Maple Morris Dancing and Jane Austen

A few weeks ago I had the great pleasure of seeing a demonstration of Maple Morris dancing.

From the website: www.maplemorris.com:

"Morris dancing is a surviving English traditional folk dance that has been performed since the 1400s and has been associated with seasonal and harvest rituals. The dance is vigorous and athletic and the high leaps are accented by the use of white handkerchiefs and bells strapped to the legs."

Morris Daning is a form of dancing Austen would have seen at a May Day celebration.

From an article by Elizabeth Butt in 1999:

"The most prevalent opinion is that Morris Dancing is based on a pre-Christian Fertility or luck-bringing ceremony. Over time, these 'pagan' dances were adopted by the church and by the 1500's, dances were being performed for Easter, May Day and other parish feasts, with the emphasis being on raising funds for the church.

The traditional dress for Morris is that of an all white costume with bells worn on the dancers legs. The white signifies power over darkness and the bells were used to scare to devil out of the ground before planting. As Morris Dancing has come through generations of men who have worked the land, there is probably something in this interpretation. Dances vary greatly, depending on the location of the teams.

Perhaps the most common type of Morris performed is the Cotswold (a region located in the western half of England.) Cotswold dances usually consist of a series of distinctive maneuvers. There are several traditions of Cotswold dances and their differences usually lie in the style of the distinctive figures. Some use handkerchiefs and others clash sticks, whilst some dances are precise and some are disorderly."

I saw both the use of handkerchiefs and sticks:

 

Still tracking the origin of the addition of 'maple' to the name - the maypole was usually made of maple, or is it that the Canadian teams changed the name to reflect the Canadian version of the tradition? 

The exhibition was perfect for a fall day. Attracted lots of crowds, including two brides in the square in Fells Point who were having their pics taken and were pulled into the dance. Looks like great fun, but I'm fairly certain my knees could never withstand the leaps!

Comments

[Barbara Morrison]

Ah. No. Maple Morris is the name of one of the teams that danced that day, a team started by two Canadians (hence the name). Other teams dancing that day were the Rock Creek Morris Women and Foggy Bottom Morris Men (both from DC and named after DC locations), the Albermarle Morris Men (from Charlottesville in Albermarle County), Handsome Molly (from NJ), and the Toronto Morris Men (from, er, Toronto). So team names often reflect their home town. Our local team, now disbanded, was called BaltiMorris.

Morris dancing is just called morris dancing. Glad you enjoyed it, though!

The Elizabeth Butt's article is sadly out-of-date, and was even in 1999. The pre-Christian fertility theory was put about in the early 20th c by a folklorist who had spent too much time reading _The Golden Bough_. In fact, most people today are pretty sure that it started as just another busking activity, a way for villagers to persuade wealthy people at the church fete or May fair to give them some coins. (see books by Tony Barrand, John Forrest, Ronald Hutton, Georgina Boyes for more info)

And, related to your course of study, there is a short scene of morris dancing in the film _Bride and Prejudice_.

[Chris]

Thanks Barbara! There was a woeful lack of historical info on the Internet so I chose what seemed the most professional. I'm going to post this on the blog so people get the info, in case they don't read the comments. I thought the name was for the region of the dancers, but wasn't sure.