With a hey nonny nonny ... Watch it, pal. The last lot to call us wussy got beaten up outside a Mariborough pub a few years back. There's no one harder than a Morris dancer. So what's with the bells and the hankies? It's tradition, innit?
As old as God bless you, Ma'am? Older, though no one knows where the traditions stem from. Some claim it was an ancient fertility rite or a pagan crop dance; either way it's certainly pre Elizabethan - the first one, sonny - and it even rates a mention in A Midsummer Night's Dream. But it's still not exactly cutting edge, is it? Don't you believe it. The puritans banned it for being the "devil's music" and "satanic dance". Yeah, but now it's all thigh-slapping, beard-growing, yard-of-ale drinking and hearty "Hail fellow and well met". You don't want to believe all you read, mate.
You mean that Morris dancing has a dark side? Precisely. Behind the ruddy smiles is a hotbed of intrigue and factionalism. Some reckon that there is a true Morris while others look on it as a good excuse for a knees-up and that it doesn't matter if the steps aren’t precisely as our ancestors performed then.
When did all this start? At the back end of the 19th century, when a bloke called Cecil Sharp "rediscovered" the dance form. Sharp, a music teacher, first saw Morris when a team of dancers headed by his builder, a man called William Kimber, knocked on his door on Boxing Day in 1899. Sharp was immediately taken by the dances and became a fanatical collector of English folk dance & song and was virtually single-handedly responsible for inventing the concept of the English folk movement.
But is there a definitive "Olde Englande" Morris dance? That's a tricky one. Some consider Cotswold to be the purest Morris, but there's a huge range of regional variations that are considered part of the Morris umbrella. For instance, there's Border, North-west, rapper and sword ...
OK, I'm getting the picture. That's only the half of it. There's so little agreement between we Morrissers that there's three separate governing bodies - the Morris Federation, Open Morris and The Morris Ring - to head up the various interests. The Morris Ring, which was founded in 1934, is the hard-line fundamentalist arm of the Morris movement; only certain prescribed dance steps may be used and women are absolutely forbidden to take part.
Where did they get this idea from? I've no idea. As far as anyone can tell women have always danced Morris, so it might have been one of those homoerotic inventions that were much in vogue in the early 20th century. Anyway, the other two more liberal organisations were formed out of the growth of interest in Morris dancing as a result of the folk-rock revival of the 1970s.
So does anything go in some Morris dancing circles? I'm afraid so. I'm as liberal as the next man but you can take things too far. Now that the middle-class trendies have got interested, Morris dancing is in danger of losing its working-class roots. It is being taken away from the people and repackaged by arts professionals who want to teach and stage Morris without any respect for its tradition. They'll do anything to get a grant. Terrible.
But where can 1 find a Morris dancing club? Side. Sorry - Sides. There not called clubs, they're sides.
Pull the other one, it's got bells The old ones aren't necessarily the funny ones. And 1 should know.