What is morris dancing?

Morris dancing is England’s native ritual dance: a set of dancers moving in figures to live music, marking a day in the calendar - a May morning, a feast, a midwinter night - rather than performing for a stage. Most people picture one version of it, the white-clad Cotswold dancer with bells at the shins and a handkerchief in each hand, but that is only one of several distinct traditions, as different from each other as folk dances of separate countries. The archive has not yet stood in a pub yard or a churchyard and documented a side dancing; this entry sets out what morris is, and the difference between its forms, until it has.

Morris is danced by a side (a team) in sets, to a musician on melodeon, fiddle or pipe and tabor, and it divides into several regional traditions that do not look much alike:

Cotswold morris is the familiar one - small sets, white shirts, bell-pads, handkerchiefs or short sticks, danced to named dances from particular villages (Bampton, Headington, Fieldtown). Border morris, from the Welsh border counties, is danced with sticks, in ragged coats of cloth strips called tatters, the dancers traditionally disguised - historically by blacking the face, a practice many sides have now moved away from in favour of other colours, precisely because its meaning has changed. North West morris is processional and danced in clogs, often by larger sets, out of the mill-town tradition. Molly dancing is the East Anglian midwinter form, tied to Plough Monday. The rapper and longsword dances are close cousins but are sword traditions in their own right, not morris.

A side is the team; a set is the formation it dances in. The squire leads the side, the bagman keeps the money and admin, and the foreman teaches the dances. Bell-pads are the strapped pads of bells worn at the shins in Cotswold morris; tatters are the strip-cloth coats of Border sides. A stick dance uses short sticks struck together; a hankie dance uses handkerchiefs. Capering is the high leaping found in some Cotswold dances. The fool and the beast (a hobby animal) are stock characters that accompany some sides.

Morris is recorded in England from the fifteenth century, and by the eighteenth and nineteenth it was a living village custom tied to particular days and places. Its deeper origins are genuinely uncertain, and much of what is said about them - ancient fertility rite, pagan survival - is Victorian and Edwardian romance rather than evidence; the honest position is that morris is an old English dance custom whose beginnings are not securely known. What is certain is the near-death and the rescue: by the early twentieth century many traditions had lapsed, and the folk-song and dance collector Cecil Sharp, among others, recorded surviving dancers and published the dances, which seeded the revival that carries morris today.

That revival is why morris now exists as a deliberate tradition with organising bodies - the Morris Ring, the Morris Federation and Open Morris - and hundreds of sides, men’s, women’s and mixed. It is a Carriers tradition in this archive’s sense: it survives only because particular people keep turning out to dance it, year on year, on the days it belongs to.

The archive has not yet documented a morris side first-hand - has not followed one through a season, from the winter practice nights to the May dawn. It is squarely among the customs the archive intends to record, ideally across more than one tradition so the differences between Cotswold, Border and North West are on the documentary record rather than flattened into the single white-and-bells image. When it is, this page will carry the dancing in place of this note.

Morris is in a paradoxical position: visible everywhere on May Day and at folk festivals, and quietly anxious about its future. Many sides report an ageing membership and difficulty recruiting younger dancers, and the loss of a side - when the people who hold its particular dances stop - is a real and recurring event. Against that, the tradition has organised itself well, women’s and mixed sides have broadened it, and the move by Border sides away from blacked faces has been part of keeping it welcoming. It is not dying, but it depends, like every living custom, on the next set of people choosing to take it on.

It is learned by joining a side and going to practice - most welcome newcomers. The archive’s coverage of the people who carry such customs is set out in The People Who Carry England.

What are the main types of morris dancing?
The main English forms are Cotswold morris (handkerchiefs and bells, danced in sets), Border morris (from the Welsh border, with sticks, disguise and ragged "tatter" coats), North West morris (clogged and processional, often by larger sets), and molly dancing (the East Anglian midwinter tradition). Rapper and longsword are related but distinct sword-dance traditions.

Why do morris dancers wear bells?
In Cotswold morris the dancers wear pads of bells at the shins, so the movement makes its own rhythm and the stepping is heard as well as seen. Not every tradition uses them - Border sides, for instance, tend not to - but the bell-pads are the image most people picture.

Where did morris dancing come from?
Morris dancing is recorded in England from the fifteenth century. Its earlier origins are debated and often romanticised; what is certain is that it survived as a living regional custom, nearly died out, and was revived from the early twentieth century - notably through the collecting work of Cecil Sharp - into the tradition danced today.