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.