"Myself above Tom Piper to advance,
Which so bestirs him in the Morrice-dance
For penny wage."[164:A]
And Shakspeare, alluding to the violent gesticulations and music of the Morris dancers says, speaking of Cade the rebel,
——————— "I have seen him
Caper upright like a wild morisco,
Shaking the bloody darts, as he his bells."[164:B]
The music accompanying the Morris and the May-games, was either the simple pipe, or the pipe and tabor, or the bag-pipe. In the following passage from a curious controversial pamphlet, published towards the close of the sixteenth century, the morris and the pipe and tabor are thus noticed: "If Menippus, or the man in the moone, be so quick sighted, that he beholds these bitter sweete jests, these railing outcries; this shouting at prelates to cast them downe, and heaving at Martin to hang him up for Martilmas biefe; what would he imagine otherwise, then as that stranger, which seeing a Quintessence (beside the foole and the Maid Marian) of all the picked youth, strained out of an whole Endship, footing the morris about a may pole, and he, not hearing the crie of the hounds, for the barking of dogs, (that is to say) the minstrelsie for the fidling, the tune for the sound, nor the pipe for the noise of the tabor, bluntly demanded if they were not all beside themselves, that they so lip'd and skip'd whithout an occasion."[164:C] To this quotation Mr. Haslewood has annexed the subsequent ludicrous story from a tract entitled, Hay any worke for Cooper. It is a striking proof of the singular attraction and popularity of the May-games at this
period:—"There is a neighbour of ours, an honest priest, who was sometimes (simple as he now stands) a vice in a play, for want of a better; his name is Gliberie of Hawstead in Essex, hee goes much to the pulpit. On a time, I thinke it was the last May, he went up with a full resolution to doe his businesse with great commendations. But, see the fortune of it. A boy in the church, hearing either the summer lord with his May-game, or Robin Hood with his morice daunce, going by the church, out goes the boye. Good Glibery, though he were in the pulpit, yet had a mind to his old companions abroad, (a company of merry grigs you must thinke them to be, as merry as a vice on a stage), seeing the boy going out, finished his matter presently with John of London's amen, saying, ha ye faith, boy! are they there? Then ha with thee, and so came downe and among them he goes."[165:A]
That the music of the bag-pipe was highly esteemed in the days of Shakspeare, and even preferred to the tabor and pipe, we have a strong instance in his Winter's Tale, where a servant enters announcing Autolicus in the following terms: "If you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you would never dance again after a tabor and pipe; no, the bag-pipe could not move you[165:B];" and that especially in the country, it was a frequent accompaniment to the morris bells, the numerous collections of madrigals, published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, afford many proofs. Thus, from a collection printed in 1600: