A Morris troupe is usually referred to as a side or a team. The two terms are interchangeable. Despite the terminology, Morris dancing is hardly ever competitive. The earliest (15th-century) references place the Morris dance in a courtly setting. The dance became part of performances for the lower classes by the later 16th century. Henry VIII owned a gold salt cellar which depicted a Morris dance with five dancers and a "tabrett". A "tabret" is a small tabor drum. [21] On 4 January 1552, George Ferrers, the Lord of Misrule of Edward VI, put on a show in London which included "mores danse, dansyng with a tabret". [22] In 1600, the Shakespearean actor William Kempe Morris danced from London to Norwich, an event chronicled in his Nine Daies Wonder (1600). The dance may have given name to the board games three men's morris, six men's morris and nine men's morris. Judge, Roy (1984). "D'Arcy Ferris and the Bidford Morris". Folk Music Journal. 4 (5): 443–480. JSTOR 4522157. In England, an ale is a private party where a number of Morris sides get together and perform dances for their own enjoyment rather than for an audience. Food is usually supplied, and sometimes this is a formal meal known as a feast or ale-feast. Occasionally, an evening ale is combined with a day or weekend of dance, where all the invited sides tour the area and perform in public. In North America the term is widely used to describe a full weekend of dancing involving public performances and sometimes workshops. In the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, the term "ale" referred to a church- or dale-sponsored event where ale or beer was sold to raise funds. Morris dancers were often employed at such events.

This is the first of three dances which conform to a standard pattern; which can, with a little care, be memorised and need, therefore, no calling. Like Y Gaseg Eira it is a handkerchief dance. The current practise with the music is to use hornpipe time, which lends a lilt to the dance that some people find attractive. [40] It had been added to the Nantgarw repertoire by 1984. [41] Ty Coch Caerdydd (The Red House of Cardiff) [ edit ]Everett, W.; F. C. Phillips (1957). "The Lichfield Morris" (PDF). English Folk Dance and Song Society. VIII (2): 103 . Retrieved 15 September 2011. Hutton, Ronald. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford University Press, 1996. pp.218–225 The majority of contemporary morris sides have been formed in the last 80 years or so. Each club will have a Squire who is responsible for the performance and the sides leadership, a Foreman or Captain who teaches the dances, and a Bagman who acts as its secretary. Clubs are autonomous so they can make their own decisions as to when, where and what to dance. Beasts are Morris characters that add to the story of the dance. Common beasts are hobbyhorses, dragons, and unicorns. It can be difficult for Beasts to dance with the same nimbleness as the other dancers due to their cumbersome costume, but that doesn't stop many from trying. Hobbyhorses are the most common type of Beasts in modern practice.

of the more colorful stories about Morris Dance from this era is that of the actor Will Kemp, who bet a friend that he could Morris dance from London to Norwich before the end of Lent. In a feat that would come to be known as his "Nine Day Wonder," Kemp danced the more than 100 miles between the two cities. While the entire journey took more than nine days, he did win his bet. While not the inspiration for, it is definitely reminiscent of Tony Hawks who, in the 1990s hitchhiked around the circumference of Ireland with a mini-fridge, also on a bet.

Bibliography

Wright, Lucy (2019). ‘“What a Troupe Family Does”: Family as Transmission Narrative in the British Carnival Troupe Dancing Community’, Dance Research Journal, vol. 37, no. 1 (2019), pp. 35 – 58. https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/drs.2019.0252?journalCode=drs