"The chambermaid, and serving man by night
That seek out silent hanging: Then mine host
And his fat spouse, that welcomes to their cost
The gauled traveller, and with a beckning
Informs the tapster to inflame the reck'ning.
Then the beast-eating clown, and next the fool,
The Bavian, with long tail and eke long tool,
Cum multis aliis, that make a dance."
Mr. Ritson has taken notice of an old wooden cut "preserved on the title of a penny-history, (Adam Bell, &c.) printed at Newcastle in 1772," and which represents, in his opinion, a morris dance consisting of the following personages: 1. A bishop. 2. Robin Hood. 3. The potter or beggar. 4. Little John. 5. Friar Tuck. 6. Maid Marian. He remarks that the execution of the whole is too rude to merit a copy, a position that is not meant to be controverted; but it is necessary to introduce the cut in this place for the purpose of correcting an error into which the above ingenious writer has inadvertently fallen. It is proper to mention that it originally appeared on the title page to the first known edition of Robin Hood's garland, printed in 1670, 18mo.
Now this cut is certainly not the representation of a morris dance, but merely of the principal characters belonging to the garland. These are, Robin Hood, Little John, queen Catherine, the bishop, the curtal frier, (not Tuck,) and the beggar. Even though it were admitted that Maid Marian and Friar Tuck were intended to be given, it could not be maintained that either the bishop or the beggar made part of a morris.
There still remains some characters in Mr. Tollett's window, of which no description can be here attempted, viz. Nos. 1, 4, 6, and 7. As these are also found in the Flemish print,[205] they cannot possibly belong to Robin Hood's company; and therefore their learned proprietor would, doubtless, have seen the necessity of re-considering his explanations.[206] The resemblance between the two ancient representations is sufficiently remarkable to warrant a conjecture that the window has been originally executed by some foreign artist; and that the panes with the English friar, the hobby-horse, and the may-pole have been since added.
Mr. Waldron has informed us that he saw in the summer of 1783, at Richmond in Surrey, a troop of morris dancers from Abingdon, accompanied by a fool in a motley jacket, who carried in his hand a staff about two feet long, with a blown bladder at the end of it, with which he either buffeted the crowd to keep them at a proper distance from the dancers, or played tricks for the diversion of the spectators. The dancers and the fool were Berkshire husbandmen taking an annual circuit to collect money.[207] Mr. Ritson too has noticed that morris dancers are yet annually seen in Norfolk, and make their constant appearance in Lancashire. He has also preserved a newspaper article respecting some morris dancers of Pendleton, who paid their annual visit to Salford, in 1792;[208] and a very few years since, another company of this kind was seen at Usk in Monmouthshire, which was attended by a boy Maid Marian, a hobby-horse, and a fool. They professed to have kept up the ceremony at that place for the last three hundred years. It has been thought worth while to record these modern instances, because it is extremely probable that from the present rage for refinement and innovation, there will remain, in the course of a short time, but few vestiges of our popular customs and antiquities.
FOOTNOTES:
[156] This will hereafter appear to be a mistake.