Search winerock.com

Morris Dancing

In early modern England, morris dancers were frequently implicated in fights and breaches of the peace. The morris was a physically demanding dance with choreographed, technically complicated steps. It was performed by groups of six to ten men (and occasionally women) wearing bells on their legs and special coats, and some of the dances required props like handkerchiefs or sticks to accent the dancers’ movements. Morris dancers were frequently hired to dance in festive processions, and as entertainment at church ales and other parish events. Costumed characters such as Maid Marion, Friar Tuck, or a Fool often accompanied.Generally young men in their late teens and early twenties, morris groups went on tours of neighbouring parishes, as well as danced at local events. [26]

While the REED collections contain many records of payments to morris dancers, they also name morris dancers in violent altercations. In an incident in Shrewsbury in 1618-9, ten men who confessed to, “dauncinge the morris daunce out of their parishe into an other parishe immediately after dynner... did absent themselves from Eveninge prayer that daye And therby allsoe dyvers [committed] breaches of the peace & other misdemeaners ....” [27] The misdemeanours included David Plum hitting William Cock “vppon the head with the staffe that did beare the flagg,” Richard Morry striking Phillip Speake “vpon the brest, to make roome for the dauncers,” and Morry again assaulting Speake so that the latter “was in the thronge cast downe and had his face scracht and blood drawne.” [28] An even more extreme example occurred in Wells in Somerset in 1608-9, where the godly constable’s attempts to suppress morris dancing during Whitsuntide led to riots with hundreds of armed men following the morris dancers “dauncing vpp and downe the streetes with naked rapyers and daggers in theire handes.” [29] When the constable and his friends tried to arrest and imprison the drummer who was playing for the dancers, the crowd attacked and freed him. [30] Miraculously no one was injured in these altercations, but the morris dancers and their followers had blatantly threatened violence and disregarded the constable’s authority. The case brought by the constable, Hole v. White et al., made it all the way to the Star Chamber, and suggests the intensity and seriousness of the controversy over dancing and maygames in Wells and in England in general. [31]

The not unfounded association of morris dance with riotous misbehaviour explains the emphasis of the Liverpool Town Book 2 1576-7 entry on smooth proceedings; “here were manye thinges done & pastymes made as A morres daunce over & besides the premisses which were all so orderlye & trymlie handled as was to the great lykinge & pleasure of the said right honorable erle.” [32] Still, moralists and traditionalists alike were aware that the morris legitimized groups of young men to assemble armed with sticks or even swords in the name of dancing. While Paul Griffiths observes that groups of young men sometimes engaged in violent acts, such as the tradition of London apprentices “pulling downe the bawdy houses” on Shrove Tuesday, that ironically reinforced community values, more frequently, violence placed young men at odds with the community; “Magistrates and ministers made the connection between the pastimes of youth and immorality, insolence, rough play, and pranks.” [33] That morris dancers were sometimes paid for their dancing in ale hardly improved the situation! [34] Although the majority of references to morris dancing are to payments for dancers, there is substantial evidence that morris dances could easily cross the line from mock battles to real ones. As religious reformers in early modern England were anxious to detail the many dangers of dancing, it is curious and noteworthy that antidance treatises rarely mention morris dancing, and do not single morris dancers out for their contribution to physical harm and public unrest.

Footnotes