Up and downe, to and fro,
From the towne, to the grove,
Two and two, let us rove,
A maying, a playing;
Love hath no gainsaying:
So merrily trip and goe."
Lord Orford in his catalogue of English engravers, under the article of Peter Stent, has described two paintings at Lord Fitzwilliam's on Richmond green which came out of the old neighbouring palace. They were executed by Vinckenboom, about the end of the reign of James I., and exhibit views of the above palace; in one of these pictures a morris dance is introduced, consisting of seven figures, viz. a fool, a hobby-horse, a piper, a Maid Marian, and three other dancers, the rest of the figures being spectators. Of these the first four and one of the dancers are reduced in the annexed plate from a tracing made by the late Captain Grose. The fool has an inflated bladder or eel-skin with a ladle at the end of it, and with this he is collecting money. The piper is pretty much in his original state; but the hobby-horse wants the legerdemain apparatus, and Maid Marian is not remarkable for the elegance of her person.
Dr. Plott, in his History of Staffordshire, p. 434, mentions that within memory, at Abbot's or Paget's Bromley, they had a sort of sport which they celebrated at Christmas, or on new year and twelfth days, called the Hobby-horse dance, from a person who carried the image of a horse between his legs made of thin boards, and in his hand a bow and arrow. The latter passing through a hole in the bow, and stopping on a shoulder, made a snapping noise when drawn to and fro, keeping time with the music. With this man danced six others, carrying on their shoulders as many rein-deer heads, with the arms of the chief families to whom the revenues of the town belonged. They danced the heys and other country dances. To the above hobby-horse dance there belonged a pot, which was kept by turns by the reeves of the town, who provided cakes and ale to put into this pot; all people who had any kindness for the good intent of the institution of the sport giving pence apiece for themselves and families. Foreigners also that came to see it contributed; and the money, after defraying the expense of the cakes and ale, went to repair the church and support the poor; which charges, adds the doctor, are not now perhaps so cheerfully borne.
A short time before the revolution in France, the May games and morris dance were celebrated in many parts of that country, accompanied by a fool and a hobby-horse. The latter was termed un chevalet; and, if the authority of Minsheu be not questionable, the Spaniards had the same character under the name of tarasca.[193]
VIII. The Dragon. The earliest mention of him as a part of the morris dance we have already seen in the extract from Stubbes's Anatomie of abuses; and he is likewise introduced in a morris, in Sampson's play of the Vowbreaker, or fayre maid of Clifton, 1633, where a fellow says, "I'll be a fiery dragon:" on which, another, who had undertaken the hobby-horse, observes that he will be "a thund'ring Saint George as ever rode on horseback." This seems to afford a clue to the use of this dragon, who was probably attacked in some ludicrous manner by the hobby-horse saint, and may perhaps be the Devil alluded to in the extract already given from Fetherstone's Dialogue against dancing.
IX. The Morris Dancers. By these are meant the common dancers in the late morrises, and who were not distinguished by any particular appellation, though in earlier times it is probable that each individual had his separate title. If there were any reason for a contrary opinion, it might depend on the costume of numbers 10 and 11 in Mr. Tollett's window, which may perhaps belong to the present class. There are likewise two similar figures in the Flemish print; and the coincidence in their attitudes is no less remarkable than it is in those of some of the other characters. The circumstance too of one only wearing a feather in his hat is deserving of notice, as it is the same in both the representations. The streamers which proceed from their sleeves and flutter in the wind, though continued in very modern times, were anciently not peculiar to morris dancers, examples of them occurring in many old prints.[194] In the reign of Henry the Eighth the morris dancers were dressed in gilt leather and silver paper, and sometimes in coats of white spangled fustian. They had purses at their girdles, and garters to which bells were attached.[195] The latter have been always a part of the furniture of the more active characters in the morris, and the use of them is of great antiquity. The tinkling ornaments of the feet among the Jewish women are reprobated in Isaiah iii, 16, 18. Gratius Faliscus, who wrote his poem on hunting in the time of Augustus, has alluded to the practice of dancing with bells on the feet among the Egyptian priests of Canopus, in the following lines:
Velatur sonipes æstivi turba Canopi."
Cynegeticon, lib. i. 42.
There is good reason for believing that the morris bells were borrowed from the genuine Moorish dance; a circumstance that tends to corroborate the opinion that has been already offered with respect to the etymology of the morris. Among the beautiful habits of various nations, published by Hans Weigel at Nuremberg, in 1577, there is the figure of an African lady of the kingdom of Fez in the act of dancing, with bells at her feet. A copy of it is here exhibited:
The number of bells round each leg of the morris dancers amounted from twenty to forty.[196] They had various appellations, as the fore-bell, the second bell, the treble, the tenor, the base, and the double bell. Sometimes they used trebles only; but these refinements were of later times.[197] The bells were occasionally jingled by the hands, or placed on the arms or wrists of the parties. Scarves, ribbands, and laces hung all over with gold rings, and even precious stones, are also mentioned in the time of Elizabeth.[198] The miller, in the play of the Vowbreaker, says he is come to borrow "a few ribbandes, bracelets, eare-rings, wyertyers, and silke girdles and handkerchers for a morice and a show before the queene." The handkerchiefs, or napkins[199] as they are sometimes called, were held in the hand, or tied to the shoulders.[200] In Shirley's Lady of pleasure, 1637, Act I., Aretina thus inveighs against the amusements of the country:
They keep their wakes, and throw for pewter candlestickes,
How they become the morris, with whose bells
They ring all into Whitson ales, and sweate
Through twenty scarffes and napkins, till the Hobby horse
Tire, and the maide Marrian dissolv'd to a gelly,
Be kept for spoone meate."
The early use of the feather in the hat appears both in Mr. Tollett's window and the Flemish print; a fashion that was continued a long time afterwards.[201] Sometimes the hat was decorated with a nosegay,[202] or with the herb thrift, formerly called our lady's cushion.[203]
Enough has been said to show that the collective number of the morris dancers has continually varied according to circumstances, in the same manner as did their habits. In Israel's print they are nine: in Mr. Tollett's window, eleven. Mr. Strutt has observed that on his sixteenth plate there are only five, exclusive of the two musicians: but it is conceived that what he refers to is not a morris, but a dance of fools. There is a pamphlet entitled Old Meg of Herefordshire for a Mayd Marian and Hereford town for a morris dance, or 12 morris dancers in Herefordshire of 1200 years old, 1609, 4to.[204] In the painting by Vinckenboom, at Richmond, there are seven figures. In Blount's Glossographia, 1656, the Morisco is defined, "a dance wherein there were usually five men and a boy dressed in a girles habit, whom they call Maid Marrian." The morris in Fletcher's Two noble kinsmen contains some characters, which, as they are nowhere else to be found, might have been the poet's own invention, and designed for stage effect:
That seek out silent hanging: Then mine host
And his fat spouse, that welcomes to their cost
The gauled traveller, and with a beckning
Informs the tapster to inflame the reck'ning.
Then the beast-eating clown, and next the fool,
The Bavian, with long tail and eke long tool,
Cum multis aliis, that make a dance."
Mr. Ritson has taken notice of an old wooden cut "preserved on the title of a penny-history, (Adam Bell, &c.) printed at Newcastle in 1772," and which represents, in his opinion, a morris dance consisting of the following personages: 1. A bishop. 2. Robin Hood. 3. The potter or beggar. 4. Little John. 5. Friar Tuck. 6. Maid Marian. He remarks that the execution of the whole is too rude to merit a copy, a position that is not meant to be controverted; but it is necessary to introduce the cut in this place for the purpose of correcting an error into which the above ingenious writer has inadvertently fallen. It is proper to mention that it originally appeared on the title page to the first known edition of Robin Hood's garland, printed in 1670, 18mo.
Now this cut is certainly not the representation of a morris dance, but merely of the principal characters belonging to the garland. These are, Robin Hood, Little John, queen Catherine, the bishop, the curtal frier, (not Tuck,) and the beggar. Even though it were admitted that Maid Marian and Friar Tuck were intended to be given, it could not be maintained that either the bishop or the beggar made part of a morris.
There still remains some characters in Mr. Tollett's window, of which no description can be here attempted, viz. Nos. 1, 4, 6, and 7. As these are also found in the Flemish print,[205] they cannot possibly belong to Robin Hood's company; and therefore their learned proprietor would, doubtless, have seen the necessity of re-considering his explanations.[206] The resemblance between the two ancient representations is sufficiently remarkable to warrant a conjecture that the window has been originally executed by some foreign artist; and that the panes with the English friar, the hobby-horse, and the may-pole have been since added.
Mr. Waldron has informed us that he saw in the summer of 1783, at Richmond in Surrey, a troop of morris dancers from Abingdon, accompanied by a fool in a motley jacket, who carried in his hand a staff about two feet long, with a blown bladder at the end of it, with which he either buffeted the crowd to keep them at a proper distance from the dancers, or played tricks for the diversion of the spectators. The dancers and the fool were Berkshire husbandmen taking an annual circuit to collect money.[207] Mr. Ritson too has noticed that morris dancers are yet annually seen in Norfolk, and make their constant appearance in Lancashire. He has also preserved a newspaper article respecting some morris dancers of Pendleton, who paid their annual visit to Salford, in 1792;[208] and a very few years since, another company of this kind was seen at Usk in Monmouthshire, which was attended by a boy Maid Marian, a hobby-horse, and a fool. They professed to have kept up the ceremony at that place for the last three hundred years. It has been thought worth while to record these modern instances, because it is extremely probable that from the present rage for refinement and innovation, there will remain, in the course of a short time, but few vestiges of our popular customs and antiquities.
FOOTNOTES:
[156] This will hereafter appear to be a mistake.
[157] Strutt's Sports and pastimes of the people of England, p. 171.
[158] Hist. of Musick, vol. iv. 388, by Sir John Hawkins, who was clearly of opinion that the morris dance was derived from the Moors.
[159] Etymologicum Anglicanum. In further corroboration of this deduction of the morris dance, the following words may be adduced; MORESQUE a kind of grotesque painting, sometimes called Arabesque, and used in embroidery and damasking. Moriscle, and MOURICLE, a gold coin used in Spain by the Moors, and called in the barbarous Latin of the fourteenth century morikinus. See Carpentier, Suppl. ad glossar. Ducangian. v. Morikinus. Morris wax, called likewise mores wax, in the Garbelling of spices, 1594, 4to. To these the morris-pike may perhaps be added. It is probable that the English terms morris and morice have been corrupted from mores, the older and more genuine orthography.
[160] Tabourot Orchesographie, 1589, 4to, p. 97, where the several postures of this dance are described and represented. The Pyrrhic dance appears to have travelled from Greece into the north. See Olaus Magnus, De gentibus septentrionalibus, lib. xv. c. 23, 24, 25, 26, 27.
[161] It is remarkable that the same practice should be found in the island of Ceylon. Knox tells us that "A woman takes two naked swords, under each arm one, and another she holds in her mouth, then fetcheth a run and turns clean over, and never touches the ground till she lights on her feet again holding all her swords fast."—Hist. of Ceylon, p. 99.
[162] Wise's Enquiries concerning the first inhabitants, language, &c. of Europe, p. 51.
[163] Jean Tabourot, canon and official of the cathedral of Lengres, published his Orchesographie et traicté en forme de dialogue par lequel toutes personnes peuvent facilement apprendre et practiquer l'honneste exercice des dances, 1589, 4to, under the anagrammatized name of Thoinot Arbeau. He died in 1595, at the age of 66. His work is equally curious and uncommon.
[164] But the French morris can be traced to a much earlier period. Among other instances of the prodigality of Messire Gilles de Raiz, in 1440, morris dancers are specified. Lobineau, Hist. de Bretagne, ii. 1069. In the accounts of Olivier le Roux, treasurer to Arthur III. duke of Bretagne in 1457, is this article: "à certains compaignons qui avoient fait plusieurs esbatemens de morisques et autres jeux devant le due à Tours, vi. escus."—Id. 1205. At a splendid feast given by Gaston de Foix at Vendôme in 1458, "foure yong laddes and a damosell attired like savages daunced (by good direction) an excellent Morisco, before the assembly."—Favines Theater of honour, p. 345; and see Carpentier, Suppl. ad glossar. Ducangian. v. Morikinus. Coquillart, a French poet, who wrote about 1470, says that the Swiss danced the Morisco to the beat of the drum. Œuvres, p. 127.
[165] Peck's Memoirs of Milton, 135. What this writer has added on the subject of the morris dance is not very interesting; but he is certainly mistaken in his explanation of five, seven, or nine men's morris.
[166] Ritson's Robin Hood, I. cii.
[167] See particularly Stubbes's Anatomie of abuses, p. 109, edit. 1595, 4to.
[168] In Laneham's Letter from Kenilworth or Killingworth castle, a bride-ale is described, in which mention is made of "a lively Moris dauns, according too the auncient manner: six dauncerz, Mawdmarion, and the fool."
[169] See Stowe's Survay of London, 1618, 4to, p. 161.
[170] Stubbes's Anatomie of abuses, p. 107.
[171] Fetherston's Dialogue agaynst light, lewde, and lascivious dauncing, 1582, 12mo, sign. D. 7. See a passage to the same purpose in Northbrooke's Treatise against dicing, dancing, &c. 1597, 4to, fo. 68 b.
[172] Albion's England, 1612, p. 121.
[173] Steevens's Shakspeare, at the end of the play of King Henry IV. part I.
[174] There is a remarkable instance of the corruption that has been gradually introduced into popular ceremonies, in the celebration of the gunpowder-plot; in which, formerly, Guy Faux was ignominiously carted, in company with the Pope and the Devil, all of whom were afterwards consigned to the flames: whereas at present we have only the image of a fellow, or sometimes a real boy bedizened with gilded rags, ruffles, and powdered periwig, under the appellation of Poor Guy, for whom the attendants seem to crave charity. The Pope had been long dismissed by proclamation or act of parliament; and the Devil is probably forgotten by some, or become an object of too much terror with others to be sported with.
[175] Churchwardens' accounts at Kingston, in Lysons's Environs of London, vol. i. p. 227. The learned author of this interesting work has remarked that he had found no entries at Kingston relating to the May games, after the 29 Hen. VIII.; but they certainly continued, as parochial ceremonies, in other places to a much later period. In the churchwardens' accounts of Great Marlow it appears that dresses for the morris dance were lent to neighbouring parishes so late as 1629. See Langley's Antiquities of Desborough, 4to, 1797.
[176] Fordun's Scotichronicon, 1759, folio, tom. ii. p. 104.
[177] Polyolbion, song xxvi.
[178] Ben Jonson's Works, 1756, vol. vi. p. 93.
[179] Marian, or as it is more frequently written Marion, is not formed, as some French writers have supposed, from Mary and Ann, but more probably from Mariamne the wife of Herod, whose name seems borrowed from that of Miriam מרים the prophetess, the sister of Aaron. Miriam is said to come from a Syrian word signifying mistress, or from מרר marar, bitterness. The name of Mary, evidently contracted from Miriam or Mariamne, does not occur till the time of the daughter of Joachim and Anne, the mother of Christ, at which period we find other Maries in the New Testament. It is remarkable that Maria, from Marius, should not occur among the Roman names of women, in like manner as we have Julia, Cornelia, Fulvia, Proba, Valeria, &c., from Julius, Cornelius, Fulvius, Probus, and Valerius. The facetious and eccentric Edmund Gayton, in the dedication to his Festivous notes on Don Quixote, speaks of Mayd Myriam. He perhaps imagined that the morris dance had been suggested by the prophetess and her dancing women with their timbrels.
[180] Steevens's Shaksp. viii. 530.
[181] Waldron's History of the Isle of Man, 12mo, p. 95, where he has described the mock battle between the queens.
[182] Strype's Eccl. memorials, iii. 376.
[183] The honestie of this age, 1615, 4to, p. 35.
[184] What these ladies exactly were is not easy to comprehend. Whitepot in old cookery was a kind of custard, made in a crust or dish with cream, eggs, pulse of apples, sugar, spices, and sippets of white or manchet bread. It is possible therefore that Maid Marian, being occasionally personated by a kitchen malkin or cook wench, obtained the title of a white-pot queen.
[185] Golden books of the leaden Goddes, 1577, 4to, fo. 30.
[186] Greene's Quip for an upstart courtier, sig. D. 3.
[187] Bavon or bavette, is from bave, spittle. Hence the middle age Latin term for a fool, bavosus. See Ducange Gloss. This is a very plausible etymology, and might stand well enough by itself; but it must not be concealed that in some of the Northern languages Bavian signifies a monkey or baboon. Whether Fletcher, who seems the only writer that has made use of this word, applied it to the fool in question on account of the monkey tricks that he played, remains to be ascertained. If we could discover the names of the characters in a French, Dutch, or German morris of this time, some light might be thrown on the subject.
[188] See Carter's Specimens of ancient sculpture and painting, vol. ii. pl. xiii. Nos. 5 and 13, and pl. xxxvi.
[190] Coryat's Crudities, 1611, 4to, p. 9.
[191] Yet, in the reign of Charles the Second, Thomas Hall, another puritanical writer, published his Funebria Floræ, the Downfall of May-games, 1661, 4to, in which, amidst a great deal of silly declamation against these innocent amusements, he maintains that "Papists are forward to give the people May-poles, and the Pope's holiness with might and main keeps up his superstitious festivals as a prime prop of his tottering kingdome." That "by these sensual sports and carnal-flesh-pleasing wayes of wine, women, dancing, revelling, &c., he hath gained more souls, than by all the tortures and cruel persecutions that he could invent." He adds, "What a sad account will these libertines have to make, when the Lord shall demand of them, where wast thou such a night? why, my Lord, I was with the prophane rabble, stealing May-poles; and where wast thou such a day? why, my Lord, I was drinking, dancing, dallying, ranting, whoring, carousing, &c."
[192] Every man out of his humour, Act II. Scene 1.
[193] Spanish dictionary.
[194] See the plate of ancient cards, xxxi. in Strutt's Sports and pastimes, where a knave or attendant is dressed in this manner.
[195] Churchwardens' accounts at Kingston, in Lysons's Environs of London, i. p. 227, 228.
[196] Stubbes's Anatomie of abuses, ubi supra.
[197] See Rowley's Witch of Edmonton, 1658, Act I. Scene 2.
[198] Stubbes, ubi supra. Knight of the burning pestle, Act IV.
[199] Stubbes, ubi supra. Jonson's Masque of gipsies. Holme's Academy of armory, book iii. p. 169, whence the following cut has been borrowed, which, rude as it is, may serve to convey some idea of the manner in which the handkerchiefs were used.
[200] Knight of the burning pestle, Act IV.
[201] Vox graculi, 1623, p. 49.
[202] Fletcher's Women pleased, Act IV.
[203] Greene's Quip for an upstart courtier, sign. B. 2.
[204] This tract is mentioned by Sir William Temple, in his Essay on health and long life, from the communication of Lord Leicester. Howel, in his Parly of beasts, 1660, has recorded that "of late years ther were call'd out within three miles compasse ten men that were a thousand years between them, one supplying what the other wanted of a hundred years apiece, and they danc'd the morris divers hours together in the market place with a taborer before them 103 years old, and a maid Mariam 105."—p. 122. This seems to allude to the same event.
[205] Compare No. 1, with the left hand figure at bottom in the print; No. 4, with the left hand figure at top; No. 6, with the right hand figure at bottom; and No. 7, with the right hand figure at top. This last character in the Flemish print has a flower in his hat as well as No. 4. Query if that ornament have been accidentally omitted by the English engraver?
[206] This gentleman's death is recorded to have happened Oct. 22nd, 1779. Gough's Brit. topogr. ii. 239.
[207] See his continuation to Ben Jonson's sad shepherd, 1782, 8vo, p. 255, a work of very considerable merit, and which will materially diminish the regret of all readers of taste that the original was left unfinished.
[208] Robin Hood, I. cviii.