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What is Morris Dancing?
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Opinions differ widely
as to the origins of Morris dancing, but the truth is no one really
knows. The earliest written
references to ‘Morrys Dauncers’ occur in churchwardens’ accounts
c1500, usually recording small payments for ribbons or a pair of
shoes. Before the Reformation, the Morris dancers and their
musicians took part in all of the church festivals that were linked
to the agricultural year, which may indicate that the dances were
originally connected with the fertility of the earth and the
successful planting and growing of the crops. There are half a dozen
different ‘styles’ or traditions of Morris dancing: Cotswold,
Border, North West, Molly, Sword and Rapper, but within these
headings the dances can vary widely; they are usually performed by
sets of four, six or eight people. |
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Although, for a number
of years in the mid-1900s, Morris dancing was the preserve of men,
there is ample evidence that women, too, took part. William Kemp in
1599 danced from London to Norwich in nine days during which time he
met women who danced the Morris as well as men; of one he said:
‘At Chelmsford, a mayde not passing foureteene years of age, dwelling with one Sudley,
my kinde friend, made request to her master and dame, that she might
daunce the Morrice with me in a great large room. They being
intreated, I was soone wonne to fit her with bells; besides, she
would have the olde fashion, with napking on her armes; and to our
jumps we fell. A whole houre she held out; but then being ready to
lye downe, I left her off; but this much in her praise, I would have
challenged the strongest man in Chelmsford, and amongst many I
thinke few would have done so much.’
Chambers’ Book of Days (1880) |
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| In the early days Morris
dancing was almost solely the preserve of the agricultural working
man, but with the coming of the Industrial Revolution in the early
19th century, many old country traditions began to die out. By the
1890s only a handful of villages, mainly in Oxfordshire,
Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, still had Morris dancers. |
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A lucky chance, Cecil
Sharpe, who collected folk songs from around the country, saw one of
these sides in 1899 and began to write down the music and dances,
which now form the basis of the modern Morris dance revival. In the last 30
years or so women too have again taken up this form of traditional
dancing. There now exist in England hundreds of sides comprising men
only, women only and men and women dancing together. |
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