V. EXTRA CHARACTERS
In the days when the Morris dance was an integral part of the people’s life it was no one’s business to make exact records in writing either of the dance itself, of the ceremonies connected with it, or of the characters associated with it. It is therefore very difficult to differentiate with any exactitude just where the Morris dance merged into the sword dance, and just where the dances were merged into the Mummers’ plays and other early pageants and ceremonies.
All primitive forms of dance and drama are attempts to express man’s worship of the natural forces and facts of life, so that we shall expect to find other characters than those of the actual dancers. The most common of these are the Lord and Lady, the King and Queen, evidently representing early ideas of the masculine and feminine principles in nature and worshipped as the forces which brought the return of the green life of spring to the earth. Both these characters also occur separately in some places, the King being called Mayor, a Lord of Misrule, a very curious survival of the Mock King of Saturnalian revels, who after a short reign of feasting and festivity is sacrificed that a new king may reign in his stead. One very old man whom I met, and who shall remain unnamed and unlocated, boasted to me that he had been this Mayor of the Morris nine times. The qualification for this honour, I learned elsewhere in the town, was to have been locked up three times in one year for being drunk and three times in one year for beating your wife! In emphasising the religious origin of these dances it is well to bear in mind that the religion they express is not precisely that of the orderly Church and Chapel-going folk of to-day, and that no sort of gloom or depression was allowed to mar the joy of the ceremonial, even when the end of the principal actor was known to be execution at the point of the sword. As Dr Frazer remarks, “in these circumstances it was natural that the principal actor should be recruited from the gaol more often than from the green-room.”
The Queen was also called the Moll, Maid Marian, the Lady of the Lamb, Bessie, and The Lady of the May, and was a man, generally a smooth-faced youth, who was dressed as and represented a woman.
A very important character was the Fool, Tom Fool, Dysard, Squire, or Rodney, identical with the jongleur or joculator. He was often the best dancer, did special feats to amuse the crowd, and with a cow’s tail and bladder attached to the ends of a stick kept the crowd from encroaching on the dancers. The Fool survived in Lancashire as “owd Sooty face,” “Dirty Bet,” and “owd Molly Coddle” as late as 1891.
The Hobby-Horse was a great feature of the dance in early days. Its wild capering and frolicking around added much to the general amusement. Mr Cecil Sharp says that he has not met with a traditional dancer who remembers a hobby-horse being part of the Morris side, but there are numerous allusions to it in writing.
In “Cobbe’s Prophecies, his Signs and Tokens, his Madrigalls, Questions and Answers” (1614), the following occurs:—
“And fine Maide Marian with her smoile, Shew’d how a rascall plaide the roile: But, when the Hobby-Horse did wihy, Then all the wenches gave a tihy.”