A haphazard history of the morris
Part of the mystery of the morris is that there is so little
historical information about it. Some would like to believe that it
is a surviving remnant of Druidic springtime rites. Others think that
John of Gaunt or some crusaders brought it to England after the
Moorish conquests. Alternatively, it bears some resemblance to a form
of Italian court dance called the Moresca which dates from the 12th
century. In short, if you ask a morris dancer on the street about the
history of morris the reply is likely to be just about anything. (On
the street the aim has always been to get appreciation from the
audience. Scholarship is not part of the show.)
In the written record, some form of dance called morris can be
documented in England as far back as the 15th century. The earliest
known reference is in a will from 1458 which mentions a ``silver cup
sculpted with morris dance.'' There are other wills which describe the
disposition of other similar cups; some of these cups were in the
possession of the royal family. So at its earliest known point morris
was already common enough to have spawned a knicknack industry.
During the 16th century the annual acounting for several churches
contain expenditures for the purchase of morris bells and costumes,
and also income from the rental of the same to neighboring parishes.
Morris dance was performed before the courts of Henry VIII and
Elizabeth I, and the tradition was described as ``ancient'' by those
courtiers.
Shakespeare's play Henry V would have us believe that
Whitsun morris dances were sufficiently common that the French royalty
knew of them. Morris, performed by a team of men and a team of women,
was the central theme of one scene in a play
(
The Two Noble Kinsmen by Fletcher) which was viewed by
Elizabeth I at her house on Drury Lane.
Rhett Krause has uncovered evidence that morris was performed on the
north American continent in 1583. According to the account of Edward
Haies, captain of the Golden Hinde, his crew performed morris
dances in what is now Canada for ``the solace of our people, and
allurement of the Savages.'' The manifests of other ships exploring
America also indicate that morris paraphernalia were on board.
By the beginning of the 17th century some Puritans were
denouncing dancing (and most other forms of festive expression).
It is often supposed that the years of Puritan rule following the
Civil War contributed to the demise of morris in many communities, but if
true this was likely due to the enforced whims of a few autocrats. Indeed,
during the Protectorate only just after Charles I was executed the
first edition of the
English Dancing Master appeared. This treatise on
country dances was so popular with the new ruling class in London that
another edition was needed within a year. When Charles II returned
from exile he was greeted by numerous morris dancers along his route
from the coast to London.
In 1679 Blount published a description of a springtime festival, the
Lamb Ale, in Kirtlington. One small part of this
festival was a morris dance by men and another by women. The
character of this celebration seems to typify that of most Cotswold
morris for the next 200 years. Most of the celebrations were tied to
May 1 or to Whitsunday. The celebration in each village had its own
local peculiarities, processions, and characters. Some of the
villages shared a common element such as the Whit-hunt in the Wychwood
forest.
Many Cotswold villages had their own distinctive style of the morris.
This included peculiarities of the music, the steps, and the figures.
There were various ales to which the dancers from many villages would
come and perform. By the last half of the 19th century, however, many
of these local and regional celebrations ceased. The reasons for this
loss of local tradition are topics of debate, as the written history
of the end of Cotswold morris is not much better than the history of
its origin.
In some villages where the annual morris had ceased it was revived
after a few years by one of the original team or a descendant. One
such village was Headington, near Oxford. On Boxing Day of 1899 the
Headington morris men decided to dance. This midwinter dancing was
quite out of the usual season for Cotswold morris. However it proved
to be the key to the revival and popularization of the morris, for the
dancers stopped to perform a set directly in front of the house where
Cecil Sharp was spending the holiday.
Sharp was one of numerous scholars who had noted that other European
countries seemed to have a much richer folk tradition than England.
The discovery of the morris and the associated traditions led to
several decades of active searching for other villages where morris
either had been or still was practiced.
From those villages where the morris persisted, collecting the morris was
a relatively easy task of watching the performance. However the collectors
also searched until they found survivors of the defunct teams.
When they were located for interviews some of these dancers and musicians
were over 80 years old or in wheelchairs. Still they whistled or
fiddled the music, and they danced or demonstrated by hopping their fingers.
This was adequate to permit the preservation of Cotswold morris.
Though the 19th century teams had mostly been composed of men
Mary Neal brought the dancers and dances to her Esperance club for women.
These women greatly accelerated the revival of the morris.
Before the first World War started, both Neal and Sharp had published
books on the morris. The information in these books, the following decades
of research published in various folk journals, and the original notes of
the collectors serve as the source material for present day morris.
Though there are historical precedents
for dancing on May Day, and for individual teams dancing at dawn, the first
recorded incident of morris dancing at dawn on May Day is from 1923.
It was in that year that the Oxford Morris Men decided to join the May
Day Dawn festivities at Magdalen College.
The morris revival reached the US starting about 1915 with the
creation of the organization now known as the Country Dance and Song Society.
Morris has been taught at CDSS activities since the beginning. Aside from
a few teams localized at individual camps and colleges there were no
morris teams in the US until the 1960s. In 1969 Roger Cartwright
started the Village Morris Men in New York City. The Binghampton Morris
Men came about in 1973. Ring O' Bells, the first US women's team,
started in 1974. In 1975 Roger Cartwright organized the first
US May Day dawn morris dancing in Cambridge Mass. The explosion of
US morris teams dates to roughly the same time, and dancing at May
Dawn has come to typify US morris teams. |