by J.E. Crawford Flitch MA.
(author of "Mediterranean Moods)
London - Grant Richards Ltd. Philadelphia - J.B. Lippincott Company. MDCCCCXII
CHAPTER XIV
THE REVIVAL OF THE MORRIS DANCE
No view of the modern renaissance of dancing would be complete which did
not take account of the revival of the Morris Dance.
Perhaps it has been too lightly assumed that England being a nation of
shopkeepers has never been a nation of dancers. But shop keeping is merely
a habit, the product of circumstance, and in its nature a temporary makeshift.
Dancing is a need of the spirit, a daughter of the high moods, and if, as
Lucian said, it is as old as love, it is surely also as everlasting. The
shop keeping spirit may be, and probably is, antagonistic to dancing; but
by the shop keeping spirit I do not mean the modern spirit, for that is an
incalculable, energetic and mobile thing, which is going to bear I know not
what strange fruit in life and art. I mean that austere, unsmiling, level
and practical temper which began to overshadow Western Europe some time in
the sixteenth century; which set its face against ecstasy, and art which
is the expression of ecstasy; which regarded poverty and vagabondage and
unrestrained laughter as disreputable; which worshipped respectability,
commonsense, such success as could be expressed in terms of cash, and all
things that were materially substantial and enduring; which created Puritanism,
the eighteenth century and the industrial revolution. To this temper, which
found a secure lodgment in the Anglo-Saxon mind, dancing was naturally
unsympathetic. But though it long held Britain, and America too, in its grip,
it was not strong enough to strangle the free and joyous spirit which had
created" Merrie England."
That spirit found its typical expression in the dance, and particularly in
the Morris Dance. Not until the improbable event of the antiquarians arriving
at unanimity will it be determined whether or no the Morris was originally
danced by the Moors or " Moriscos " of Spain and imported by John of Gaunt
into England in the fourteenth century; but if so, it was" diablement change
en route." It mixed with the native dances and was incorporated with a mass
of Catholic and even pre-Christian tradition. In some English villages there
are memories of a dance on the 21st of June, the longest day of the year,
of a slaughtered ox, a procession in which one of the dancers carried a sword
and a large wooden cup. To surmise what dim forgotten rites of a pagan
sun-worship linger in this ritual would take us far into the labyrinth of
archaeology. But whatever its origin the Morris gathered unto itself the
joy and holiday spirit of the countryside. It had its roots deep in the soil.
It was inspired by the rhythm of an ancient, simple and full-blooded life,
if not by the very rhythm of the woods and rivers themselves.
In spite of direct attempts at suppression, the inevitable desuetude of ancient
custom, and the changed conditions of the life of the people, this dancing
has come down from Catholic England to our own day. The Puritan preachers
denounced it as "lewde" and " ungodlie "; but it survived even the tyranny
of Cromwell's major generals and flourished gaily under the Merry Monarch.
In the eighteenth century it had already become demoded. In a journal of
the period we read of an account of a soirée, in which the writer
said of a certain lady, with more candour than courtesy, that she "looked
as silly and gaudy, I do vow, as one of the old Morris Dancers." In many
villages, particularly in the west and south-west of England, there still
exist" sides" of Morris dancers to whom the tunes and music have been handed
down through an unbroken tradition. The fidelity of this tradition is in
many cases surprising. Mr. Cecil Sharp, to whom is chiefly due the rediscovery
of the ancient dances, relates how he took down a tune from the fiddler of
the Bidford Morris men which was identical, note for note, with one that
he had found in a version printed in 1550. But during the last twenty or
thirty years many of the old Morris sides have been disbanded. The revival
has come at the eleventh hour. Already dances have been collected representing
probably every variety of the Morris step; but in another generation the
memory of the Morris Dance would have almost vanished from the countryside.
Soon after the Morris Dance took root in England it became incorporated with
the old mummers' plays, which embodied the cult of Robin Hood. The traditional
characters of Friar Tuck, Little John and Maid Marian accompanied the dancers.
The hobby horse and the fool, sometimes known as the dysard, provided the
necessary comic relief. But the main interest, and a very serious interest
it was, centred in the dancing. At one time almost every village possessed
its troupe, and among the various villages there was a rivalry of dancing
as keen as the rivalry of football today. Occasionally the contest became
so hot that the victory was only determined by a vigorous bout of cudgelling
with the staves, which served as an accessory in the dance. The Morris Dance
was no hoydenish revel in which any unskilled yokel could take part. It developed
an intricate technique which not unnaturally lent itself to the introduction
of a kind of "star" system among the dancers.
Of these professional performers perhaps the most illustrious was a certain
William Kemp, who achieved fame in Elizabeth's reign by dancing the Morris
all the way from London to Norwich. He wrote an account of this feat in a
pamphlet called" Kemp's Nine Daies' Wonder, performed in a daunce from London
to Norwich: Containing the pleasures, paines and kind entertainment of William
Kemp betweene London and that Citty, in his late Morrice." In his droll and
vivid manner he tells how at Sudbury "there came a lusty tall fellow, a butcher
by his profession, that would in a Morrice keepe me company to Bury. I gave
him thankes, and forward wee did set; but ere ever wee had measur'd half
a mile of our way, he gave me over in the plain field, protesting he would
not hold out with me ; for, indeed, my pace in dauncing is not ordinary.
As he and I were parting, a lusty country lasse being among the people, cal'd
him faint-hearted lout, saying, 'If I had begun to daunce, I would have held
out one myle, though it had cost my life.' At which words many laughed. 'Nay,'
saith she, 'if the dauncer will lend me a leash of his bells, I'le venter
to tread one myle with him myself.' I lookt upon her, saw mirth in her eyes,
heard boldness in her words, and beheld her ready to tucke up her russat
petticoate; and I fitted her with bels, which she merrily taking garnisht
her thicke short legs, and with a smooth brow bad the tabur begin. The drum
strucke: forward marcht I with my merry Mayde Marian, who shook her stout
sides, and footed it merrily to Melford, being a long myle. There parting
with her (besides her skinfulle of drinke), and English crowne to buy more
drinke; for, good wench, she was in a pittious heate; my kindness she requited
by dropping a dozen good courtsies, and bidding God bless the dauncer. I
bade her adieu; and, to give her her due, she had a good eare, daunst truly,
and wee parted friends."
The Morris was sometimes danced, as 'William Kemp and his amateur roadside
companion performed it, as a solo dance; but its most common characteristic
was that it was danced by" sides" or sets of six. Women but rarely figured
as performers. The dress of the men has become traditional, but it appears
originally to have been merely the holiday dress of the period. It was marked
by that "gaudiness" to which the captious critic of the eighteenth century
took exception. The dancer was plentifully adorned with ribbons and rosettes,
and latterly he wore the tall beaver hat which has become an essential part
of the costume. The outfit was completed by the indispensable bells, which
were stitched upon thongs and tied to the shins. Sometimes both treble and
tenor bells were worn. In some of the dances the performers carried a white
handkerchief and in others a short wooden staff.
In early times the dance was accompanied by a pipe and tabor, otherwise known
as whittle and dub. The pipe was a kind of flageolet, which the minstrel
played with the left hand; from his left thumb was suspended the tabor or
miniature drum. These primitive instruments were superseded by the fiddle,
which in its turn is giving place to the concertina.
The dance of the people is necessarily different from the dance of art. All
national dances are characterised by vigour rather than by grace. There is
lurking in them a certain note of savagery and battles long ago. The old
fighting England as well as Merrie England still lives in the Morris. It
is not surprising that King Charles's men should have danced it on the eve
of Naseby fight. It is essentially a dance for men, and a dance for the open
air. It does not sway or glide; its movement is spirited and abrupt. The
foot is lifted as in walking and then vigorously straightened to a kick;
the heels come solidly to earth. The object of the dancer is to make the
bells ring fortissimo, and to do this he must kick, and kick hard. The Morris
does not exhibit the graceful postures and fawn like agility of the Spanish
country dances, nor the fiery energy of the Hungarian and the Russian. In
its solid merriment, its even rhythm, its vigorous but restrained movements,
it is essentially British.
It would be impossible to describe the spirit of the Morris Dance better
than in the admirable words of Mr Cecil Sharp, who is not only learned in
the history of the dance, but has sought it out wherever the tradition lingers
on the greensward and under the ancient oaks of an England that is passing
away. "It is, in spirit," he says, "the organised, traditional expression
of virility, sound health and animal spirits. It smacks of cudgel-play, of
quarter-staff, of wrestling, of honest fisticuffs. There is nothing sinuous
in it, nothing dreamy; nothing whatever is left to the imagination.
It is a formula based upon and arising out of the life of man, as it is lived
by men who hold much speculation upon the mystery of our whence and whither
to be unprofitable; by men of meagre fancy, but of great kindness to the
weak; by men who fight their quarrels on the spot with naked hands, drink
together when the fight is done, and forget it, or, if they remember, then
the memory is a friendly one. It is the dance of folk who are slow to anger,
but of great obstinacy forthright of act and speech: to watch it in its thumping
sturdiness is to hold such things as poniards and stilettos, the swordsman
with the domino, the man who stabs in the back as un-imaginable things. The
Morris Dance, in short, is a perfect expression in rhythm and movement of
the English character."
The modern revival of Morris dancing in England is of very recent origin,
but of astonishingly rapid growth. The story of its rise reads like a romance.
This movement, which is already national in its scope, which promises to
renew the heart of England, which is swelling out into wider circles that
will probably be felt through-out the Empire and America, was born in a girls'
club in a poor quarter of the north-west of London. The object of the Esperance
Girls' Club in Cumberland Market was to bring something of the joyous and
serene atmosphere of a younger and fresher world into the grim and hurried
life of the city dwellers. For some time one of the features of the
club had been the encouragement of music, dancing and play-acting. During
some winters Scotch reels and strathspeys, Irish jigs and folk songs, had
been practised one night a week. A meeting between Mr H. C. MacIlwaine, the
musical director of the club, and Mr Cecil Sharp, the leading authority on
folk music, led to the introduction of the English folk song. From the folk
song to the folk dance was only a step. Mr Sharp seven years before had collected
a set of Morris tunes from some dancers in Oxfordshire, in whose family the
Morris had been handed down from father to son for five generations. The
idea suggested itself that as the girls had learnt to sing the old songs
they might also learn to dance the old dances.
In October 1905 Miss Mary Neal, the secretary of the club, who has throughout
been the directing spirit of the movement, went down to Oxfordshire and brought
two of the Morris men up to London, and set them to teach the members of
the club. The success of the experiment was immediate and astonishing. The
girls were as unfamiliar with the steps and the music as with the speech
and dances of ancient Greece; but perhaps a kind of ancestral memory awoke
within them. The rhythms of the Morris had sprung from the rhythms of the
old English life, and the Londoners, who are said to be never more than three
generations from the soil, responded to a summons of the blood. Within half
an hour of the coming of the Oxfordshire dancers the Morris, with its stamping
of feet and clashing of staves, its maze of intricate movements, was in full
swing upon a London floor. Thus was begun the revival of Morris dancing which
to day is a part of the national life.
The next step was the giving of a public concert to make known to the larger
world the rediscovery of the ancient dances. This took place at the Small
Queen's Hall in the following April. The public interest was immediately
aroused. As one of the newspapers remarked with prophetic insight, it was
"a little entertainment which may indeed light such a candle in England as
will not immediately be put out."
From that time the movement progressed by leaps and bounds. Inquiries began
to pour in as to how the traditional dancing could be brought back into the
lives of the English people, to those in the towns who had lost it altogether
as well as to those in the country for whom it was only a vague memory. Miss
Neal's answer to this demand was to send out the best dancers among the members
of her club to act as teachers. They have danced the Morris throughout the
length and breadth of England. There is not a county today where the merry
jangle of the bells and the clatter of the staves is not heard. In course
of time the Board of Education took cognisance of the movement and introduced
the Morris and other country dances into the curriculum of the elementary
schools. In the spring of 1911 Miss Neal visited America, and by lectures
and demonstration showed to the people of the new continent the old dances
which their Puritan forefathers had omitted to bring with them. In response
to numberless appeals for instruction she left behind one of the teachers
of the Esperance Club, and the movement in the States is spreading with the
same astonishing enthusiasm and rapidity as in England.
The most significant and hopeful feature of this movement is that it is in
every sense a popular one. The inveterate cavillers may argue that it is
artificially imposed upon the younger generation by a few cultured and
enthusiastic pedants, and they will certainly repeat the well worn shibboleth
concerning the impossibility of putting back the clock. But the artificiality
has been in the enforced imposition of a Puritan code that abolished dancing
from the village green. To all healthy children it is as natural to dance
as to laugh and sing. The tradition has been abruptly broken; now it is being
restored to them and they respond to it with every fibre of their being.
They are far from regarding it as yet another troublesome item in a bewildering
system of education; they do not have to be driven to it as to a new species
of drill. They revel in it as in a delightful game, for it satisfies all
the child's inborn love of music and pantomime and emphatic rhythm. When
once the initial impetus has been given from above, the movement goes on
with its own momentum. Its motive force is not authority but the old indomitable
impulse of the blood.
All that the revival of the old dances will do for the rising generation
it is impossible to foretell. It is giving them back the power of self
expression, which the common people seem once to have possessed in the old
days when music and song came natur ally to birth in the life of the folk.
As Miss Mary Neal has well said: "Music is the one art in which the otherwise
inarticulate can express themselves, and so we have in this music the truest
meeting ground for all classes. The revival and practice of our English folk
music is part of a great national revival, a going back from town to country,
a reaction against all that is de-moralising in city life. It is a reawakening
of that part of our national consciousness which makes for wholeness, saneness,
and healthy merriment."
The movement is at present still in its trial stage. If it becomes indeed
a national revival of dancing it must result in a development of the dance.
It cannot remain content with merely perpetuating an ancient formula. Every
form of art which has the seeds of life in it must needs change and grow.
The Morris, as has been said, was originally a men's dance, and already its
performance by girls is changing something of its character. The introduction
of the feminine element necessarily robs it of its sturdiness and at the
same time lends it an added gaiety and grace. But the change will probably
go deeper than this. The old Morris was the expression of a mode of life
that has passed away; out of it must be developed some newer variation more
fitted to express the spirit of a broader and fuller life. In a suggestive
passage, Mr Holbrook Jackson indicates the direction of the development:
"The old English folk dances are limited in range; they are a combination
of acrobatic leaps and hoydenish frisks. They are, indeed, the expression
of a non-reflective and rather boorish peasantry. Today conditions have changed.
The peasantry are no more, and we have become introspective and reflective.
The bumpkin and his kind have been replaced by the clerk, with a new set
of needs and different nuances of desire; so that we have to consider not
so much the question of reviving the dances of the past, because, as such,
these can never be anything but curiosities, antiques, but how to pick up
the lapsed tradition of the dance at the point in history when it expressed
the emotions of the people, and to give that tradition a chance of new life
in our own day; not a chance of imitating the past in form, but a chance
of imitating the past in spirit, a chance of doing for today what it once
did for yesterday."
The Morris cannot properly be called a dance of art; it is a dance of the
people. It can never be a substitute for the dance of the theatre. But the
popular revival of the old dances is important, not only in providing a new
means of emotional expression, but in arousing a new interest in the art
of the dance itself. Dancing is a sensitive plant which can only thrive in
a congenial atmosphere. In some degree all the arts appear to live by the
breath of popular favour. Their activity is stimulated, their expression
perfected, by interest, criticism and understanding. The art of dancing has
always risen to its highest level when it has been most esteemed; decadence
has always succeeded to neglect. "Dancing is an art, let the public remember,"
a lover and critic of the dance has said, "which depends on their support
for its very existence. The poet, the painter, the sculptor can work for
posterity; but the dancer's art is fugitive, not permanent. If the contemporaries
of any dancer fail through ignorance, or dulness, or bigotry, to appreciate
her, no one else can."
If England becomes once more a nation of dancers, bigotry and dulness and
ignorance will never again be obstacles to the flowering of the art of the
Dance. |
