which could be danced around as a symbol of rights and licence, not fertility. The plaited ribbon form, familiar now for a hundred years, was, along with garland and other ribbon dances, part of the stock in trade of entertainment arrangers. It diffused into schools via teacher training colleges with the invention about 1880 of May Day with May Queens and other Victorian make belief.
On Boxing Day 1899, a team of dancers from Headington Quarry by Oxford, appearing out of season to raise some money for themselves, went up to a cottage and met Cecil Sharp, who was staying with an aunt. He had taught at the Adelaide Music Conservatoire in Australia for a while and on return had had a post tutoring royal children. He was just starting his monumental collecting, publishing and lecturing about English Folk Song and was soon to become an national celebrity. In 1905 he was approached by Mary Neal, who had founded the Esperance Club for young seamstresses in London and who was teaching them Sharp's folk songs, to ask if there were any dances. He had none but put her in touch with William Kimber, the musician he had noted years before, and she went to visit him and invited him to London to pass on his dances directly. The public displays by the Esperance Club from that December soon led to the teaching of these morris dances throughout the country, but mainly to girls. Many an old lady has remembered learning Beansetting at school.
Sharp started to assist the Club, but Mary Neal and her colleagues had become involved with the Women's Suffrage Movement. She had campaigned against social injustice, the Boer War, food adulteration and the like. Several of her colleagues were involved in the violent WSPU protests. Through a dispute over standards and accuracy of reproduction, Sharp was led to form the separate English Folk Dance Society, based at first at the Chelsea Polytechnic, which amongst other topics trained Physical Education teachers, and he worked hard to have English dance and song included in school activities. But even Sharp had been a theoretical Socialist of the Fabian sort.
Although a great debt is owed to Cecil Sharp for capturing details of the Cotswold Morris of the mid 19th century, he largely ignored dances that were or had been done elsewhere. Other collectors such as Clive Carey and friends of Mary Neal, George Butterworth and Tiddy, colleagues of Sharp who died in WW1, and several men since, particularly Professor Kenworthy Schofield and Dr Russell Wortley, also recorded extensively. Documenting the social background and identifying the 19th century Cotswold performers had to wait until Keith Chandler's recent books. A modern assessment of the origins, growth and decline of such activities are given in the books by Prof Hutton of Bristol University.
The morris was practiced between the World Wars by essentially clubs of professional people and by working people as members of EFDS local evening classes. Skills were judged by the award of certificates and medals. It was the Society's aim to give the dances back to the people but it largely failed because the time was not yet ripe, and the participants were too few. In 1924 the idea of morris tourswas evolved then as well as the modern roles within a club of Squire and Bagman, rather than the more traditional names of Captain and Secretary. Morris dinners with guests became Feasts, and with dancing Ales, reworking old concepts into new usages. By the mid 1930's there were enough mens' sides in England to form the first linking organisation called The Morris Ring.
The revival of morris was exported to the USA, especially to the Appalachians where Sharp had collected so many presumed ancient English songs, but also to Australia and New Zealand. There is a record of a morris visiting America very early in the history of settlement but it did not stay. The establishing of colonies in New England, Virginia and the backlands of the Appalachians occurred in waves, attracting people of different types and drawing on particular regions of the UK. They went as families and not communities, and, despite the attempts in Virginia, did not recreate the old social structures needed to support seasonal visiting, nor were there the need for public exertions for maintaining rights, as was an explanation for some seasonal customs in England.Other Forms of the MorrisThere was another form of morris in the Forest of Dean in west Gloucestershire. It was a summer dance, perhaps related to the Cotswold one, but it died too soon to be recovered. A unique feature was that it was often accompanied by a swordsman with one or two swords which were manipulated to amaze the crowds.
There are other English dance traditions to be seen today, most of which have reappeared in the last twenty five years. What might be older than the Cotswold morris are the long-sword dances surviving in Yorkshire with six or eight dancers in a linked ring, but these are seen infrequently in the south. The sword is a rigid wrought iron bar, not a true sword, of the sort that a blacksmith had carried for centuries as the raw material which could be transformed into whatever was needed, including fighting swords on demand in periods of crisis. Today ceremonial swords are made from steel bars that are initially one foot by one inch by half an inch. More likely to be seen is the short-sword or rapper dance of Durham for only five dancers and one or more comic characters, which is a derivative dating from the availability of flexible spring steel in the 18th century. Sharp found most of the sword dances and his final assistant Maud Karpeles many of the other forms of morris dances after his death in 1924.
Sword dancing was mentioned as long ago as 1389 in Bruges. It has only occurred in northern, western and central Europe. The hey-day of references was the 16th and 17th centuries. In Britain the first was in Edinburgh in 1590. No single region, people, social group or occasion ever appeared to have a monopoly. But early comments did not describe the dancing but sometimes mentioned fencing masters and could easily have been about fighting simulations or dancing over swords on the ground. From 16th to 18th century detailed descriptions it is difficult to tell if linking hilt-to-point in an unbroken circle was an element of the dances. Except for one mention in the Basque country (1660) the first clear mentions of linking anywhere across Europe occurred after 1770. The figures commonly given were a long snaking line, bridges, roses or platforms and fencing. Dancing in a line, as thread-the-needle and other simple forms, is very old and has survived in adult and children's games into living memory.
Common now are the Border Dancers and Molly Dancers who perform in a style derived from the 19th century performances on the English side of the Welsh Border and East Anglia respectively. The collected Molly was essentially country dances of the recent past. The Border used country dance figures interspersed with stick tapping movements. The common feature was that the dances were simple, needing very little practice beforehand, and were usually variable from outing to outing. Once to be found over the twelve days of Christmas, and the related Plough Monday, there were no survivors of old groups to show how it should be done, and most of what appears is a modern invention since the mid 1970's, including the rag jackets, which were once an indication of extreme poverty. Neither form has a history similar to the Cotswold morris and cannot claim any great age, although they do! Some kind of ploughing ceremony existed in 1413 but nothing else is known. The teams have been very creative with their dances and adaptive of ideas from all sources, for example, The East Acton Stick Dance is from an early Tony Hancock ITV broadcast! Few of the eleven Border dances actually collected are in use today. The emphasis is on patterns of movement, not on steps and movement skills, and the participants compensate with yells and lively action.
The most obvious feature of them today is the face painting. Once the wearing of masks were common in entertainment. Blacking Up was always considered exotic, even Henry VIII and James I's Queen had done so, but there is no mention of it with any of the morris, except the sword dance, until well into the 19th century, by then the minstrel troupes were already popular. Disguise to avoid recognition and a full face colouring that was frightening were hardly the way to ensure monetary gifts and repeat invitations. All over face cover is disturbing, which is why clowns have designs, and has been associated with those up to no good such as poachers or with covert operations such as the recent SAS. The 1731 Act and subsequent renewals made blacking or even covering the face sufficient evidence of intent to poach or cause mischief The rather different black face of the sweep was considered lucky, although such are no longer to be seen. Colour prejudice in England fell sharply after the abolition of slavery. Black face is also seen as not politically correct because of 20th century racial sensitivities, largely engendered in the UK by the US attitudes imported during the two World Wars. Before then coloured people were recognised as exotic and servants would be dressed grandly. They and those performers in black face would also be called Ethiopians and Nubians. So popular was minstrelsy by the turn of the century it was the most common form of entertainment available in London. After World War One it became a typical amateur entertainment replacing many older traditions until overtaken by the concert party. However today it does have the advantage that it reduces gender identification in mixed sides and so does not distract from the enjoyment of the dances. Different cultures have other attitudes. Black Peter, not Santa Claus, visits children in Holland and gives presents on 5th December.
Sometimes called morris are the folk plays, which might include an element of singing and dancing. The most common has been the Hero-Combat involving Father Christmas, King George who fights a Turkish Knight or two, a doctor who restores him, and other characters. The plot is minimal, the objective is humour. In the Midlands there was the Wooing Play and in the north a play associated with the sword dance. The evidence is that the Wooing Play existed in its modern form from about 1760. The earliest recorded Hero-Combat was in the 1730's. As the surviving chapbook plays date from 1757 it is suggested that all plays may have had a literary origin. All earlier references to mummers and players do not indicate the nature of the performance. Dr Cawte has shown that "dying out" is one of the main qualifications for any traditional custom! He further showed that customs recorded since 1800 are generally found in different parts of the country from those recorded before.
Then there is the north western morris, mostly in Lancashire and Cheshire but extending into Yorkshire and the Lake District, once a processional dance and at first associated with the annual taking of rushes on carts to church for floor covering. festivities which grew from the middle of the 19th century like Rose Festivals and Knutsford May day provide many new performance opportunities. The dance form grew in popularity during the second half of the 19th century. It suffered great losses of dancers during the first World War and was restarted often with teenagers or children. It is now a well developed folk art with its Carnival Morris Troupes, Jazz Bands and Acrobatic groups. Many of the older dances have been collected in recent years and learnt by adult groups. For many years it has been performed wearing clogs, and for the men breeches, although these were never the common people's dressing-up in its first heyday. But now nostalgia is the mood and performers feel that it is right. There is no recognised English national folk costume, to compare with pearly kings and queens, because the dress of the ordinary folk did not lag sufficiently behind current fashion.AppearanceThe bells are worn below the knee, around the ankle, on the shoe or the sleeves to accent the rhythm of the movements. The skill of the team can be judged by the degree of simultaneity of the jangle. There should be one or two rings to each step, depending on the style pursued. Once bells were more musical, being made of better metals than today's, and could be selected for pitch, so one could tell which dancers were not on the proper foot! Pocket handkerchiefs were invented for Richard II. The morris hankie should be larger, more the size of a neckerchief They are an extension of the hand and arm allowing a greater expression, and probably with less effort! The sticks are nowadays of various woods, although willow is considered best. Once they were normally painted and each dancer provided their own. The distinctive crossed sashes or baldricks were once a common decoration, often in some local colours. They were easy to wear and provided places to attach ribbons and rosettes without damaging their ordinary clothes. Suggestions that such things were to frighten devils, wake up the earth and promote plant growth are fun but unsupportable.
The dancing should be lively, with good springy stepping, not just barely lifted. It is the jumps and capers which are characteristic of the Cotswold Morris, some of which are done in slow time to allow of a greater effort in leaping.The MusicThe oldest instruments used for the morris were the pipe and tabor, being a three hole pipe played with the left hand and a small drum. The pipe or whistle is seldom heard today because its volume does not compete well against modern background noise. Cheap violins did not become available until the middle of the 19th century, and the concertina and other boxes based on Wheatstone's free reed, not until the end. Other instruments are often used now, flute, banjo, accordions, even bagpipes, and various rhythm instruments, such as drums, tambourines and bones.
Playing for the morris is different from anything else. The dancers usually know what they are going to do better than the musicians, and do not need to be led. As the individual steps vary in timing and stress, they need the music to reflect what they do, a mnemonic, not to constrain them. The dance can be brisk, but no more than at four bars in five seconds, which is suitable for the inexperienced or non athletic. More skill does allow of slower speeds, but only at a loss of foot-tapping excitement in the music, and often a lower rate of movement effort. As dancers get older and less athletic, the slower speeds can look pathetic!
The tunes used are mostly in the old rhythms of hornpipes, polkas and double jigs. Only a few, such as Trunkles, Shepherd's Hey and the Morisco, are very old, but many others of the widely known tunes are 100 to 300 years old. Few modem tunes are usable because the main stress in the morris movements are on the strong beats and so much of 20th century popular music emphasises the off-beat. There is also copyright and the Performing Rights Society!The CharactersThere are a number of tasks associated with a public show which may be handled by supernumeries or characters. The necessary one is of leader, announcing to the audience, choosing the next dance, calling the names of the movements to remind the dancers, thus allowing for flexibility and a control of the show. The most obvious will be the fool, dressed differently from the dancers, from a circus clown to a tooth fairy or whatever takes their fancy. This person sort of represents the audience in dealing with the dancers. But they should know it all and be able to step in anywhere. The fool's role is much older than the morris, but is made difficult because they are heirs of all the types of comedy that have been created over the years in circus, pantomime, radio and TV. The traditional gags were more like now unacceptable horseplay. Likely to be missed are the collector who works through the audience, but who can be talked to at length, and the ragman who discretely looks after the coats and equipment.
Today another character, the hobby-horse or other animal, is likely to be met, although they have had no part in the morris of former years since Tudor times. They were reintroduced to the morris at the end of the 19th century by antiquarians. These are representatives of the class of beautifuls, meant to be admired as much as causing fun or mayhem. They are also much older than the morris. The English tradition has at least three forms, the two legged tourney horse which has a simulated rider with dummy dangling legs, the stick animalwith a person underneath a cloth holding the head for manipulation on a short pole, and a similar design with a longer pole that can rest on the ground so that the carrier becomes its back. None was like the child's toy leg across riding cock-horse. Sometimes tourney horses had heads and jaws that could be worked by strings. Today you might see one designed to appear as a camel or ostrich, with a flexible neck that can be steered. Beginning to appear again are giants, once common on their own, only that at Salisbury survives, but they are still common in Flanders. Of the modern ones there are two in Alton.
There are Horses which have never be associated with the morris, at Padstow, Minehead, Combe Martin, the Hooden Horses in Kent, the Mari Llywd in Glamorgan, the Old Tupin Derbyshire, and the Ooser with a bull's head in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.TodayThe morris is no longer just another working class way of supplementing income. It has to attract attention by the quality of the performance and not assume that audience respect is due because of some inherent antiquarian value.
History shows a continual reuse of old activities. The occasions for performance have changed markedly. In most of the English traditions a team learnt a single dance which was enough for all performance opportunities such as they were. Now the teams are clubs meeting regularly throughout the year and wanting a wider repertoire for which they draw widely. Few of them dance for the money, but give the surplus to charity after paying for necessary expenses such as the rehearsal hall.
The morris may appear in competitions and art festivals but it is essentially non-competitive. There are a few other activities which provide similar social situations involving peer groups such as bell-ringing and choirs.
In the past the dances were transmitted orally and were therefore rather localised. Invention was a significant part of all the traditions although that was forgotten by academic folklorists. The middle aged leaders, Kimber, Wells and Bennett, were always trying to introduce new material to their teams. Today communications, travel and freedom allow international contact and good dance ideas can spread quickly around the world.
The morris is an art that exists only in performance and has to be continually recreated. Natural spontaneity ensures that it never exactly repeats. As a group activity it should reflect a consensus of those actually dancing rather than some absolute standard.
A major challenge is that the older caring attitudes about the morris are being lost by the practitioners for whom it is no longer a source of pride or an expression of prized individuality. The same problems exist for the traditionalists in martial arts when contrasted with the modern combative element. The growth of sport as leisure and a business has emphasised new attitudes, a new motivation for the seeking of excellence but also a trivialisation of the activities) reflecting changing degrees of commitment.
The major problem facing the morris and many charity raising organisations and other such activities is the relative lack of young people and the growth of the number of fortysomethings. Young people are now too busy with too many demands on them, besides the generation gap in attitudes. It is the older person, with lessening family responsibilities, more time and money, and fitness who finds expression through the moms.
At one time everywhere in England was within reach of some annual or regular event which allowed them to relax and enjoy themselves, either as participants or onlookers. Today it can be difficult to find a morris side dancing out, as few of the clubs have regular annual spots where they can be found on some easy to work out date ever year. However there are many festivals which bring groups together from all over if there is an interest in just seeing a variety.
The dancers enjoy clinging to myths and love to tell the tale. The spiel is to be enjoyed but not believed! The worst aspect of claiming pagan roots is that modern practicing pagans actually believe them!
Under the right circumstances the morris is magical! The dancers get a lift, the audiences feel good, and the morris is often welcome at weddings, parties and fetes. It needs to be intimate and not lost in remote spaces far from the watchers.Women and the MorrisThere is an estimate that there are about 10,000 people in the British Isles performing the morris, which makes it comparable with many other active hobbies. The limitation is determined by the density of practicing clubs and the overlapping of catchment areas, which has greatly increased with the widespread availability of so many of what were once very local traditional styles with their different performer appeals. Women started dancing morris forms regularly in public from the mid 1970's when suddenly it was realised that it was acceptable, although for a while they only did dances not used by the men, and yet still met considerable hostility, now mostly gone. Many such deeply held views are Victorian and need reevaluation. A consequence was the growth of other morris associations, the Morris Federation which was begun to represent women's morris and is now open to all, and Open Morris which was reaction to the apparent conflicts between the first two organisations. The cooperation between them all now is close and they do continue to reflect the different needs of clubs.
No one will deny that there are some physical differences between men and women. Sex was a discovery made long ago by single cell animals from which all subsequent evolution became possible. For various reasons there are no surviving indications of traditional dances which were considered the property of or characteristic of women, so the known dances and their modern derivatives are shared. But the differences in height, build, strength and cultural ideas of what are suitable forms of movement ensure a different end product. There have been many indications of what men thought women's dances should be like, mostly ladylike! But women often work together better as a group, and can move around quickly and can seem to fly through the air on capers, if their choice of costume allows it, so that it is not worse but an alternative. In England women usually opt for a skirt whose extra movements can be eye catching. However it is difficult to produce a costume that dances well and can suit a variety of sizes and shapes.WarningUnfortunately morris dancers are no more socially skilled that any other, often appear to be less, and will unwittingly show bad manners by standing in front of their audience, imagining they are invisible because they are in costume, turning up late compared to the postered advice, indulging in in-jokes, being more interested in talking than dancing, etc. Large bands will stand in a long line in front of the dancers and the audience being danced to! These are all the habits arising from the way in which they practice, forgetting to do it then as they would intend to do it out. Spectators should remind them of good manners, in return for the courtesy of not moving around or off during individual dances and disturbing those that are watching. Standing in front of people, especially the less mobile elderly, to take photographs, or just to be closer, also gives offence to many.Towards a Theory of MorrisHuman behaviour is inordinately complex, but a satisfactory theory for the morris has to answer three key questions.
We have no idea whether a morris like activity or organised religion came first.
through the various stages of society's development. It is essentially conservative.
under the common title. What is the common element?
| a | Why do humans engage in such activities. |
| b | Does it account for its persistence |
| c | Can it explain the apparent diversity of activities |
Morris is a form of sport. The arguments for ritual origins apply to sport in general not morris in particular.
©1997 Roy DommettRoy Dommett and Fleet MorrisFleet, Hampshire
Version 26th August 1997 reasons there are no surviving indications of traditional dances which were considered the property of or characteristic of women, so the known dances and their modern derivatives are shared. But the differences in height, build, strength and cultural ideas of what are suitable forms of movement ensure a different end product. There have been many indications of what men thought women's dances should be like, mostly ladylike! But women often work together better as a group, and can move around quickly and can seem to fly through the air on capers, if their choice of costume allows it, so that it is not worse but an alternative. In England women usually opt for a skirt whose extra movements can be eye catching. However it is difficult to produce a costume that dances well and can suit a variety of sizes and shapes.WarningUnfortunately morris dancers are no more socially skilled that any other, often appear to be less, and will unwittingly show bad manners by standing in front of their audience, imagining they are invisible because they are in costume, turning up late compared to the postered advice, indulging in in-jokes, being more interested in talking than dancing, etc. Large bands will stand in a long line in front of the dancers and the audience being danced to! These are all the habits arising from the way in which they practice, forgetting to do it then as they would intend to do it out. Spectators should remind them of good manners, in return for the courtesy of not moving around or off during individual dances and disturbing those that are watching. Standing in front of people, especially the less mobile elderly, to take photographs, or just to be closer, also gives offence to many.Towards a Theory of MorrisHuman behaviour is inordinately complex, but a satisfactory theory for the morris has to answer three key questions.
We have no idea whether a morris like activity or organised religion came first.
through the various stages of society's development. It is essentially conservative.
under the common title. What is the common element?
| a | Why do humans engage in such activities. |
| b | Does it account for its persistence |
| c | Can it explain the apparent diversity of activities |
Morris is a form of sport. The arguments for ritual origins apply to sport in general not morris in particular.
©1997 Roy DommettRoy Dommett and Fleet MorrisFleet, Hampshire
Version 26th August 1997