Studio Brief 2 - Visual Journalist MORRIS DANCER INTERVIEW

Transcript 4 – Moss Ambrose (Morris Dancer and Morris Fool)

 – BRITISH MORRIS TRADITIONS

A: How has or how is Morris dancing influenced by folklore?

M: Well every area of the country had a particular kind of folk tradition, so there are different types of dances for different parts of the country. So to say it’s all Morris dancing is just a huge generic term.

In Yorkshire, there’s a sword dance, called ‘long sword’ which is basically wooden swords which they weave into a knot. They follow each other round, with a hand at either and of the sword, and form a knot which is quite often a pentagram. So there is 5 or 6 men and they weave a pentacle lock at the end which is supposedly connected with magic.

In the North East, in Tyneside, they have a tradition called Rappa. It’s again a sword dance tradition, but with metal swords. What they did is they took the things they used to use in the pits to take coal dust out of ponies’ coats, pit ponies. Flexible, bendy swords which they scraped down the horse coats with to get the coal dust out. So they took these and made a dance with them which became this thing called Rappa, which is very fast. 5 men again, linked to each other by holding either end of the sword, but they weave incredibly complicated knots. It’s a show dance, much more than Morris dancing is usually. But it came from their trade as miners.

[…]

In the North West you’ve got Clogg which comes from the mills, it’s a workers thing, it’s a sort of Lancashire, Cheshire tradition. The clogs came from the mills so they used them in their dancing and then their work became part of the dance. Because the streets of Lancashire are long and thin, these are long dances, they fitted in with processions.

Coming down the country, there’s the stuff called border dancing which is characterised by the fact that the people black their faces, which is called guising, and guising is disguising. The idea behind it was that you blacked your face because your features then all seem to merge and you can get away with what you want. And they did do what they wanted, because the whole idea was that people did Morris dancing on a bank holiday, they’d collect money, drink beer and their landlords wouldn’t know who they were because they were blacked up. So the border tradition wear rag coats and it’s a very simple sort of stick dance, hitting each other with sticks. So that’s the Shropshire, Welsh border, coming down to Herefordshire.

In the central South, in the Cotswolds there’s the Cotswold Morris which is usually characterized by people wearing white. So white trouser and white shirt, and a baldric which is a cross strap with a badge on, and quite often straw hats, and bells. So the bell pads that you tie on your knees, that’s basically Cotswold Morris. But each village in the Cotswolds had a different tradition because there was fairly vigorous competition between the villages.

Then if you go to East Anglia, you’ve got something called Molly Dancing. Which is farm workers dressing up their working clothes with a few ribbons and bells and doing, like a country dance.

So that’s all the different types of Morris dancing.

[…]

We don’t know where the term comes form but some people say Morris dancing is Moorish dancing. But they term Morris also just means ‘let’s go’ or ‘let’s dance’. 

Transcript 5 – Moss Ambrose (Morris Dancer and Morris Fool)

-MORRIS AND FOLKLORE

A: Are there any particular dances that are specifically connected to a story?

M: Erm, some of them are connected to songs. Stick dances are presumably a remembrance of quarterstaff fighting, Robin Hood and Little John kind of stuff, so they’re a commemoration of that tradition. There’s very few that tell any kind of connected narrative. I was thinking about ‘Banks of the Dee’, which is a column dance where you have handkerchiefs waving which look like waves. But it’s the tune really, not the actually story, not in my experience.

A: Another things I’ve been looking into is Shamans and the Shakespearean Fool, that person that crossed over into the other world and brought information back. I wondered if you thought there was a connection between the Shakespearean fool and the fool in Morris dancing as a sort of story teller.

M: Well I’m a fool. The fool might well have been the Shaman, he is the dancer that sort of blends with the rest of the dancers, but I think in English folklore, he’s more sort of connected to the Lord of Misrule. Well you know the Lord of Misrule is connected to April Fool’s Day, in Medieval times, even in the church, they would turn the order round, and even the bishops would serve the lowest people. I’ve been a fool for about 30 years, and the fool has got a very particular role, he isn’t really a priest and he isn’t really, well there’s animals in Morris as well. We’ve got a black horse, which had originally been a horse’s skull. Really what people tend to have is animals that are local to them, so Leeds really should have an owl, my coat has got an owl on the back of it. But we ended up with a black horse. Leicestershire has a fox.

A: I wondered if Bradford had a boar maybe?

M: They should have but they don’t.

Burnsal in the dales have the Barguest, the black dog. Because Troller’s Gill, has got a Barguest legend.

So the animal is the god, and the fool is the priest. But he is also the bridge with the audience. To be the fool you have to know all the dances, so that you can run rings round them, bring people into them and not collide with them. So yes, the fool probably originally was the priest, but he has become a sort of licenced idiot.

A: So he has gone from being like a court fool, to the Lord of Misrule?

M: Yeah, like Shakespeare.

A: Is there a connection between folklore and the costumes that you wear?

M: They say that tatter coats are supposed to be forest leaves. Which are images of fertility, green in the midst of barren.

[…]

M: The horn dances are very strange, meandering dances with a very haunting tune. And they do these horn dances with clashes, obviously connected to hunting and fertility.

There are a lot of customs around but whether they sort of tell stories, I don’t know.

A: Are there any sort of rituals associated with Morris dancing and the landscape?

M: Some of them take their origins from seasons. Generally speaking, they are mostly transferable. But then for example, the Padstow dance is only danced in Padstow on the 1^st May, never done anywhere else. 

REFLECTIONS ON RESEARCH

Speaking to a Morris dancer who has danced for more than 30 years, I've collected some really insightful information into the culture and traditions of Morris dancing, and the specific origins and elements that inform it. I previously had no knowledge of the traditions of Morris so it was interesting to learn that the type of Morris dancing you practice is in fact based on your geographical location, and heritage. Learning how socio-cultural contexts inform modern day folk practice was particularly interesting as it sparked ideas for me about visually documenting a guide to Britain's Morris traditions. The contextual and aesthetic differences between the traditions seems to be something fairly unknown to non-dancers so this could be a ideal answer to the brief 'tell and untold story'. 

Considering the connections with folklore and the landscape, it may be necessary to explore media and material to mimic textures and experiment with a connection between the natural influences and the aesthetic of Morris. 

MORRIS DANCERS AREN'T IN SEASON...

Unfortunately Morris dancers only perform in spring and summer so to further my research I will aim to explore the specific Morris traditions through video and photographic footage on the internet and hopefully I will be able visit a practice to get a better sense of the sound and movement of the tradition through photographs an experiential drawings.