english folk dances: their survival and revival

English Folk Dances: Their Survival and RevivalAuthor(s): Maud Karpeles and Joan EvansSource: Folklore, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Jun. 30, 1932), pp. 123-143Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1256537 .

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ENGLISH FOLK DANCES: THEIR SURVIVAL AND REVIVAL.

BY MAUD KARPELES.

[Read at a Meeting, 2Ist October, I93I.] I AM very appreciative of the honour which the Folk-Lore

Society has conferred upon me in asking me to read a paper on English Folk Dances, but I must confess that my feelings of flattery are mixed with some fear and trepida- tion, because I am all too conscious of the limitations of my knowledge and my woeful ignorance of the science of Folk Lore. I will, however, ask you to be indulgent and to regard my paper merely as an introduction to the main business of the evening, that is the performance of folk dances by the members of The English Folk Dance Society.

I am going to preface my discourse with a few sentences from Tylor's Primitive Culture, because they indicate the particular approach which I have adopted to the subject of my paper. The passage I am about to quote is concerned with Myth, but with certain modifications it is equally applicable to the subject of Folk Dances.

" The myths ... so full to us of unfading life and beauty, are the masterpieces of an art belonging to the past rather than the present. The growth of myth has been checked by science, it is dying of weights and measures, of proportions and speci- mens-it is not only dying, but half dead, and students are anatomising it. In this world one must do what one can, and if the moderns cannot feel myth as their fore-fathers did, at least they can analyse it. There is a kind of intellectual frontier within which he must be who will sympathise with myth, while he must be without who will investigate it, and it is our fortune that we live near this frontier line and can go in and out."

124 English Folk Dances:

Now it seems to me that it is at this very frontier line that the folk dancer and the folklorist have the good fortune to meet, and if by our meeting we can stimulate each other to go in and out instead of being content to reside on one or other side of the line, we shall derive great mutual benefit. To-night, speaking as a folk dancer- which is all I can do !-I shall endeavour to give a glimpse of what lies within the intellectual frontier.

It must be realised that our approach to the subject of folk dance cannot be quite the same as to that of myth, for whereas myth may be said to belong to the past rather than the present, folk dance is a living and vital art with a

present appeal, and the folk dancer's attitude to his art is not merely one of sympathy, but of belief.

I am reminded of an incident that took place in a log- cabin in the mountains of Kentucky, where Cecil Sharp and I were collecting folk songs. A mountain-woman had been singing to us the ballad of the " Death of Queen Jane," which relates the popular legend of how Jane Seymour, wife of King Henry VIII, voluntarily gave up her life in childbirth to save that of her baby. After he had noted the song, Cecil Sharp told the singer something of the historical events connected with the personages of the ballad. She listened intently and then burst out, trium-

phantly: "There now, I always said the song must be true, because it is so beautiful." That remark really expresses the attitude of the traditional singer or dancer towards his art. He does not reason about it, but instinc-

tively he knows that " Beauty is truth, truth beauty." The history of our songs and dances to a certain extent

must always be hypothetical, but when we hear and see them, and above all when we sing and dance them, we know beyond doubt that they are the outcome of some deep and fundamental human emotion, and as such they bear the stamp of truth.

What exactly was the nature of that emotion, or what

Their Survival and Revival. 125

were the particular circumstances that produced it, are questions into which I shall not enter this evening, but I shall content myself with giving a brief survey of the various forms of folk dance as they have survived in England, including some of the ceremonies and customs that are connected with them, and if I touch on the question of origins it will be only in order to incite others to turn their attention to this interesting and important aspect of the subj ect.

It is probably not necessary to remind you that our dances, like all other products of the folk-as well as the folk themselves-have been fast disappearing since the middle of the last century, as the result of industrialism, the institution of general education and other causes. At the beginning of the century, little or nothing was known of our traditional dances, and we owe our present very extensive knowledge almost entirely to Cecil Sharp's collections.

Our folk dances can be divided into two main categories : firstly, the ritual or spectacular dances, which include Sword and Morris; and, secondly, the social Country Dance.

I will first give an account of the Sword Dance, which has survived in the counties of Yorkshire, Northumberland and Durham.

The Yorkshire dances are performed by six or eight men, who carry swords made of blunt steel with a wooden handle at one end, or sometimes wooden laths are used as substi- tutes for the swords.

In the Northumberland and Durham dances it is cus- tomary for five men only to take part, and the implement used-which is called a rapper-is a short strip of flexible steel with a wooden handle at each end. The origin of this instrument is puzzling. The name suggests that it is derived fromi rapier, but this is hardly an instrument with which the folk would have been familiar, and it seems more probable that it has some affinity with the strips of hoop-iron which are used in the Bavarian Schaefflertanz,

and also in the Sword Dance of Papa Stour, which is described by Sir Walter Scott.

The dancers are usually accompanied by some, if not all, of the following extra characters: the Clown (or Fool), the King, the Queen (a man dressed in woman's clothing), and the Bessie, or Dirty Bet, as he is often called-also a man-woman-who is charged with the important task of

collecting money from the audience. These extra characters frequently wear some kind of

animal insignia, often bits of fur in their caps, and in some cases the Fool wears a fox's tail.

The Long Sword Dances of Yorkshire conform to a

general type as do the Rapper dances of Northumberland and Durham, although there are numerous variants to be found in the different districts.

The dance, as you will presently see, is one of great com-

plexity, demanding strength, skill, and, above all, fine team-work. A false turn on the part of any one performer will throw the whole dance into confusion, for the dancers are linked together in a ring by their swords, each dancer

holding the hilt of his own sword in his right hand and the

point of his neighbour's in his left, and, without breaking this link, they perform the most elaborate evolutions, twisting under the swords, jumping over them, turning the

ring inside out, and so on. The climax of the dance is invariably brought about by

the plaiting of the swords together in a star-shaped figure called the Lock, Nut, Rose or Glass. This symbol is then held aloft and displayed by the leader, or more often than not it is placed round the neck of one of the extra characters, or a dancer, who suffers a mimic decapitation and death, at the moment that the swords are drawn and separated by the performers. At Grenoside, in Yorkshire, the Captain, who wears a complete rabbit-skin over his helmet, is the victim. Often it is the Fool who is decapi- tated, and at Earsdon in Northumberland the Bessie, who

wore a hairy cap, used formerly to be hung, that is, held aloft with the swords around his neck. It is, in passing, interesting to note that a similar incident occurs in a Sword Dance from Austria.

In addition to this dramatic episode at the end of the dance, there is often a suggestion of drama before the dance

begins, when in the Calling-on Song of the Captain the dancers are severally introduced to the audience. Some- times Biblical characters are ascribed to them, at other times they are said to be national heroes, such as Lord

Wellington or other famous generals and admirals, and, again, as in the Earsdon song, they are introduced as ordinary craftsmen. In this song, after the introductions have been made, and various witticisms have been levelled against the dancers, the singer makes the apparently irrelevant announcement that he is going to kill a bullock and divide it amongst the poor.

Now had there been nothing else to go upon but these

Calling-on Songs and the dance itself with its tense emotion

leading up to its exciting and dramatic climax, we should have realised that here was something more than met the eye, and we should have guessed that we were witnessing the survival of some bygone ritual. And this supposition is borne out by the Play, of which the dance was once an integral part, but from which it has in nearly every case become detached, retaining only the dramatic episodes of the Calling-on Song and the mock decapitation. Some- times even these incidents have been dropped and the dance stands entirely on its own.

Fragments of the Play have been noted from various sources, but the most complete versions are those from Ampleforth and Bellerby in Yorkshire, and Revesby in Lincolnshire.

The Play is a crude affair, a mixture of " folk" and debased literary composition, in which the dialogue is con- fused and the action difficult to follow. Yet, in spite of

128 English Folk Dances :

this, it is all highly suggestive, and it grips our attention

throughout. In all versions of the Play we find the motifs of death

and resurrection, but the personality of the victim varies. In the Revesby Play, it is the Fool who is killed by his

sons; in the Bellerby version the Bessie (the man-woman) is killed by the dancers, led by the King; and in the Ample- forth Play, although the King calls upon the dancers to kill the Clown, it is actually a stranger who becomes the victim.

In the Ampleforth Play, there are other motifs besides the death and resurrection. The characters are the King, the Clown, who is the King's father, the Queen, the Doctor and his horse, the dancers, and a stranger, and the plot roughly is this. The King courts the Queen, who rejects him; the King and Clown cross swords and fight; the Queen bestows her favour on the Clown; the King calls on the dancers to kill the Clown; they perform the dance, led by the King, and kill, not the Clown, but a stranger; the King then calls on the dancers to confess their crime, which they one and all deny. Incidentally, the Clown calls the stranger a young man. He says: "I got him this morning before I had my breakfast." Then the dancers, led by the King, sing a psalm over the dead man's body; they call for a doctor to cure him, and the comic, swash- buckling doctor enters riding his horse. After much high- flown nonsensical talk he attempts to cure the dead man, but fails; whereupon the Clown brings him to life by means of some mystic signs, and the dead man arises and sings:

"Good morning, gentlemen, A-sleeping I have been; I've had such a sleep As the like was never seen. And now I am awake And alive unto this day, Our dancers shall have a dance, And the doctor shall have his pay."

To follow up all the suggestive clues and to unravel all the apparent contradictions of the Play is a big work which has yet to be undertaken in conjunction with an exhaustive study of the Mummers' Play, for the two forms have, as you will have realised, a close affinity. There can, I think, be no doubt that the Sword Dance Play and the Mummers'

Play are descended from a common source, in spite of certain distinctive features due, no doubt, to the circumstances through which each play has passed. Both plays have the death and resurrection feature, although in the Mummers' Play the death is brought about by means of a combat and not through the dance.

A close study of the Dance and Play will, I think, sub- stantiate the view held by Cecil Sharp and others that they are the survivals of some fertility rite, and it seems not unreasonable to believe that they are connected with the dramatic representation of the cyclic death of the Old Year and rebirth of the New Year, although it may be possible to find traces of other elements, for instance, the rites of initiation. It is, of course, dangerous to attach un- due importance to the dates of traditional Festivals, but it is perhaps significant that both the Mummers' Play and the Sword Dance are performed traditionally at Christmas time or the New Year.

There are many features connected with the Dance, such as the reference to the killing of the bullock, and the wearing of animal-skin by the victim, which seem to suggest that an animal sacrifice once formed part of the ceremony ; and this, I believe, does actually occur in one of the Sword Dances of South-East Europe.

Whatever the purpose of the killing, either real or supposed, it can, I think, be established beyond doubt that it was a ritual act, and this is borne out by the disguise which the dancers adopt by the assumption of a fictitious character. The Sword Dancers are often termed " guisers," and it is interesting to note that at Sleights (Yorks.)

the Toms-the extra characters who are responsible for the collection of money-wear large wooden spectacles, on the pretext of disguising themselves, and in other places the dancers have been known to blacken their faces.

Before leaving the subject of the Sword Dance, I would refer to its wide diffusion throughout the Continent of

Europe, and the interesting ethnographical knowledge that

might be gained by an extensive study of the dance. We now come to the other main type of spectacular

dance-the Morris-and here a difficulty of terminology meets us at the outset.

We are accustomed nowadays to associate the term with a very definite type of dance for six men, which has been found in the Midland Counties of Oxfordshire, Gloucester-

shire, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire, and also in

degenerate forms in Worcestershire and Herefordshire. But amongst the folk, the term Morris is applied not only to this Midland dance, but to the Sword Dance and the Mummers' Play, and also to certain Processional dances which have survived in Lancashire and Derbyshire. So, in

examining the dance, we must consider what, if any, is the connection between these various dance forms.

The Midland Morris, which for convenience I shall call the Morris, is now-as apparently in Shakespeare's time- almost invariably performed at Whitsuntide.

So far as the actual dance-movements are concerned there is little resemblance between the Morris and the Sword Dance, beyond the fact that they are both of a ceremonial nature. There is no elaboration of figure in the Morris as in the Sword Dance, but the steps are many and varied, and there are complex co-ordinated rhythms of hand and foot which demand considerable skill in performance.

The dancers carry a white handkerchief in each hand, or else a stick in one or both hands, and these are rhythmically

employed during the course of the dance. The pads of bells, called " garters," which the dancers strap on to their shins, are also a great help in emphasising the rhythm of the steps.

The character of the dance can best be described in the words of a traditional Morris dancer as " plenty of brisk but no excitement," and it illustrates that mixture of grave and gay which is so characteristic of the art of the English folk, another example being the ballad with its tragic words set to a lilting air.

The dances, as in the Sword Dance, conform to a general type, but each village has its own tradition, and this accounts for considerable variety in the development of steps and figures.

Cecil Sharp in discussing the possibility of the Morris being an off-shoot of the Sword Dance, which is the view held by Sir Edmund Chambers, suggests that the hand- kerchiefs at some time may have been substituted for swords when the latter were hard to obtain; and that the greater freedom of movement provided by the flexible link had led to a desire for still further freedom, which resulted in the complete severance of the link by cutting each handkerchief in two. There seems, however, very little in the actual construction of the dances to support this theory.

In the Morris dances themselves we find no trace of the sacrificial victim, except, possibly, in the dance called Brighton Camp, in the final figure of which the dancers get into ring-formation with one of their number in the centre of the ring. In this position they dance more and more vigorously and excitedly, gradually closing in on the central figure, and the climax is reached when with a shout they throw him up into the air.

In the ceremonies which are associated with the dance there are, however, many signs of a sacrificial or sacra- mental rite, which are not embodied in the dance itself.

The following description, given in Blount's Ancient Ten- ures, 1679, is quoted by Mr. Percy Manning in Folk-Lore:

"At Kidlington in Oxfordshire the Custom is, That on Monday after Whitson week, there is a fat live Lamb provided, and the Maids of the Town having their thumbs ty'd behind them, run after it, and she that with her mouth takes and holds the Lamb, is declared Lady of the Lamb, which, being dressed with the skin hanging on, is carried on a long Pole before the Lady and her Companions to the Green, attended with Music and a Morisco Dance of men, and another of Women, where the rest of the day is spent in dancing, mirth and merry glee. The next day the Lamb is part bak'd, boyl'd, and rost, for the Ladies feast, where she sits majestically at the upper end of the Table, and her Companions with her with music and other attendants, which ends the solemnity."

A somewhat similar festivity used to be held at Kirtling- ton, another Oxfordshire village, during the week following Whitsun week. This was the Lamb Ale which was attended by the Morris teams of the neighbourhood. The Morris men used to go forth preceded by a shepherd in a clean white smock leading a lamb decked out in ribbons, and every morning the dance called " Bonny Green Garters " was performed round the shepherd and his lamb. The lamb was afterwards killed, made into pies and eaten by the dancers, special virtue being attached to the head-pie, which contained the animal's head with wool intact.

At Abingdon, in Berkshire, the Morris celebrations were preceded by the election of a Mock-Mayor. The voters had to be residents of Ox Street, and at the close of the poll the newly-elected Mayor, seated in a chair decked with evergreens, was carried in procession up and down the street. He was accompanied by the Fool, musician and dancers, a man carrying a large pair of oxen's horns attached to a pole, and the ex-Mayor, who carried a wooden cup, shaped like a chalice, called the " glass," which bore on it the emblem of a bull's heart in silver.

Another ceremony was the Whit-hunt which used to be held in the forest of Wychwood. The villagers of four parishes had the right to run down the four deer, and the first man in at the death had the privilege of cutting the animal's throat and keeping the neck and head for himself.

The ceremonies so far described are all connected with the killing of an animal, but there are others which seem to illustrate the desire to establish contact with the vegetable instead of the animal world.

There is, first of all, the cake- and sword-bearer who still perambulates the streets of Bampton on Whit-Monday, accompanying the Morris dancers. He carries a sword covered with ribbons and flowers upon which is impaled a round tin containing a cake, and small pieces of this cake -said to bring luck-are distributed amongst the spec. tators in return for a monetary offering.

Another instance is the dancing of the Morris around the Maypole.

At Ducklington (Oxon.) the dancers before setting out on their rounds invariably performed " Green Garters " round the Maypole, which was profusely garlanded with " laylocks and golden chains." This they did " for luck," and on one occasion when the dancers failed to pay homage to the Pole, they were angrily reprimanded by a very old man, who threatened to cut down the Pole unless they made good their omission. The ceremony of raising the Pole was performed by the villagers in the early morning after they had been summoned by the blowing of peeling- horns made from the bark of withy trees.

The Calling of the Morris men was also practised at Clifford's Mesne, where the fiddler went to the highest place in the village street and solemnly played a little air.

The derivation of the word Morris is a controversial subject. The theory, which Cecil Sharp at one time held, but afterwards discarded, that the dance is so called

134 English Folk Dances":

because it came from the Moors, is perhaps strengthened by the fact that a dance very like our Morris is still performed in the Castillian Province of Spain-I have seen recent photographs of these dancers, who from their costumes might be mistaken for the Bampton Morris men. But the wide distribution of the dance throughout Europe is argument against this source of origin, and the more likely theory is that suggested by Sir Edmund Chambers and supported by Cecil Sharp, that the dance is called Morris, or Moorish, because the dancers blackened their faces as a form of disguise-a custom which was noted on several occasions by Cecil Sharp. In one village the dancers used to put the very smallest smudge of black on their faces, and when Cecil Sharp asked one of them why he did so, the reply came promptly : " So that no one shan't know you, sir." The smudge did not, of course, disguise him in the least, but the incident is a good example of the per- sistence of tradition.

Of the ritual origin of the Morris there can be no doubt, but what was the nature and symbolism of the rite, and what connection it may have had with the Sword Dance ritual are questions which have not as yet been satisfactorily answered.

And now we must consider the Processional dances, which, though they have many elements in common with the Midland Morris, have a very different construction. This has, no doubt, been determined, partly by the number of participators, which is always more than six, and sometimes unlimited.

There is great variety in the different Processionals, both as regards the manner in which they are danced and the ceremonies with which they are associated. Many of them take place during the month of May, but this is not invariably the case.

In Lancashire, the dances-or at any rate those of which I have first-hand knowledge-used to be associated

with the ceremony of the Rush Carts, which dropped out some years ago.

At Castleton, in Derbyshire, the dancers-formerly all men-used to carry boughs or small pieces of oak, which they tossed from hand to hand as they danced. Amongst the extra characters was the King, who wore over his head and shoulders a garland, that is a wicker construction covered with flowers and surmounted by a nosegay, which, curiously, was called the " Queen." When the Procession was over the King rode into the churchyard, the nosegay was removed from his garland, and the garland itself hoisted to the top of the church tower.

At Winster, also in Derbyshire, the dancers-sixteen in number-are accompanied by a King and Queen (a man dressed as a woman), and a Fool. They dance in two files, and those on the left side (which is called the woman's side) are distinguished by their hats, which are profusely garlanded with flowers, whilst those on the other side wear plain hats.

In all the ceremonies mentioned, and in others of a similar nature, it is the Procession which is the main feature. During the course of the Procession, halts are customarily made and a stationary dance-either a Country Dance, or some special dance-is performed, but this is usually of secondary importance.

The Processional form is also used in the Midland Morris, but here it plays only a minor part, and seems to be little more than an interlude between the stationary dances, a means of shifting the team from one plot to the next.

One is inclined to think that both dance-forms may have their origin partly, if not completely, in the same ceremony, that of a seasonal lustration round the village with halts at certain sacred spots, and that the Midland Morris with its limited number of performers acquired a specialised character, which resulted in the elaboration of the stationary dance at the expense of the Processional.

It now only remains to give some account of the Country Dance, for time prevents me from discussing any of the Hobby Horse ceremonies, or the mystic Abbots Bromley Horn Dance.

The Country Dance is nowadays a purely social affair, which is danced on all occasions by men and women together. The origin of the dance is again conjectural, but everything points to its being a development of the May Day dances, the Longways form of Country Dance being derived from the Processional, and the Rounds and Squares from the Stationary dance.

In the British Museum there is a chap-book printed in black-letter, on the cover of which there is a wood-cut depicting a dance round the Maypole, and underneath is the legend, " Hey for Sellenger's Round," and " Sellenger's Round " we know to be the name of a Country Dance. It is mentioned in The Fair Maid of Perth, a comedy by Thomas Heywood (1575-1650), and is nowadays one of the most popular dances amongst the members of The English Folk Dance Society.

In the Furry Dance, which is still performed annually at Helston in Cornwall, we can perhaps see the transition from the Procession to the Longways Country Dance. The Furry Dance is performed by men and women together, who process in couples through the streets and in and out of the houses, using simple Country Dance figures. Seventy or eighty years ago the ceremony was more elaborate and the bearing of green boughs formed part of the pro- ceedings.

The Country Dance, as we would expect, is not a highly specialised dance so far as the individual is concerned, but one that lies within the capacity of any one who is sound of wind and limb, no matter what his or her age may be. The steps are simple, and the dance derives artistic expression mainly from the variety and elaboration of its patterns.

Unlike the Morris and Sword, which so far as we know

were danced only by the " folk," the Country Dance was popular with all classes of society. It was danced at Court not only in England, but on the Continent, and we were known in Tudor days as the " Dancing English " and were renowned for carrying a " fair presence."

In 1650, John Playford, the musician, edited and published under the title of The English Dancing Master the tunes and descriptions of 104 Country Dances that were popular at that time. A second edition under the title of The Dancing Master was issued in 1652, and ultimately it went through seventeen editions, the last being published in 1728.

During this period of seventy-eight years, many of the dances and tunes appeared in altered forms in the succes- sive editions, some disappeared altogether, and in every edition a number of new dances were added. The gradual process was to drop out the Rounds and Squares and dances for a limited number of couples, and to retain and add only those of the " Longways for as many as will " type. Practically speaking, it is only this type of Country Dance that has survived in England, and we owe our knowledge of the other forms to the deciphering of the Playford collections by Cecil Sharp and others.

The majority of the dances in the Playford collections are not pure folk dances, although they may be said to have a folk-basis. The Country Dance, as Cecil Sharp has pointed out, ordinarily consisted of a series of figures arbitrarily chosen to fit a given tune, and only in certain instances did a particular combination of figures become stereotyped and achieve universal acceptance. Though the older dances in the collection had probably been danced for many generations in the same way to the same tune, there is no doubt that others owe a great deal to the conscious manipulation of traditional material by John Playford and his sub-editors. Many of the tunes, too-par- ticularly those in the later editions-are popular composed

138 English Folk Dances":

airs of the period which were pressed into the service of the dance, or in some cases may even have been written expressly for the dance.

That finishes my account-which I know is a superficial one-of our English folk-dance survivals. But the story is not complete without some account of the revival, for our dances are like the victim in the Ampleforth Play, who has never really died, but has only slumbered or feigned death in order to be revived or re-born.

There is, perhaps, yet another analogy between our folk music and the Ampleforth Play. The doctor who is called in to cure the dead man gets carried away in a flood of his own oratory, which the King interrupts by pertinently remarking: " Well, doctor, he's a long time coming to life." Whereupon the Clown breaks in with the curt: " I'll fetch him back to life "-and immediately he does so. And it seems to me that had Cecil Sharp set out to theorise about folk music and dance instead of immediately getting to work to collect and restore them, it is doubtful whether we should now have had this beautiful building' and all for which it stands.

The Society's repertory, thanks to Cecil Sharp, is an astonishingly big one. In addition to the many hundreds of dances deciphered from the Playford collections, it includes some twenty or more collected from traditional sources, sixteen Sword Dances, and about a hundred Morris dances, representing eighteen different Morris tradi- tions. These dances are all recorded and published in available form, and it is hard for us to realise how nearly they had disappeared.

Cecil Sharp's first sight of English folk dances was in 1899, when he witnessed a performance of the Headington team, or "side" (to give it its technical term). The Headington dancers and those of Bampton-in-the-Bush, who still celebrate their annual Whit-Monday festival,

1 Cecil Sharp House.

were the only surviving traditional Morris teams, and for the rest he had to depend upon the memories of individual dancers.

Most of the Sword Dance teams, too, had been dis- banded, although in many cases Cecil Sharp was able to bring them together again, and a satisfactory feature of the general interest in folk dancing is that several traditional teams have revived their dances and still continue to practise them.

Cecil Sharp did a great work in preserving and accurately recording so many songs and dances which would otherwise have become extinct, but his real greatness lies in what a friend has called his power of recognition. He perceived immediately that these songs and dances which had lingered on in the memories of old people were something more than a relic of the past-the mere shell of beliefs that have been outgrown and forgotten. He saw that they contained the germs of life, and that as a living expression of those unchanging human emotions which we share with our ancestors they belonged as much to this generation as to the past. This fundamental quality of the dances was well expressed by a traditional Morris dancer, who said of them: " Our dances are now what they were and what they always will be."

An objection was made to me a short time ago that The English Folk Dance Society, by reviving the dances and taking them out of their original settings, was complicating the work of analysis which it is the function of the Folk Lore Society to perform. I have every sympathy with my folklorist friend. How much easier it is to hold a post- mortem examination on a corpse that will, as the Americans say, " stay put," than to examine a living organism which is for ever changing, developing and showing new and unexpected tendencies.

The error of this point of view is, however, shown in the Presidential Address which Dr. Marett gave to your

Society some thirteen years ago. In discussing what he considered might be called the folklorist's fallacy, he says:

" The rule that ghosts must not walk is applied to survivals. Let a stake be driven through them at the cross-roads rather than that they should thus unconscionably resurrect. More especially is it resented if revival lift the obsolescent custom to a higher plane of culture. Not only is it unseemly on the part of the unquiet spirit; it is snobbish into the bargain. But it will be urged that I misrepresent the attitude of the folk-lorist by ignoring his scientific motive. Since his aim is to reconstruct the original institution out of its remaining fragments, these are really spoilt for his purpose if they turn out to have been re- adapted. I hope that it will not sound a paradox if I reply to this, argument that the original institution in question never existed. Origins are relative, and the regress of conditions is endless. The supposed prototype is but an effect of historical mirage.... There never was a time.., .when the interplay of old and new did not go on exactly as it does now-when survival and revival, degeneration and regeneration, were not pulsating together in the rhythm of social life."

" The living," as Dr. Marett said on another occasion, " must be studied in its own right and not by means of methods borrowed from the study of the lifeless." And, furthermore, he says that you are not in a position to explain human institution unless you can speak about it as an insider, that " to be a folklorist worthy of the name you must have first undergone initiation amongst the folk, must have become one of them inwardly and in the spirit."

Now, I can imagine no better form of initiation than that which is provided by song and dance. In them we find, indeed, the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. This was brought home to me very forcibly last year when I was collecting folk songs on the shores of Newfound- land. Although a perfect stranger and accustomed to an entirely different mode of life from these simple fisher-folk,

I was able to establish an immediate intimacy with them by virtue of our common musical interest. Often they would remark, " How wonderful it is that a stranger should be so much like ourselves," and on one occasion when I had spent an evening of song in a fisherman's cottage, he turned to his wife and said of me: " She is like some one you have known very well who has gone away and then come back." That remark I felt was a genuine endorse- ment of my initiation amongst the folk.

And now, in conclusion, I must apologise for the incon- clusive and fragmentary nature of my address, but I would at the same time express the hope that I have said enough for you to realise what a vast field of research the subject of folk dance offers to the folklorist. And if any words of mine have encouraged the meeting of folk dancers and folklorists on what Sir Edward Tylor calls the " intellectual frontier," I shall indeed be happy. For the folk dancer cannot appreciate his dances to the full unless he has some knowledge of the conditions and events which have influenced them and prompted their growth; and the folklorist cannot afford on his side to ignore the living matter which is presented him by the folk dancer.

The happiest and most satisfactory state of affairs is, of course, that in which the folk dancer and the folklorist are combined in one and the same person. Some of our folk dancers are endeavouring to become folklorists in a mild way-and I would like to acknowledge the help and sympathy that your President has given and is giving to us in this direction. Is it too much to ask that you in your turn should avail yourselves of the opportunities afforded by The English Folk Dance Society and become folk dancers ? And lest anyone should hesitate to do so out of respect to the dignity of his years, I would tell him or her that it has been proved beyond all doubt that the most suitable age to start dancing is the age you happen to be.

MAUD KARPELES.

PROGRAMME OF DANCES PERFORMED BY THE MEMBERS OF THE ENGLISH FOLK DANCE SOCIETY.

From SWORD DANCE:

Rapper. Earsdon, Northumberland.

FOLK TUNES ON THE PIPE AND TABOR:

JOAN SHARP.

MORRIS DANCES:

Processional. Wheatley, Oxon.

Step Back. Field Town, Oxon. Constant Billy. Adderbury, Oxon.

COUNTRY DANCES:

Helston Furry Processional. Cornwall. Haste to the Wedding. Devon. Gathering Peascods. Playford's Dancing

Newcastle. j Master, 1650-1728. Picking up Sticks. Running Set. Kentucky, U.S.A.

MORRIS DANCES:

Leap Frog. Field Town, Oxon. Green Garters. Bampton, Oxon.

THE ORIGIN OF "MORRIS."

Miss Karpeles' allusions to the origin of the Morris dance in the paper she read to the Folk-Lore Society on 21st October last prompts me to quote a reference to Moorish dances that is not, perhaps, of great importance, but which, since it comes from a Mediaeval inventory, may not be well known.

The 1467 inventory of the plate of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, preserved in the archives of Lille and published by the Comte de Laborde in 1851,2 includes among the

2Les duos de Bourgogne, 2e partie, II; the salt-cellars are described on p. 84.

saltcellars two decorated with " danses de morisque." " Item, deux sallibres d'argent.. . le bachin en maniere d'une fleur de lys esmailli6, et autour du couvercle a une danse de morisque...." We know that Rene of Anjou had dancers to perform the " morisque " before him, and these

saltcellars, for which their fleur-de-lys form suggests a French origin, show that the dance was familiar enough in that country to be perpetuated in art. The close links between France, Burgundy and England in the fifteenth

century make it more than probable that it reached us from there; Ren6 of Anjou's daughter married Henry VI of England, Charles the Bold married the sister of Edward IV. The transition from one court to another must have been the easiest in the world.

That " morris " was the Tudor English translation of " moresque " is shown by the title of the earliest engraved pattern-book for craftsmen ever published in England. It contains designs for damascening in the Moorish style, and is entitled Morysse and Damashin renewed and increased, very profitable for goldsmythes and embroderers. It was published in London in 1543.3

JOAN EVANS.

SSee Campbell Dodgson in Proc. Soc. Ants., I9I7 (June 28) p. 2I0.

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