III. MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
In the earliest records of Morris dancing, the pipe and tabor, or whittle and dub, were the musical instruments in use, and the oldest dancers to-day are never tired of lamenting that the pipe and tabor to which they danced in their youth have gone out of fashion.
A Morris dancer in Fleet Street, London, is described in a seventeenth century manuscript in the British Museum (Harleian MS. 3910):
“In Fleet Strete then I heard a shoote: I putt of my hatt, and I made no staye, And when I came unto the roote, Good Lord! I heard a taber play, For so, God save me, a morrys-daunce.”
In the old play of Jacke Drums Entertainment (1601)—
The taber and pipe strike up a morrice. A shoute within. Ed. Oh, a morrice is come, observe our country sports, ’Tis Whitsun-tyde and we must frolick it.
Enter the Morrice.
The Song
“Skip it and trip it, nimbly, nimbly, Tickle it, tickle it lustily, Strike up the taber, for the wenches favour, Tickle it, tickle it lustily.
Let us be seen in Hygate Greene, To dance for the honour of Holloway. Since we are come hither, let’s spare no leather, To dance for the honour of Holloway.”
Later the fiddle took the place of pipe and tabor, and still more recently the concertina.
The present-day fiddler at Bampton, Mr Wells, and Mr Mark Cox of Headington are well worth a visit from musicians interested in the actual form in which the tunes are played to-day by the musically unlettered.
Mr William Kimber, jun., of Headington, is also in possession of the old tunes, which he plays skilfully on the concertina. Patience will be needed should the tunes be noted, for very few musicians can repeat a phrase, even if it is the very last bar, without going right back to the beginning of the tune. When the phrase is intricate, and has to be often repeated, this means that a considerable amount of time is taken up. The same applies to the dance; the traditional dancer is quite unselfconscious, and if he is pulled up and asked for a repetition of a step, he cannot give it, as a rule, without going back to the beginning of the dance; so that in writing down the steps and evolutions of the dance much patience is needed and understanding of the way in which the minds of simple folk work.
Within the memory of some of the oldest dancers the dancing was always accompanied by singing, and old Master Druce, of Ducklington, told us that the Morris could not be properly danced without singing. He could, however, only remember a few of the words of one dance—“The Lollypop Man.”
The Bampton men gave us a few odd verses of one or two songs, but I am afraid the real song will never be recovered, for, as one old man put it to a friend of mine, “the words are too clumsy for girls.”
Miss Gilchrist gave me the words of a Lancashire Morris which we have often used with very good effect—
“Morris dance is a very pretty tune, Lads and lassies plenty, Every lad shall have his lass, And I’ll have four and twenty.
My new shoone they are so good, I could dance Morris if I would, And if hat and coat be dressed, I will dance Morris with the best.
This is it and that is it, And this is Morris dancing, My poor father broke his leg, And so it was a’chancing.
Bread and cheese and the old cow’s head Roasted in a lantern, A bit for me and a bit for you, And a bit for the Morris dancer.”
Even in this doggerel there are traces of the old sacrificial rite of animal sacrifice in which the head was considered as the most sacred part of the animal and much coveted. It was generally awarded to the victor or victorious side in a fight for its possession.