{"id":24802,"date":"2023-07-04T19:21:58","date_gmt":"2023-07-04T23:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=24802"},"modified":"2023-07-18T16:13:52","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T20:13:52","slug":"episode-849-morris-dancerswhy-do-they-jump-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/?p=24802","title":{"rendered":"EPISODE 849 MORRIS DANCERS\u2026why do they jump about?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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EPISODE  849   MORRIS DANCERS\u2026why do they jump about?<\/p>\n

alan skeoch<\/span><\/h4>\n
june 2023<\/span><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/h4>\n


<\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

Morris dancing is a form of English folk dance usually accompanied by music. It is based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers, usually wearing bell pads on their shins. Implements such as sticks, swords and handkerchiefs may also be wielded by the dancers.<\/span><\/span><\/h4>\n

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<\/h4>\n
WE MEET A BUNCH OF MORRIS DANCERS , june 2023<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
The village of St. Albans had closed off its main street for a bunch of senior<\/span><\/div>\n
citizens in odd costumes\u2026with bells on their ankles and either hitting each other with sticks<\/span><\/div>\n
or leaping in the air and waving white handkerchiefs all in time with a violin and an accordion.<\/span><\/div>\n
Big crowd had gathered.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Strange to see men leaping in unison while waving a white  nose cloth.  Even stranger to see <\/span><\/div>\n
two rows of women in green dress trying to hit each other hunks of wood\u2026.while dancing .<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s happening?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cI think these are Morris dancers?\u201d<\/div>\n
The name came to me although I had never seen such dancers before.<\/div>\n
\u201cStrangest dancers I\u2019ve ever seen.   Big men and big women acting as if they are light  feathers.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cCould you do it?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNot with my bad knee.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cThese dancers are 60 to 90 years old.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cHow do you  know that?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cBy their haircolor or lack of hair.\u201d<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF MORRIS DANCING?<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\u201c\u2019Seems to have begun as a fertility thing way back in the 15th century.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cFertlility?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201c\u201dVillagers wishing that their neighbours would get pregnant.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cDid they not know the real facts of life,?<\/div>\n
\u201cSex?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cYes.  Getting pregnant and having healthy children is a matter of chance\u2026.it does not <\/div>\n
happen that easily.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cAre Morris dancers encouraging sexual activity?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cSeems so\u2026.although the dancing could be a harvest wish\u2026\u2026good crops?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cDo you know what I  really think?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cMorris dancing is not a fertility blessing or a  wish for good harvest\u2026.then what?\u2019<\/div>\n
\u201cI think Morris dancing is just an excuse to have a good time with friends.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cNow that makes sense.\u201d<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\u201cMorris dancers used to be exclusively men for some reason but now both<\/div>\n
sexes jump around.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cI wonder why just men?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cI have no idea but I bet there was a reason..\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cFind out\u2026..(READERS JOB)<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
NOTE:  My brother Eric and I did not need Morris Dancers to exlain the facts of life.<\/div>\n
We had TINKER who attracted Tom Cats like a magnet does hairpins.   She chose one,<\/div>\n
struck an odd posture.  The Tom Cat then crawled on fast and got away fast.  Then<\/div>\n
we had kittens\u2026.lots o of kittens.  TINKER was a teacher.  Her Tom Cat visitors lined<\/div>\n
along the back fence and sang some sexual song in perfect harmony until dad fired <\/div>\n
the bb gun from the kitchen window.<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

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<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/h4>\n

History in England<\/span><\/h4>\n
While the earliest (15th-century) references place the Morris dance in a courtly setting, it appears that the dance became part of performances for the lower classes by the later 16th century; in 1600, the Shakespearean actor William Kempe, Morris danced from London to Norwich, an event chronicled in his Nine Daies Wonder<\/span> (1600).<\/div>\n
Almost nothing is known about the folk dances of England prior to the mid-17th century. While it is possible to speculate on the transition of \u201cMorris dancing\u201d from the courtly to a rural setting, it may have acquired elements of pre-Elizabethan (medieval) folk dance, such proposals will always be based on an argument from silence as there is no direct record of what such elements would have looked like. In the Elizabethan period, there was significant cultural contact between Italy and England, and it has been suggested that much of what is now considered traditional English folk dance, and especially English country dance, is descended from Italian dances imported in the 16th century.<\/div>\n
By the mid 17th century, the working peasantry took part in Morris dances, especially at Whitsun. The Puritan government of Oliver Cromwell, however, suppressed Whitsun Ales and other such festivities. When the crown was restored by Charles II, the springtime festivals were restored. In particular, Whitsun Ales came to be celebrated on Whitsunday (Pentecost), as the date coincided with the birthday of Charles II.<\/div>\n
Morris dancing continued in popularity until the industrial revolution and its accompanying social changes. Four teams claim a continuous lineage of tradition within their village or town: Abingdon (their Morris team was kept going by the Hemmings family), Bampton, Headington Quarry, and Chipping Campden. Other villages have revived their own traditions, and hundreds of other teams across the globe have adopted (and adapted) these traditions, or have created their own styles from the basic building blocks of Morris stepping and figures.<\/div>\n
However by the late 19th century, and in the West Country at least, Morris dancing was fast becoming more a local memory than an activity. D\u2019Arcy Ferris (or de Ferrars), a Cheltenham based singer, music teacher and organiser of pageants, became intrigued by the tradition and sought to revive it. He firstly encountered Morris in Bidford and organised its revival. Over the following years he took the side to several places in the West Country, from Malvern to Bicester and from Redditch to Moreton in Marsh. By 1910, he and Cecil Sharp were in correspondence on the subject.<\/div>\n
Several English folklorists were responsible for recording and reviving the tradition in the early 20th century, often from a bare handful of surviving members of mid-19th-century village sides. Among these, the most notable are Cecil Sharp, Maud Karpeles, and Mary Neal.<\/div>\n
Boxing Day 1899 is widely regarded as the starting point for the Morris revival. Cecil Sharp was visiting at a friend\u2019s house in Headington, near Oxford, when the Headington Quarry Morris side arrived to perform. Sharp was intrigued by the music and collected several tunes from the side\u2019s musician, William Kimber; not until about a decade later, however, did he begin collecting the dances, spurred and at first assisted by Mary Neal, a founder of the Esp\u00e9rance Club (a dressmaking co-operative and club for young working women in London), and Herbert MacIlwaine, musical director of the Esp\u00e9rance Club. Neal was looking for dances for her girls to perform, and so the first revival performance was by young women in London.<\/div>\n
In the first few decades of the 20th century, several men\u2019s sides were formed, and in 1934 the Morris Ring<\/a> was founded by six revival sides. In the 1950s and especially the 1960s, there was an explosion of new dance teams, some of them women\u2019s or mixed sides. At the time, there was often heated debate over the propriety and even legitimacy of women dancing the Morris, even though there is evidence as far back as the 16th century that there were female Morris dancers. There are now male, female and mixed sides to be found.<\/div>\n
Partly because women\u2019s and mixed sides were not eligible for full membership of the Morris Ring, two other national (and international) bodies were formed, the Morris Federation<\/a> and Open Morris. All three bodies provid<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EPISODE  849   MORRIS DANCERS\u2026why do they jump about? alan skeoch june 2023 Morris dancing is a form of English folk dance usually accompanied by music. It is based on rhythmic stepping and the execution of choreographed figures by a group of dancers, usually wearing bell pads on their shins. Implements such as sticks, swords […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanskeoch.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}