Research Items | Nature

Origins of Morris Dance. The question of the origins of the Morris dance and of its name is once more raised by Mr. Rodney Gallop (J. English Folk-dance and Song Soc., 1, No. 3). The belief

generally held that ‘Morris’ was a corruption of ‘Morisco’ and the dance itself of Moorish origin was doubted so long ago as the time of Strutt, who in his “Sports and Pastimes of the People

of England” suggested that it was derived from a part of the ceremony of the Feast of Fools; but Francis Douce in 1839 tried to justify the traditional view, while recognising that the

European Morris differed widely from the true Moorish dances. Cecil Sharp at first (1906) adopted Douce's view, but later (1912) held that it was a development of a pan-European, or even

more widely, distributed custom. He held, however, that the name might still be derived from ‘Morisco’, but without any implication of origin. It was a popular ‘explanation’ of the blackened

faces of the dancers. It is now pointed out that ‘Morisco’ is applied to a wide diversity of dances, first appearing in the fifteenth century in France, Burgundy and Italy. In England, from

the sixteenth century onward, it is both a court dance and a folk-dance. No single feature is common to all, the two widespread elements, the blackening of the face and the use of bells, to

which attention mainly has been directed, being by no means universal. In numerous ceremonial combats, the opponents are ‘Christians’ and ‘Moors’. These combats were of wide distribution

and still survive in Portugal and on the east side of the Adriatic, and they have been carried to Panama and Mexico. The Morisco of the Hispanic peninsula does not always involve two sides

and a combat. Some are purely processional, though in origin obviously a survival of the pagan ceremonial combat. One side has tended to disappear, and the survivors have retained the name

of ‘Moor’, possibly as the equivalent of ‘pagan’ and as applied to a ‘pagan’ dance.

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