I’ve only seen morris dancing done twice – in New England. It seemed to be half-ritual, half-dance. The ladies danced holding handkerchiefs. The men had wooden staffs that they hit on the ground and used like swords and sets of bells strapped to their shins. Apparently, morris dancing is an ancient country tradition in England harkening back to days when all the holidays related to the cycles of planting and harvesting. The tradition had nearly died out in the late 19th-century due to the Industrial Revolution, but was revived by folksong collector Cecil Sharp at the turn of the 20th-century. His book “A HISTORY OF MORRIS DANCING WITH A DESCRIPTION OF ELEVEN DANCES AS PERFORMED BY THE MORRIS-MEN OF ENGLAND” is reproduced here by Project Gutenberg.
“The English Dancing Master” by John Playford (1651) is a prime resource for contradance information.
The illustration is a woodcut depicting “Kemp” – whose first name I could not determine and who was an actor in Shakespeare’s company – who danced the Morris all the way from London to Norwich in 1599. His performance is called “The Nine-day Wonder” – so I guess that was a whole lotta dancing.
May 7th, 2006
by Hillary
Yep. We kinda did this in my 5th grade class when we studied the Middle Ages the whole year. The thumping sticks on the ground dance, that is.
May 10th, 2006
by Chris
That’s interesting. In Egypt there is a men’s stick dance that has a similar description. Sticks are used kind of like swords with lots of spinning and tapping the sticks on the ground. They wear bells on their ankles. I wonder if there is any other relation between the two dances. Ill see if I can dig up a picture.
Morris Dancing pic: http://www.little-egypt.org.uk/03lidgate.html
Tahtib Egyptian men’s dance: http://www.saharasilk.com/what4.htm
(the pic is a little blurry.)
May 10th, 2006
by Bob
The Author
Hi Chris. The origins of the English morris dancing tradition are unknown, but one theory is that the word “morris” was originally “moorish” which would denote a North African origin.
May 14th, 2006
by dancing queen
Great stuff, Chris. It seems that worldwide there are more women on the dancefloor than men. It turns us on to turn
men on.