Folks shouldn't laugh

Sam Bond talks to Morris man Mark Rogers about the history of the eccentric art form and its current revival...

MARK Rogers loves his Morris dancing.

So much, in fact, that he and his Surrey family upped sticks and trundled down the M4 purely on the strength of the Stroud team's enviable reputation.

"I tend to take it seriously, my wife and I effectively moved here because Stroud Morris were here," he said.

"We joined the Morris dancers first, then found jobs, then found a house."

Despite his obvious enthusiasm, even Mark is unaware of the real origins of Morris which go back so far it is hard to get an accurate idea of how it all began.

"We don't know where it came from," he said.

"The best guess at the moment is that it first arrived in England just after the crusades."

The word Morris is a corruption of Moorish, whose dancing the crusaders and their entourage encountered during their invasion of the Holy Land.

"I'm not saying it's a Moorish dance but it could be a dance in the style of the Moors," said Mark.

"It seems to have developed alongside social dancing, almost as a Mickey-take of the posh people's dances."

Perhaps surprisingly the quintessentially English Morris dances, or their close relatives, crop up all over Europe, and even further afield.

"You can go to Spain and see the Basque dances that are almost identical," said Mark. "There are also records of it in Holland, Germany, France and places like Romania.

"I've even seen people with bells on their legs and handkerchiefs in their hands in India, dancing very similar figures to those we use, though that was in Goa so they may have originally picked it up from the Portuguese."

Though a school of thought persists that Morris dancing developed from pagan fertility rituals celebrating male virility Mark does not subscribe to it.

"There is nothing to link it to Pagan origins other than people's imaginations," he said "There is no evidence for it at all."

Many of the current Morris moves owe their preservation to the work of an enthusiastic historian, Cecil Sharpe, who spent his days travelling the length and breadth of the land recording folk tradition by getting the old men of the time to show him the dances they had learned in their youth.

Sadly, this turned out not to be the best way to get a real picture of the Morris tradition.

"There is one dance where your legs are bent and you have to do some pretty strange movements," said Mark.

"Nowadays, we think it's because the old guy doing it for Cecil Sharpe had bow legs.

"A lot of it is Victorian or early 20th century and comes from their concept of Merry England."

"Over the past 20 or 30 years people have been seeing it as a living tradition rather than something historical that has to be preserved unchanging.

"We are now using the traditions as the basis for new dances, which would have been unimaginable in years gone by."

He said the music was harder to change but some teams were now using the music of the Beatles and folk songs of the 60s and 70s.

"Would have favours or a couple of bands of ribbon.

Agricultural workers and builders used to dress up in their Sunday best during quiet times of the year and perform their dances for cash.

"Traditionally, it would have been performed at village ales or feasts," said Mark.

"They used to have lambing ales, Witsun ales, events to mark important dates in the rural calendar."

"And agricultural workers would go to London with the harvest and stay there for an extra couple of weeks once it had been sold to make more money from the dancing."

Though people may see Morris dancing as a male pursuit, it is becoming less and less exclusive.

"When it was being done for money and was a serious income for people it tended to be done by agricultural workers and builders at slow times of year.

"The women always had work to do so didn't have the time to go out and dance.

"Thesedays with greater equality most people say it really doesn't matter.

"There are a few who still say it's a male fertility ritual but I can't really believe that."

While we may immediately think of men in white clothes, straw hats and coloured ribbons there are several branches of Morris dancing.

Our local dancers follow the Cotswold Morris school, but there is also Border Morris from the Welsh Marches where dancers paint their faces black to disguise themselves, Rapper and Longsword sword dancing from the north east and Clog Morris from the north west. Though all have their own style they are related by the similarity of moves.

All the styles are currently experiencing a come back akin to that seen in the 1960s and 1970s when folk music and traditions saw a major revival.

"There seems to be another revival at the moment and people are taking it seriously," said Mark.

"University teams are growing at the moment and a lot more young people are taking it up.

"We had eight teenagers who they all joined last year and they seem to be thoroughly enjoying it."

The teams dance in the traditional Cotswold Morris whites, with coloured rosettes and bands, red for the famous cloth of the Stroud valleys and green for the beautiful green fields.

Mark is reluctant to discuss the mockery the pastime sometimes inspires, but does hint that uncultured hooligans have been dunked in nearby rivers for the heinous crime of laughing at their local Morris men in the past.

"If it's done well people just don't laugh at it, they admire it," said Mark.

"Though that's not to say it's not fun."

Stroud Morris celebrates its 25th anniversary this year and currently has some 40 members.

It is, said Mark, quite a social thing and the Morris men and women meet up for walks and pub sessions as well as the regular dance practice.

So just why does Morris rock the world of Mark and his fellow enthusiasts?

"It's a strange mixture of being a team sport but a solo thing as well," he said.

"You've got to be doing your best but you've also got to be aware of what other people are doing.

"It's good for building team skills and it also concentrates the mind wonderfully.

"And personally I just love performing."