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Friday, January 30, 2004

Morris Dancers

An interesting idea Peter. On a visit to Gilbert White's house and garden in the Hampshire village of Selborne last summer I was fortunate enough to spend a pleasant afternoon being entertained by a visiting troupe of Morris Dancers. Jolly good they were too!



Origin of the Morris
Border Morris
It is now accepted that Border Morris, which comes from the English counties along the border between England and Wales, is in fact the oldest form. It is also the simplest and most violent, involving loud yells and beating the hell out of each other with big sticks.
It derives from a ritual display as performed by the English whenever any Welshman dared to venture across the border. The English, being in those days by nature xenophobic, devised the dance to illustrate to the Welshmen what they should expect if they were to venture any further. This can be compared with the posturing of other species of wild animals, in which the animals rarely actually fight with each other, but simply try to frighten each other off by putting on the fiercest display. This also explains the outlandish appearance of Border Morris dancers, and the blacked faces used as a disguise to make themselves harder to recognise at any subsequent police identity parade.

The Morris developed along the Welsh border first rather than the Scottish border simply because it was not necessary on the Scottish border due to the presence of Hadrian's Wall. However, as the wall fell into disrepair, the Morris developed in the north of England to compensate; but being developed later was somewhat more subtle. The warning to potential invaders from Scotland wearing kilts is obvious when you consider that Morris dancing in the north of England is either performed in heavy wooden clogs, involving a lot of high kicking, or involves the brandishing of swords.

These days, the Morris is still uniquely English, but is now performed to entertain rather than to frighten. To this end, Morris dancers sometimes now use hankies to wave around rather than sticks, which is where Cotswold Morris comes from.

So there you have it: the true origin of the Morris...

Posted by Nick @ 11:45 GMT

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