More of What Is Morris?

Assuming you've just come here from the prerequisite page, you've just read a description of one variety of morris dancing, the type done in the rural "Cotswolds" (or more accurately, the South Midlands) region of England in the middle of the 19th century. Groups from the various villages such as Adderbury, Oddington, and Bampton had their own particular style of dancing and their own repertoire of dances. They'd often compete at the Whitsun ales (village festivals) for prizes, and sometimes the money they collected was an important supplement to their income.

Elsewhere in England, "morris dancing" referred to other types of dances, with varying degrees of resemblance to the Cotswold style, including the border morris of Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and Shropshire and the northwest morris of Lancashire and North Cheshire. Along similar lines were the longsword dances of Yorkshire, the rapper sword dances of Durham and Northumberland, and the molly dances of East Anglia.

All these varieties of the morris are still done, throughout the English-speaking world (though in America it's not exactly an everyday sight), these days by women's groups and mixed groups as well as by men. Nowadays the competitive aspect is more or less absent, or at least not as overt, despite the fact that morris groups usually are called "teams" or "sides". Far from being mostly agricultural laborers, most modern morris dancers seem to be either computer programmers, librarians, teachers, or scientists.

There are over 150 morris teams active in the U.S. and Canada, probably around 500 in England, and some in Australia, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. Often several teams will get together for a weekend "ale" in which they'll go dance in a variety of places, sample the local brew, overeat, dance some more, sing drinking songs, sea songs, harvest songs, silly songs, and dirty songs, and get too little sleep.

Sounds stupid? I warned you. Watch a performance. Visit a practice. Put the misleading words aside.

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Last modified: Tue Jun 12 17:55:23 EDT 2001