Morris dance<\/b>\u00a0is a form of\u00a0English\u00a0folk dance\u00a0usually accompanied by music. It is based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers, usually wearing bell pads on their shins. Implements such as sticks, swords and\u00a0handkerchiefs\u00a0may also be wielded by the dancers.<\/p>\n
The earliest known and surviving English written mention of Morris dance is dated to 1448, and records the payment of seven shillings to Morris dancers by the Goldsmiths’ Company in London.\u00a0Further mentions of Morris dancing occur in the late 15th century, and there are also early records such as visiting\u00a0bishops‘<\/a>\u00a0“Visitation Articles” mention sword dancing,\u00a0guising\u00a0and other dancing activities, as well as\u00a0mumming plays.<\/p>\n While the earliest records invariably mention “Morys” in a court setting, and a little later in the\u00a0Lord Mayors’ Processions\u00a0in\u00a0London, it had adopted the nature of a folk dance performed in the parishes by the mid 17th century.<\/p>\n The name is first recorded in the mid-15th century as\u00a0Morisk dance<\/span><\/i>,\u00a0moreys daunce, morisse daunce<\/span><\/i>, i.e. “Moorish\u00a0dance”. The term entered English via Flemish\u00a0mooriske danse<\/i>\u00a0Comparable terms in other languages are German\u00a0Moriskentanz<\/i>\u00a0(also from the 15th century), French\u00a0morisques<\/i>, Croatian\u00a0more\u0161ka<\/i>, and\u00a0moresco<\/i>,\u00a0moresca<\/i>\u00a0or\u00a0morisca<\/i>\u00a0in Italy and Spain. The modern spelling\u00a0Morris-dance<\/i>\u00a0first appears in the 17th century.<\/sup><\/p>\n It is unclear why the dance was so named, “unless in reference to fantastic dancing or costumes”, i.e. the deliberately “exotic” flavour of the performance.\u00a0The 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\u00a0Italian folk dance. The means and chronology of the transmission of this fashion is now difficult to trace; the\u00a0Great London Chronicle<\/i>\u00a0records “spangled Spanish dancers” performing an energetic dance before\u00a0Henry VII\u00a0at Christmas of 1494, but Heron’s accounts also mention “pleying of the mourice dance” four days earlier, and the attestation of the English term from the mid-15th century establishes that there was a “Moorish dance” performed in England decades prior to 1494.<\/p>\n It is suggested that the tradition of rural English dancers blackening their faces may be a reference to the\u00a0Moors, miners, or a disguise worn by dancing beggars.<\/p>\n While the earliest (15th-century) references place the Morris dance in a courtly setting, it appears that the dance became part of performances for the lower classes by the later 16th century; in 1600, the\u00a0Shakespearean\u00a0actor\u00a0William Kempe,\u00a0Morris danced from\u00a0London\u00a0to\u00a0Norwich, an event chronicled in his\u00a0Nine Daies Wonder<\/i>\u00a0(1600).<\/p>\n Almost nothing is known about the folk dances of England prior to the mid-17th century.\u00a0While 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\u00a0argument from silence\u00a0as there is no direct record of what such elements would have looked like. In the\u00a0Elizabethan\u00a0period, 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\u00a0English country dance, is descended from Italian dances imported in the 16th century.<\/p>\n By the mid 17th century, the working\u00a0peasantry\u00a0took part in Morris dances, especially at\u00a0Whitsun.\u00a0The\u00a0Puritan\u00a0government of\u00a0Oliver Cromwell, however, suppressed\u00a0Whitsun Ales\u00a0and other such festivities. When the crown was restored by\u00a0Charles II, the springtime festivals were restored. In particular, Whitsun Ales came to be celebrated on Whitsunday (Pentecost), as the date coincided with the birthday of\u00a0Charles II.<\/p>\n Morris dancing continued in popularity until the\u00a0industrial revolution\u00a0and its accompanying social changes. Four teams claim a continuous lineage\u00a0of tradition within their village or town:\u00a0Abingdon\u00a0(their Morris team was kept going by the Hemmings family),\u00a0Bampton,\u00a0Headington Quarry, and\u00a0Chipping Campden.\u00a0Other villages have revived their own traditions, and hundreds of other teams across the globe have adopted (and adapted) these traditions, or have created their own styles from the basic building blocks of Morris stepping and figures.<\/p>\n However by the late 19th century, and in the West Country at least, Morris dancing was fast becoming more a local memory than an activity. D\u2019Arcy Ferris (or de Ferrars), a Cheltenham based singer, music teacher and organiser of pageants, became intrigued by the tradition and sought to revive it. He firstly encountered Morris in Bidford and organised its revival. Over the following years he took the side to several places in the West Country, from Malvern to Bicester and from Redditch to Moreton in Marsh. By 1910, he and Cecil Sharp were in correspondence on the subject.<\/p>\n Several English folklorists were responsible for recording and reviving the tradition in the early 20th century, often from a bare handful of surviving members of mid-19th-century village sides. Among these, the most notable are\u00a0Cecil Sharp,\u00a0Maud Karpeles, and\u00a0Mary Neal.<\/p>\n Boxing Day\u00a01899 is widely regarded\u00a0as the starting point for the Morris revival. Cecil Sharp was visiting at a friend’s house in Headington, near\u00a0Oxford, when the Headington Quarry Morris side arrived to perform. Sharp was intrigued by the music and collected several tunes from the side’s musician,\u00a0William Kimber; not until about a decade later, however, did he begin collecting the dances, spurred and at first assisted by Mary Neal, a founder of the\u00a0Esp\u00e9rance Club\u00a0(a dressmaking co-operative and club for young working women in London), and\u00a0Herbert MacIlwaine, musical director of the Esp\u00e9rance Club. Neal was looking for dances for her girls to perform, and so the first revival performance was by young women in London.<\/p>\n In the first few decades of the 20th century, several men’s sides were formed, and in 1934 the\u00a0Morris Ring<\/a>\u00a0was founded by six revival sides. 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.<\/p>\nName and origins<\/span><\/h4>\n
History in England<\/span><\/h4>\n