Morris dance

The tradition & historical record

Morris dancing is a form of English folk dance. It is based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers in costume, usually wearing bell pads on their shins, their shoes or both. A band or single musician, also costumed, will accompany them. Sticks, swords, handkerchiefs, and a variety of other implements may be wielded by the dancers. Morris dancing first appeared in England in the 15th century. Its earliest surviving mention dates to 1448 and records the payment of seven shillings to Morris dancers by the Goldsmiths' Company in London. Three prominent groups organise and support Morris in England: Morris Ring, Morris Federation and Open Morris; all three organisations have members from other countries as well. There are around 150 Morris sides (or teams) in the United States. English immigrants form a large part of the Morris tradition in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Hong Kong. There are relatively isolated groups in other countries, for example those in Utrecht and Helmond, Netherlands; the Arctic Morris Group of Helsinki, Finland and Stockholm, Sweden; as well as in Cyprus, St Petersburg, Russia, and in the Alsace-Basel region at the border of France and Switzerland. ²

Throughout its history, the Morris seems to have been common. It was imported from village festivities into popular entertainment after the invention of the court masque by Henry VIII. The word Morris apparently derived from morisco, meaning 'Moorish'. Cecil Sharp, whose collecting of Morris dances preserved many from extinction, suggested that it might have arisen from the dancers' blacking their faces as part of the necessary ritual disguise. The name is first recorded in English in the mid-15th century as Morisk dance, moreys daunce, morisse daunce, i.e. 'Moorish dance'. The term entered English via Flemish mooriske danse. Comparable terms in other languages include German Moriskentanz (also from the 15th century), French morisques, Croatian moreška, and moresco, moresca or morisca in Italy and Spain. The modern spelling Morris-dance first appeared in the 17th century. In Edward Phillips's The New World of English Words, first published in 1658, the term morisco was referenced as both "a Moor" and "the Morris dance, as it were the Moorish dance", while John Bullokar defined it in 1695 as "a certain dance used among the Moors; whence our Morris dance". ²

It is unclear how the dance came to be referred to as Moorish, "unless in reference to fantastic dancing or costumes", i.e. the deliberately "exotic" flavour of the performance. The English dance thus apparently arose as part of a wider 15th-century European fashion for supposedly "Moorish" spectacle, which also left traces in Spanish and Italian folk dance. ²

The earliest (15th-century) references place the Morris dance in a courtly setting. The dance became part of performances for the lower classes by the later 16th century. Henry VIII owned a gold salt cellar which depicted a Morris dance with five dancers and a "tabrett". A "tabret" is a small tabor drum. On 4 January 1552, George Ferrers, the Lord of Misrule of Edward VI, put on a show in London which included "mores danse, dansyng with a tabret". In 1600, the Shakespearean actor William Kempe Morris danced from London to Norwich, an event chronicled in his Nine Daies Wonder (1600). Almost nothing is known about the folk dances of England before the mid-17th century. While it is possible to speculate on the transition of "Morris dancing" from the courtly to a rural setting (it may have acquired elements of pre-Elizabethan (medieval) folk dance), such proposals will always be based on an argument from silence as there is no direct record of what such elements would have looked like. In the Elizabethan era, there was significant cultural contact between Italy and England, and it has been suggested that much of what is now considered traditional English folk dance, and especially English country dance, is descended from Italian dances imported in the 16th century. By the mid-17th century, the working peasantry took part in Morris dances, especially at Whitsun. The Puritan government of Oliver Cromwell, however, suppressed Whitsun ales and other such festivities. When the crown was restored by Charles II, the springtime festivals were restored. ²

Boxing Day 1899 is widely regarded as the starting point for the Morris revival. Cecil Sharp was visiting a friend's house in Headington, near Oxford, when the Headington Quarry Morris side arrived to perform. Sharp was intrigued by the music and collected several tunes from the side's musician, William Kimber, including "Country Gardens". A decade later he began collecting the dances, spurred and at first assisted by Mary Neal, a founder of the Espérance Club (a dressmaking co-operative and club for young working women in London), and Herbert MacIlwaine, musical director of the Espérance Club. Neal was looking for dances for her girls to perform, and so the first revival performance was by young women in London. ²

In the first few decades of the 20th century, several men's sides were formed, and in 1934 the Morris Ring was founded by six revival sides: ²

Cambridge Morris Men Letchworth Morris Thaxted Morris Men East Surrey Morris Men Greensleeves Morris Men (based in Wimbledon) Oxford Morris (which was not at the initial ring meeting at Thaxted but was influential in the creation of the Ring's constitution). In the 1950s and especially the 1960s, there was an explosion of new dance teams, some of them women's or mixed sides. At the time, there was often heated debate over the propriety and even legitimacy of women dancing the Morris, even though there is evidence as far back as the 16th century that there were female Morris dancers. There are now male, female and mixed sides to be found. Partly because women's and mixed sides were not eligible for full membership of the Morris Ring (this has now changed), two other national (and international) bodies were formed, the Morris Federation and Open Morris. All three bodies provide communication, advice, insurance, instructionals (teaching sessions) and social and dancing opportunities to their members. The three bodies co-operate on some issues, while maintaining their distinct identities. An umbrella body that includes all three, the Joint Morris Organisation, organises joint events and discusses issues that affect all members, such as access to both public liability and personal insurance cover. ²

Traditional Welsh dance experienced a revival in the early twentieth century, and while these dances were commonly performed as progressive longways display dances, Lois Blake noted that the Llanover Dances displayed "the influence of the Morris, both in form and movements". While these traditions that had been recorded by Ceinwen Thomas and Catherine Margretta Thomas were not specifically Morris dances as recognised today, they were interpreted in new ways by Morris men. ²

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Morris dance”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ²

Morris dance is English performance folk dance, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ¹

The source record links this tradition to 9 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ¹