Harper's Monthly Magazine/"A Morris for May-Day"

by Max Beerbohm

"A Morris for May-Day"

BY MAX BEERBOHM

LAST year, I remember, I read a prospectus issued by some more or less aesthetic ladies and gentlemen who, deeming modern life not so cheerful as it should be, had laid their cheerless heads together and decided that they would meet once every month and dance old-fashioned dances in a hall hired for the purpose. Thus would they achieve a renascence—I am sure they called it a renascence—of "Merrie England." I know not whether subscriptions came pouring in. I know not even whether the society ever met. If it ever did meet, I conceive that its meetings must have been singularly dismal. If you are depressed by modern life, you are unlikely to find an anodyne in the self-appointed task of cutting certain capers which your ancestors used to cut just because they, in their day, were happy. If you think modern life so pleasant a thing that you involuntarily prance, rather than walk, down the street, I dare say your prancing will intensify your joy. Though I happen never to have met him out-of-doors, I am sure my friend Mr. Gilbert Chesterton always prances thus—prances in some wild way symbolical of joy in modern life. His steps, and the movements of his arms and body, may seem to you crude, casual, and disconnected at first sight; but that is merely because they are spontaneous. If you studied them carefully, you would begin to discern a certain rhythm, a certain harmony. You would at length be able to compose from them a specific dance—a dance not quite like any other—a dance formally expressive of new English optimism. If you are not optimistic, don't hope to become so by practising the steps. But practise them assiduously if you are an optimist; and get your fellow optimists to practise them with you. You will grow all the happier through ceremonious expression of a light heart. And your children and your children's children will dance "The Chesterton" when you are no more. Maybe a few of them will still be dancing it now and then, on this or that devious green, even when optimism shall have withered forever from the land. Nor will any man mock at the survival. The dance will have lost nothing of its old grace, and will have gathered that quality of pathos which makes even unlovely relics dear to us—that piteousness which Time gives ever to things robbed of their meaning and their use. Spectators will love it for its melancholy not less than for its beauty. And I hope no mere spectator will be so foolish as to say, "Let us do it," with a view to reviving cheerfulness at large. I hope it will be held sacred to those in whom it will be a tradition—a familiar thing handed down from father to son. None but they will be worthy of it. Others would ruin it. Be sure I trod no measure with the Morris-dancers whom I saw last May-day.

It was in the wide street of a tiny village near Oxford that I saw them. Fantastic—high-fantastical—figures they did cut in their finery. But in demeanor they were quite simple, quite serious, these eight English peasants. They had trudged hither from the neighboring village that was their home. And they danced quite simply, quite seriously. One of them, I learned, was a cobbler, another a baker, and the rest were farm-laborers. And their fathers and their fathers' fathers had danced here before them, even so, every May-day morning. They were as deeply rooted in antiquity as the elm outside the inn. They were here always in their season as surely as the elm put forth its buds. And the elm, knowing them, approving them, let its green-flecked branches dance in unison with them.

The first dance was in full swing when I approached. Only six of the men were dancers. Of the others, one was the "minstrel," the other the "dysard." The "minstrel" was playing a flute; and the "dysard" I knew by the wand and leathern bladder which he brandished as he walked around, keeping a space for the dancers, and chasing and buffeting merrily any man or child who ventured too near. He, like the others, wore a white smock decked with sundry ribands, and a top-hat that must have belonged to his grandfather. Its antiquity of form and texture contrasted strangely with the freshness of the garland of paper roses that wreathed it. I was told that the wife or sweetheart of every Morris-dancer takes special pains to deck her man out more gayly than his fellows. But this pious endeavor had defeated its own end. So bewildering was the amount of brand-new bunting attached to all these eight men that no matron or maiden could for the life of her have determined which was the most splendid of them all. Besides his adventitious finery, every dancer, of course, had in hands the scarves which are as necessary to his performance of the Morris as are the bells strapped about the calves of his legs. Waving these scarves and jangling these bells with a stolid rhythm, the six peasants danced facing one another, three on either side, while the minstrel fluted and the dysard strutted around. That minstrel's tune runs in my head even now—a queer little stolid tune that recalls vividly to me the aspect of the dance. It is the sort of tune Bottom the Weaver must often have danced to in his youth. I wish I could hum it for you on paper. I wish I could set down for you on paper the sight that it conjures up. But what writer that ever lived has been able to write adequately about a dance? Even a slow, simple dance, such as these peasants were performing, is a thing that not the cunningest writer could fix in words. Dd not Flaubert say that if he could describe a valse he would die happy? I am sure he would have said this if it had occurred to him.

Unable to make you see the Morris, how can I make you feel as I felt in seeing it? I cannot even explain to myself the effect had on me. My critics have often complained of me that I lack "heart"—presumably the sort of heart that is pronounced with a rolling of the r; and I suppose they are right. I remember having read the death of little Nell on more than one occasion without floods of tears. How can I explain to myself the tears that came into my eyes at sight of the Morris? They are not within the rubric of the tears drawn by mere contemplation of visual beauty. The Morris, as I saw it, was curious, antique, racy, what you will: not beautiful. Nor was there any obvious pathos in it. Often, in London, passing through some slum where a tune was being ground from an organ, I have paused to watch the little girls dancing. In the swaying dances of those wan, dishevelled, dim little girls I have discerned authentic beauty, and have wondered where they had learned the grace of their movements, and where the sureness with which they did such strange and complicated steps. Surely, I have thought, this is no trick of to-day or yesterday: here, surely, is the remainder of some old tradition; here, maybe, is Merrie England, run to seed. There is an obvious pathos in the dances of these children of the gutter—an obvious symbolism of sadness, of a wistful longing for freedom and fearlessness, for wind and sunshine. No wonder that at sight of it even so heartless a person as the present writer is a little touched. But why at sight of those rubicund, full-grown, eupeptic Morris-dancers on the vernal highroad? No obvious pathos was diffusing itself from them. They were Merrie England in full flower. In part, I suppose, my tears were tears of joy for the very joyousness of these men; in part, of envy for their fine simplicity; in part, of sorrow in the thought that they were a survival of the past, not types of the present, and that their knell would soon be tolled, and the old elm see their like no more.

After they had drunk some ale, they formed up for the second dance—a circular dance. And anon, above the notes of the flute and the jangling of the bells and the stamping of the boots, I seemed to hear the knell actually tolling. Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! A motor came fussing and fuming in its cloud of dust. Hoot! Hoot! The dysard ran to meet it, brandishing his wand of office. He had to stand aside. Hoot! The dancers had just time to get out of the way. The scowling motorists vanished. Dancers and dysard, presently visible through the subsiding dust, looked rather foolish and crestfallen. And all the branches of the conservative old elm above them seemed to be quivering with indignation.

In a sense this elm was a mere parvenu as compared with its beloved dancers. True, it had been no mere sapling in the reign of the seventh Henry, and so could remember distinctly the first Morris danced here; but the first Morris danced on English soil was not, by a long chalk, the first Morris. Scarves such as these were waved and bells such as these were jangled and some such measure as this was trodden in the mists of a very remote antiquity. Spanish buccaneers, long before the dawn of the fifteenth century, had seen the Moors dancing somewhat thus to the glory of Allah. Home-coming, they had imitated that strange and savage dance, expressive, for them, of the joy of being on firm, native land again. The "Morisco," they called it; and it was much admired; and the fashion of it spread throughout Spain—scaled the very Pyrenees, and invaded France. To the "Maurisce" succumbed tout Paris as quickly as in recent years it succumbed to the cake-walk. A troupe of French dancers braved the terrors of the sea, and, with their scarves and their bells, danced for the delectation of the English court. "The Kynge," it seems, "was pleasd by the bels and sweete dauncing." Certain of his courtiers "did presentlie daunce so in open places." No one with any knowledge of the English temperament will be surprised to hear that the cits soon copied the courtiers. But "the Morrice was not for longe practysed in the cittie. It went to countrie playces." London, apparently, even in those days, did not breed joy in life. The Morris sought and found its proper home in the fields and by the wa3"side. Happy carles danced it to the glory of God, even as it had erst been danced to the glory of Allah.

It was no longer, of course, an explicitly religious dance. But neither can its origin have been explicitly religious. Every dance, however formal it become later, begins as a mere ebullition of high spirits. The Dionysiac dances began in the same way as "the Chesterton." Some Thessalian vintner, say, suddenly danced for sheer joy that the earth was so bounteous; and his fellow vintners, sharing his joy, danced with him; and ere their breath was spent they remembered who it was that had given them such cause for merrymaking, and they caught leaves from the vine and twined them in their hair, and from the fig-tree and the fir-tree they snatched branches, and waved them this way and that, as they danced, in honor of him who was lord of these trees and of this wondrous vine. Thereafter this dance of joy became a custom, ever to be observed at certain periods of the year. It took on, beneath its joyousness, a formal solemnity. It was danced slowly, around an altar of stone, whereon wood and salt were burning—burning with little flames that were pale in the sunlight. Formal hymns were chanted around this altar. And some youth, clad in leopard's skin and wreathed with ivy, masqueraded as the god himself, and spoke words appropriate to that august character. It was from these beginnings that sprang the art-form of drama. The Greeks never hid the origin of this their plaything. Always in the centre of the theatre was the altar to Dionysus; and the chorus, circling around it, were true progeny of those old agrestic singers; and the mimes had never been but for that masquerading youth. It is hard to realize, yet it is true, that we owe to the worship of Dionysus so dreary a thing as the modern British drama. Strange that through him who gave us the juice of the grape, "fiery, venerable, divine," came this gift too! Yet I dare say the chorus of a musical comedy would not be awe-struck—would, indeed, "bridle"—if one unrolled to them their august pedigree.

The history of the Dionysiac dance has a fairly exact parallel in that of the "Morisco." Each dance has travelled far, and survives, shorn of its explicitly religious character, and in many other ways "diablement change en route." The "Morisco," of course, has changed the less of the two. Besides the scarves and the bells, it seemed to me last May-day that the very steps danced and figures formed were very like to those of which I had read, and which I had seen illustrated in old English and French engravings. Above all, the dancers seemed to retain, despite their seriousness, something of the joy in which the dance originated. They frowned as they footed it, but they were evidently happy. Their frowns did but betoken determination to do well and rightly a thing that they loved doing—were proud of doing. The smiles of the chorus in a musical comedy seem but to express deprecation of a rather tedious and ridiculous exercise. The coryphées are quite evidently bored and ashamed. But these eight beribanded sons of the soil were hardly less glad in dancing than was that antique Moor who, having slain beneath the stars some long-feared and long-hated enemy, danced wildly on the desert sand, and, to make music, tore strips of bells from his horse's saddle and waved them in either hand while he danced, and made so great a noise in the night air that other Moors came riding to see what had happened, and marvelled at the sight and sound of the dance, and, praising Allah, leaped down and tore strips of bells from their own saddles, and danced as nearly as they could in mimicry of that glad conqueror, to Allah's glory.

As this scene is mobled in the aforesaid mists of antiquity, I cannot vouch for the details. Nor can I say just when the Moors found that they could make a finer and more rhythmic jangle by attaching the bells to their legs than by swinging them in their hands. Nor can I fix the day when they tore strips from their turbans for their idle hands to wave. I cannot say how long the rite's mode had been set when first the adventurers from Spain beheld it with their keen, wondering eyes and fixed it forever in their memories.

In Spain, and then in France, and then in London, the dance was secular. But perhaps I ought not to have said that it was "not explicitly religious" in the English countryside. The cult for Robin Hood was veritably a religion throughout the Midland Counties. Rites in his honor were performed on certain days of the year with a not less hearty reverence, a not less quaint elaboration, then was infused into the rustic Greek rites for Dionysus. The English carles danced, not indeed around an altar, but around a bunt pole crowned with such flowers as were in season; and one of them, like the youth who in the Dionysiac dance masqueraded as the god, was decked out duly as Robin Hood—"with a magpye's plume to hys capp," we are told, and sometimes "a russat bearde compos'd of horses hair." The most famous of the dances for Robin Hood was the "pageant." Herein appeared, besides the hero himself and various tabours and pipers, a "dysard" or fool, and Friar Tuck and Maid Marian—"in a white kyrtele and her hair all unbrayded, but with blossoms thereyn." This "pageant" was performed at Whitsun, at Easter, on New-year's day, and on May-day. The Morris, when it had become known in the villages, was very soon incorporated in the "pageant." The Morris scarves and bells, the Morris steps and figures, were all pressed into the worship of Robin Hood. In most villages the properties for the "pageant" had always rested in the custody of the church-wardens. The properties for the Morris were now kept with them. In the Kingston accounts for 1537-8 are enumerated "a fryers cote of russat, and a kyrtele weltyd with red cloth, a Mowrens cote of buckram, and four morres daunsars cotes of white fustian spangelid, and two gryne saten cotes, and disarddes cote of cotton, and six payre of garters with belles." The "pageant" itself fell, little by little, into disuse; the Morris, which had been affiliated to it, superseded it. Of the "pageant" nothing remained but the minstrel and the dysard and an occasional Maid Marian. In the original Morris there had been no music save that of the bells. But now there was always a flute or tabor. The dysard, with his rod and leathern bladder, was promoted to a sort of leadership. He did not dance, but gave the signal for the dance, and distributed praise or blame among the performers, and had power to degrade from the troupe any man who did not dance with enough skill or enough heartiness. Often there were in one village two rival troupes of dancers, and a prize was awarded to whichever acquitted itself the more admirably. But not only the "ensemble" was considered. A sort of "star system" seems to have crept in. Often a prize would be awarded to some one dancer who had excelled his fellows. There were, I suppose, "born" Morris-dancers. Now and again one of them, flushed with triumph, would secern himself from his troupe, and would "star" round the country for his livelihood.

Such a one was Mr. William Kemp, who, at the age of seventeen, and in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, danced from his native village to London, where he educated himself and became an actor. Perhaps he was not a good actor, for he presently reverted to the Morris. He danced all the way from London to Norwich, and wrote a pamphlet about it—"Kemp's Nine Daies' Wonder, performed in a daunce from London to Norwich. Containing the pleasures, paines, and kind entertainment of William Kemp, betweene London and that Citty, in his late Morrice." He seems to have encountered more pleasures than "paines." Gentle and simple, all the way, were very cordial. The gentle entertained him in their mansions by night. The simple danced with him by day. In Sudbury "there came a lusty tall fellow, a butcher by his profession, that would in a Morrice keepe me company to Bury. I gave him thankes, and forward wee did set; but ere ever wee had measur'd halfe a mile of our way, he gave me over in the plain field, protesting he would not hold out with me; for, indeed, my pace in dauncing is not ordinary. As he and I were parting, a lusty country lasse being among the people, cal'd him faint-hearted lout, saying, 'If I had begun to daunce, I would have held out one myle, though it had cost my life.' At which words many laughed. 'Nay,' saith she, 'if the dauncer will lend me a leash of his belles, I'le venter to treade one myle with him myself.' I lookt upon her, saw mirth in her eies, heard boldness in her words, and beheld her ready to tucke up her russat petticoate; and I fitted her with bels, which she merrily taking, garnisht her thicke short legs, and with a smooth brow bad the tabur begin. The drum strucke; forward marcht I with my merry Mayde Marian, who shook her stout sides, and footed it merrily to Melford, being a long myle. There parting with her (besides her skinfull of drinke), and English crowne to buy more drinke; for, good wench, she was in a pittious heate: my kindness she requited with dropping a dozen good courtsies, and bidding God blesse the dauncer. I bade her adieu; and, to give her her due, she had a good eare, daunst truly, and wee parted friends." Kemp, you perceive, wrote as well as he danced. I wish he had danced less and written more. It seems that he never wrote anything but this one delightful pamphlet. He died three years later in the thirtieth year of his age—died dancing, with his bells on his legs, in the village of Ockley.

John Thorndrake, another professional Morris-dancer, was not so brilliant a personage as poor Kemp; but was of tougher fibre, it would seem. He died in his native town, Canterbury, at the age of seventy-eight, and had danced—never less than a mile, seldom than five miles—every day, except Sunday, for sixty years. But even his record pales beside the account of a Morris that was danced by eight men, in Hereford, one May-day in the reign of James I. The united ages of these dancers, according to a contemporary pamphleteer, exceeded eight hundred years. The youngest of them was seventy-nine, and the ages of the rest ranged between ninety-five and a hundred and nine. "And they daunced right well." Of the hold that the Morris had on England, could there be stronger proof than in the feat of these indomitable dotards? The Morris ceased not even during the Civil Wars. Some of King Charles's men (according to Groby, the Puritan) danced thus on the eve of Naseby. Not even the Protectorate could stamp the Morris out, though we are told that Groby and other preachers throughout the land inveighed against it as "lewde" and "ungodlie." The Restoration was in many places celebrated by special Morrises. The perihelion of the Morris seems, indeed, to have been in the reign of Charles II. Georgian writers treated it somewhat as a survival, and were not always even tender to it. Says a writer in Bladud's Courier, describing a "soirée de beauté" given by Lady Jersey, "Mrs. —— (la belle) looked as silly and gaudy, I do vow, as one of the old Morris Dancers." And many other writers—from Horace Walpole to Captain Harver—have their sneer at the Morris. Its rusticity did not appeal to the polite Georgian mind; and its Moorishness, which would have appealed strongly, was overlooked. Still, the Morris managed to survive urban disdain—was still dear to the carles whose fathers had taught it to them.

Board-school education, industrialism, secession from the land to the towns—these and cognate curses have fallen heavily on the Morris. I wonder if the survival will long survive. Except in Oxfordshire, I am told, only in Somerset and Wiltshire may remnants of it be found, nor ever there except on New-year's day and May-day. I hope they will never quite disappear. But I would make no effort to conserve them. If the dancers danced not because they enjoyed dancing, and not, moreover, because they felt it a sort of duty to dance, but merely to please some aesthetic ladies and gentlemen, and thereby to make money, then, for me, all the charm and the beauty of the thing would be gone utterly. I would far rather that the Morris were everywhere forgotten than that it should anywhere become a self-conscious show—a sort of pastoral ballet, supposed in course of time to have originated from designs made under the superintendence of the late Mr. William Morris. If this dance cannot live without desecration, let it die. If it die, I shall have, at least, the solace of having seen it that May-day morning.