Talk:Morris dance

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Not being very high on copyright, even within Wikipedia, are the pictures and their copyright notice canon? --Anders Törlind

Not quite sure what you mean, I thought the copyright statement was clear, it belongs to King John's Morris.


The idea is, if someone uploads a picture to Wikipedia, it's regarded as released under a GNU Free Documentation License. In other words, from a legal point of view, it seems there's no such thing as simply giving Wikipedia permission to use the photograph, since Wikipedia's contents are freely distributable and modifiable (under the constraints of the GNU FDL). Ideally, there should be a notice on the King John's Morris page to the effect that the photographs were freely distributable according to the GNU FDL. --LMS


OK, I'll remove the photographs for the time being and get them loaded into the wikipedia domain in the approved manner. Bob Waller

Contents

[edit] Other photos?

[edit] Lichfield claims

On 2 Jan 2006, User:82.44.68.11 added the following paragraph:

  • The Lichfield "tradition" has little tradition associated with it. In the 1930s and 1940s Morris sides were started at the two major collegiate UK universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The membership of these clubs were some of the brightest of the day (in later years Cambridge could field a side of six Fellows of the Royal Society) who, in common with many such people, had an affinity for intellectual practical jokes. The Lichfield tradition was their invention; as with all the best jokes it gathered so much momentum that the truth could never be openly admitted. Lionel Bacon knew the truth, and was delighted to perpetuate the story.

It seems highly unlikely - I have been around the Morris for twenty years and know plenty of people whose acquaintance is much longer, and I have never heard a breath of this idea. It seems much more like a post-modernist joke. But I can't rule it out.

I can however rule it inadmissable in Wikipedia on ground of verifiability so I removed it about 3 hours later.

Today, User:129.67.116.93 has added a weaker version of the same claim: 'Research has shown that the Lichfield tradition may also have been devised in the mid 20th century.', but still with no references at all, so I removing this as well.

If somebody out there has evidence for the claim, please reference it. If not, the claim even if true has no place in an encyclopedia. See Wikipedia:Verifiability#Verifiability.2C_not_truth --ColinFine 22:35, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Here's a reference: R. Judge, "The morris in Lichfield", Folklore, vol. 103, no.2 (1992), 131- 159. Judge calls into question the authenticity of the source materials. Some researchers believe it's more or less proven the Lichfield dances were created by one individual in (if I recall correctly) the 1950s; others still dispute this. I find Judge's article interesting but am not fully convinced one way or the other. In any case the above claim that Lichfield was invented as a joke that Bacon and many others were in on is very different from the case Judge makes, so if there's any truth to it, evidence would have to come from another source. -- Rsholmes 17:35, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalization

The capitalization needs to be made consistent in the article. Unfortunately there is disagreement on the subject. Many people like to capitalize the word "morris". I fail to understand why; it's not a proper noun in this case -- though I think it likely it derives from a proper noun ("Morisco"). The OED entry has it uncapitalized, though many of the examples it quotes capitalize it, and I would advocate following the OED. In any case, this article is about the only place I've ever seen "dance/dancing" capitalized ("There are English records mentioning the Morris Dance..."). At the very least I believe "dance/dancing" should be uncapitalized. -- Rsholmes 17:43, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I certainly won't object if you make it consistent! ColinFine 17:10, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
The common useage around the San Francisco Bay Area is to always capitalize Morris. I don't presume that such local usage is necessarily globally correct, but it is a data point. Georgewilliamherbert 19:49, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Here in Michigan, I always see Morris capitalized. Kestenbaum 19:56, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I have to amend my comment about the capitalized D: it's seen also on the Morris Ring's web site, e.g. Information about Morris Dancing. However... that page also features strange (to me) capitalizations like "the Court masques"; "Morris Sides". I think they just like capitalizing things. The same seems to be true of Open Morris (e.g. "the other two Morris Organisations"). The Morris Federation does not capitalize morris. (Or dancing, sides, or organizations.) In my experience capitalization of "morris" has little to do with geography; some people do it, some don't, and it bears more relationship to who they communicate with than where they live. Kind of like "its" versus "it's". I feel uncomfortable with capitalization, because I don't think a case can be made that it's a proper noun; and I don't think most people capitalize types (as opposed to names) of dances, e.g. flamenco, disco, swing, etc., so capitalized "Morris" seems to me inconsistent. Nevertheless, it is common -- as is uncapitalized. -- Rsholmes 21:45, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure it's not a proper noun? It seems to be a clear and distinct thing. It's a subset of dancing, but I think that even the articles Swing are consistently upper case, flamenco is mixing upper and lower, disco is consistently lower other than at the start of a sentence. Is there any info from the Dance article improvement project on preferred caps scheme? Georgewilliamherbert 22:15, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hoberdidance

I removed this:

Hoberdidance or Hobbididance was the name of a bad sprite associated with the morris dance. Its name is from Hob, an old name for the Devil.

for two reasons: first, it doesn't belong in the "styles" section, and second, it needs verification -- I've never heard of this sprite, in or not in conjunction with morris dancing. -- Rsholmes 18:04, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Duns Tew

Some members of the Berkeley (California) Morris, in the late Eighties when my then wife was active, danced in a synthetic composite style named arbitrarily for a village, Duns Tew, that sits between the places from whose traditions the style was derived. I don't know whether this was a Berkeley thing or what. —Tamfang 17:37, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

"Duns Tew" was a style invented under the direction of Tim Radford, who was then with the Adderbury Morris Men and Kirtlington Morris. I believe there was a "Duns Tew" team in England for a while, and that the style has been danced by Red Herring Morris of Boston, MA among others. I don't see this as a particularly necessary thing to mention in the article, though. Rsholmes 20:11, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
My understanding was that Tim Radford introduced it in a series of workshops he taught at Sidmouth. His topic was similarities and differences between traditions, and to illustrate this he concocted a tradition with elements of Adderbury, Bucknell and Kirtlington. Duns Tew is roughly in the centre of the triangle formed by these three, and apparently there is a record that there was dancing at Duns Tew, so he applied the name. This must have been about 1987 or 88 I guess. Quite a number of Open Morris sides dabbled in it for a bit, and Tony Forster set up Yaxley Morris to dance solely Duns Tew. ColinFine 23:50, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Just to further flog a deceased equine. . . I was on Red Herring (when it was Lemon and Capers) and learned Duns Tew as my first morris tradition from Rebecca Jordan. To date, I know of a number of teams (Goat Hill Morris in San Francisco and Squash Beetle in Lexington KY, as well as Red Herring) who dance it in the states. Zero sharp 23:26, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
OK, we're down to flaying the poor late quadruped, but my recollection is that it was created as part of the workshop process. There is a record of dancing at Duns Tew, but no record of what it looked like. Accordingly, Mr. Radford and his workshop participants decided to construct something by drawing from the three named traditions that surround the village.
Of the styles/traditions I've danced (Lemon&Capers-style style Bampton, Duns Tew, and Border), I think I liked it the best, although Border comes a close second.
/morethananyonecaresabout
(off to ponder who zerosharp might be
Septegram 20:36, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Added link to Duns Tew information Septegram 20:44, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Căluşari etc.

I've removed this:

A possibly related dance is also practised in Barcelona, Spain, where it is performed by girls or women.
The traditional Căluşari dance of Romania resembles morris in many ways [1] and some believe that the Romanian dance is the ultimate origin of the Morris Dance, brought from Dacia to western Europe via the Celts or the Goths[2]. The etymology could also be explained in this way: the root word is the Romanian word "morişcă", which means "little mill", and it refers to the circular movements of the dance. It was then corrupted into Morisque, Morrisk, Moriscas, Morris.

Reasons: (1) There are numerous dances from many places that share some features with some types of morris. In few if any cases are there any known connections with morris. If this subject is to be addressed, it ought to be addressed more completely. Furthermore, it is peripheral to an understanding of morris so does not belong in the first few paragraphs of this article. (2) There is a lot of speculation and little verification here, and in the linked discussion. Who are these "some" who believe Căluşari is ancestral to morris? Is there any historical evidence for it? Is there any basis for the stated etymology? Has Căluşari historically been referred to as "morişcă"? Note by the way the claim that Căluşari and morris have a point of similarity in the use of staves/sticks is spurious, since for the first ~300 years of recorded morris history in England there is no mention of stick dances -- sticks seem to have been adopted somewhere around the turn of the 18th century. -- Rsholmes 17:48, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Hooray. I've been unhappy about this stuff being in the article since I first read it, but I never felt bold enough to remove it myself. ColinFine 23:35, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology

For the section at the bottom: I've heard the terms "side" and "team" used not quite interchangeably - a "team" is a group of dancers that practices and tours together, and may be any number, while a "side" is a particular number (usually six, at least in Cotswald Morris) that gets up to do a dance. I'll look for any references and if there's no further discussion soon I'll edit this.Phaither 00:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Though now I notice that a similar note is made in the entry below ('set' and 'side') Hmm. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Phaither (talkcontribs).
While the usage may not be universal, I think it is not at all uncommon for people to use "side" in both senses. I believe "side" is used as a synonym for, and in preference to, "team" more often in England than in the US. Google for "morris side" for numerous examples. By the way, it's "Cotswold". Oh, and I guess "Cotswold morris" needs to be added to that page! -- Rsholmes 01:10, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Morris Festivals - Contemporary forms

I have added a link to my video of Morris at the Sweeps festival 1997. Should there be a section on Festivals of Morris dancing like the Sweeps? Szczels 14:45, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] From Ritual to Romance

Someone just added a link to the Project Gutenberg version of this book. I suggest removing this link. This book is extremely outdated, presenting a theory of morris dancing that is now thoroughly discredited; and (unlike e.g. Sharp's Morris Book) is not a significant enough contribution to the morris literature to merit mention. -- Rsholmes 03:08, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Verifiable?

What's a source for verification of the statement

While all styles are danced today by male, female, and mixed sides, the majority of female sides appear to dance North West dances.

(Also, "appear to dance North West dances" is perhaps not the most felicitous choice of phrasing!) -- Rsholmes 02:21, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Not at all sure that I agree with that one - just thinking through the local female sides in this neck of the woods; of the ones that I can think of off the top of my head, I'd say that, if anything, there are slightly more Border teams than any other style. --Tailkinker 07:47, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
The problem of course is that one's neck of the woods may not be -- or may not not be, if you follow me -- representative of the morris world as a whole. I suspect, for instance, the style/sex statistics are quite different for the UK, the eastern US, and the western US, for instance. So a statement like the above needs to be based upon either a global consensus of personal observations, or on surveys of teams worldwide. I don't know that either is available; but perhaps I'm overlooking something. -- Rsholmes 13:17, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
You're right. I was generalising from local experience - all the female sides I can think of in W Yorks are NW sides. (I did have a look whether I could find anything to back it up, but without success). It was a reaction to the previous change about women performing NW in dresses or skirts: I thought the previous addition was inappropriate, but wanted to find something to replace it with rather than just revert it. I've now removed the offending sentence, and just added a general statement about sex in the introduction.
I'd like to see a section about costume, including the correlations with style and sex (eg Cotswold mainly in either white trousers or dark britches, even for many female Cotswold dancers, whereas most female NW sides in my experience wear skirts or dresses), but I don't know if there are enough references for it. ColinFine 18:16, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The article has too much of a bias towards Cotswold Morris for my liking. The North West tradition is very different, and has always featured mixed and female sides - at least as far back as the eighteenth century. There is a picture of Eccles Wakes, painted in the 1820s by the style of dress of some of the participants and spectators, that clearly shows both male and female dancers.

In Lancashire, the tradition was taken up by sides associated with mills and nonconformist chapels, usually composed of young girls. These lasted until the Great War, after which many mutated into 'jazz dancers'. (You can see a Bolton troop in one of Humphrey Jennings's pre-war documentaries.) They later evolved into 'pom pom' dancers (still called 'morris dancers' by older people). During the folk revival in the 1960s, many of the old steps to dances such as 'Stubbins Lane Garland' were often passed on by old ladies in their seventies!

--193.60.165.65 16:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, please go ahead and redress that balance. The material I've contributed to the article has mostly been on Cotswold, because that's what I know. ColinFine 22:54, 27 September 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Fluffy/Carnival morris

Hi, there are some mistakes (in terminology really) over the developments of traditional Northwest Morris into what gets called here "Pom Pom dancing" (erroneously).

These teams are often described as "Fluffy Morris" a term that seems to be accepted by some, but disliked by others. Another common term is "Carnival Morris". They took up the use of pom poms in their kit, but I have never heard or seen an instance of them describing themselves as "Pom Pom Dancers". The term is quite definately "Morris Dancers". A brief trawl around the web would quickly confirm this. It is not confined to a few older people; "Morris" is a term invariably used to describe the tradition.

The term "Pom Pom dancers" would seem to be a term used to describe American style cheerleader dancers at sports events etc. This is probably where Morris Dancers "borrowed" their pom poms from.

Try these web pages:

http://dmoz.org/Arts/Performing_Arts/Dance/Morris_Dancing/Carnival/

http://www.morrisdancers.net/troups.htm

http://www.freewebs.com/nemdco/

Be prepared for some websites as colourful (!) as their dance costumes though :-)

Ecadre 01:44, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Verifiable (more generally)

I'm pleased to see Train guard's addition about North west, but it exacerbates a problem we already have: the article is full of unsupported statements. I started putting {{fact}} tags on the new material, but realised there would be loads of them; then I contemplated putting a {{references}} tag on the whole article, but the problem is not that it doesn't cite any sources, but that it contains so many claims that are not supported: some of them are doubtless verified in some of the works cited, but there aren't particular references; others, I'm sure, are supported in none of the references. I was thinking of this in particular for some remarks in the new North West material (eg the picture of the Eccles Wakes, the uniqueness of the Britannia's, and the 'It is said' about the role of Cornishmen).

This is not just in the new section: I have perpetrated plenty of stuff in this article from my own knowledge; but as it stands this is really not an article of any sort of Wikipedia standard.

Anybody got any suggestions how we can turn it into a good article? Or is it in fact that much of the stuff we want to say in it actually unverifiable? I don't know.

--ColinFine 23:10, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Northwest Morris and clogs

It states in the article that Northwest Morris was always danced in clogs. This is NOT true. See this study for more details:

http://www.crimple.demon.co.uk/clogshoe.htm

Ecadre 02:08, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Corrections

Changed the name "Royal Britannia Cocoanutters" to the correct name "Britannia Coco-nut Dancers". See http://www.coconutters.co.uk/ Ecadre 02:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Necessity of a Discography?

How accurate can a discography on a type of dance be? We don't have a discography for ballet, rhumba, or disco, so why for morris dancing? Bifgis 04:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Because music specifically for morris dancing is not in great supply. Ballet music is a well-recorded subset of the classical repertoire. Rumba and disco grew out of commercial pop music. Additionally, because specific dances are danced to specific tunes (unlike most modern popular dances like rumba or disco), a rescurce to find recorded versions of particular tunes is valuable. As a traditional genre, source recordings tend to be obscure. That said, the discography here is pretty pitiful... come on folka!--Natcase 05:02, 27 November 2006 (UTC)