“Thy Wakes, thy Quintals, here thou hast
Thy maypoles, too, with garlands grac’d
Thy Morris-dance, thy Whitsun-ale;
Thy shearing flat, which never fail.”
In later times the Morris-dance was frequently introduced on the stage.
MORRIS DANCERS, TEMP. JAMES I. (From a Painting by Vickenboom.)
As might be expected, the Puritans strongly condemned this form of pleasure. Richard Baxter, in his “Divine Appointment of the Lord’s Day,” gives us a vivid picture of Sunday in a pleasure-loving time. “I have lived in my youth,” says Baxter, “in many places where sometimes shows of uncouth spectacles have been their sports at certain seasons of the year, and sometimes morrice-dancings, and sometimes stage plays and sometimes wakes and revels.... And when the people by the book [of Sports] were allowed to play and dance out of public service-time, they could hardly break off their sports that many a time the reader was fain to stay till the piper and players would give over; and sometimes the morrice-dancers would come into the church in all their linen, and scarfs, and antic dresses, with morrice-bells jingling at their legs. And as soon as common prayer was read did haste out presently to their play again.” Stubbes, in his “Anatomie of Abuses” (1585), writes in a similar strain.
A WHITSUN MORRIS DANCE.