In a tract entitled Plaine Percevall the Peace Maker of England, 1590, mention is made of a “stranger, which, seeing a quintessence (besides the Foole and Maid Marian) of all the picked youth strained out of a whole endship, footing the Morris about a May-pole, and he, not hearing the ministrelsie for the noise of the tabors, bluntly demanded if they were not all beside themselves that they so lip’d and skip’d without an occasion.”
Stubbes, in his Anatomie of Abuses, thus describes a Morris dance under the title of the “Devil’s Daunce.”
Morris Dancers in the time of James I.
Description of the Lord of Misrule,
and attendant Morris
“First, all the wilde heads of the parish, flocking together, chuse them a graund Captaine (of Mischiefe) whome they innoble with the title of my Lord of Misrule, and him they crowne with great solemnitie, and adopt for their King. This king annoynted, chooseth forth twentie, fourtie, three score or a hundred lustie guttes like to himselfe to wait upon his Lordly Majesty, and to guard his noble person. Then everyone of these his men he investeth with his liveries of greene, yellow, or some other light wanton colour. And as though that were not (bawdy) gawdy ynough, I should say, they bedecke themselves with scarffes, ribbons and laces hanged all over with golde ringes, precious stones and other jewels: this done, they tie about either legge twentie or fourtie belles with rich handkerchiefe in their handes and sometimes laide a cross over their shoulders and neckes, borrowed for the most part of their pretie Mopsies and loving Bessies, for bussing them in the darke. Thus all things set in order, then have they their hobby-horses, their dragons and other antiques together with their baudie pipers and thundering drummers, to strike up the Devil’s Daunce, withall: then martch this heathen company towards the Church and Church-yarde, their pypers pyping, their drummers thundering, their stumpes dauncing, their belles iyngling, their handkercheefes fluttering about their heades like madde men, their hobbie horses and other monsters skirmishing amongst the throng: and in this sorte they goe to the Church (though the Minister be at prayer or preaching), dauncing and swinging their handkercheefes over their heads in the Church like Devils incarnate, with such a confused noise, that no man can heare his owne voyce.”
To come to later times; in a curious story of a Country Squire who turned Methodist and went about the country preaching, called “The Spiritual Quixote or the Summer’s Ramble” of Mr Geoffry Wildgoose, a comic romance (1773), there is an amusing account of a Morris dance.
“In the afternoon when they were got within a few miles of Gloucester at a genteel house near the end of the village they saw almost the whole parish assembled in the Court to see a set of Morrice dancers who (this holiday time), dressed up in bells and ribbands, were performing for the entertainment of the family of some company that had dined there.”