[710] Henderson, 70. In Yorkshire the sword-dancers carried the image of a white horse; in Cheshire a horse’s head and skin.
[711] Cf. ch. x; also Wise, Enquiries concerning the Inhabitants, ... of Europe, 51 ‘the common people in many parts of England still practise what they call a Morisco dance, in a wild manner, and as it were in armour, at proper intervals striking upon one another’s staves,’ &c. Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) calls the morris ‘a dance in which bells are gingled, or staves or swords clashed.’
[712] Müllenhoff, 124; cf. Mayer, 236.
[713] Douce, 602; Burton, 123. The bells were usually fastened upon broad garters, as they are still worn in Oxfordshire. But they also appear as anklets or are hung on various parts of the dress. In a cut from Randle Holme’s Academie of Armorie, iii. 109 (Douce, 603; Burton, 127), a morris-dancer holds a pair of bells in his hands. Sometimes the bells were harmonized. In Pasquil and Marforius (1589) Penry is described as ‘the fore gallant of the Morrice with the treble bells’; cf. Rowley, Witch of Edmonton, i. 2.
[714] Müllenhoff, 123; Mayer, 235.
[715] Tabourot, Orchésographie, 97.
[716] Cf. Appendix J. A figure with a bow and arrow occurs in the Abbots Bromley horn-dance (p. 166).
[717] W. Kempe’s Nine Days Wonder (ed. Dyce, Camden Soc.) describes his dancing of the morris in bell-shangles from London to Norwich in 1599.
[718] Müllenhoff, 114.
[719] The ‘Squire’s Son’ of the Durham dances is probably the clown’s son of the Wharfdale version; for the term ‘squire’ is not an uncommon one for the rustic fool. Cf. also the Revesby play described in the next chapter. Why the fool should have a son, I do not know.