“Bluff King Hal.”

This is a version in the major mode of “The Staines Morris Tune,” published in the first edition of Playford’s “Dancing Master,” and reprinted in Chappell’s “Popular Music of the Olden Time,” I., p. 126.  How it has come to be christened “Bluff King Hal” we do not know unless, as Mr. Kidson suggests, the Bidford Morris men have taken the name from some modern collection of old English dances.

“Morris Off.”

As has already been stated, this tune, which was given us by the Bidford Morris dancers, is printed in Thoinot Arbeau’s “Orchesographie,” p. 94.  A Dutch version of the same air is included in a collection of dance-tunes by Tielman Susato (Antwerp, 1551); and is reprinted in Carl Engel’s “Literature of National Music,” p. 56.  See also Grove’s “Dictionary of Music” (old ed.) II., 369.

THE DANCE.

The Morris Dance is essentially a manifestation of vigour rather than of grace.  This is probably true of all country dances:  it is pre-eminently true of the Morris dance.  It is, in spirit, the organized, traditional expression of virility, sound health and animal spirits.  It smacks of cudgel-play, of quarter-staff, of wrestling, of honest fisticuffs.  There is nothing sinuous in it, nothing dreamy; nothing whatever is left to the imagination.  It is a formula based upon and arising out of the life of man, as it is lived by men who hold much speculation upon the mystery of our whence and whither to be unprofitable; by men of meagre fancy, but of great kindness to the weak:  by men who fight their quarrels on the spot with naked hands, drink together when the fight is done, and forget it, or, if they remember, then the memory is a friendly one.  It is the dance of folk who are slow to anger, but of great obstinacy—­forthright of act and speech:  to watch it in its thumping sturdiness is to hold such things as poinards and stilettos, the swordsman with the domino, the man who stabs in the back—­as unimaginable things.

The Morris dance, in short, is a perfect expression in rhythm and movement of the English character.

THE MORRIS STEP.

As we have told already, the Morris dance is a bodily manifestation of vigour and rude health, and not at all of sinuous grace or dreaminess.  This will be obvious at a glance to anyone who watches the traditional Morris dancer at his evolutions.  The first step, therefore, towards acquiring the true art of the Morris-man is to put away all thought and remembrance of the ballroom manner—­really to unlearn, so far as possible, the lessons of the dancing-master and all his exhortations upon and exhibitions of glide, pirouette, chassez; the pointed toe, the gently swaying body, the elegant waving and posturing such as become the finished performer of round and square dances in the drawing-room.  To say, put away for a while these methods is to put no slight upon them, or to offer a word of criticism:  it is requisite and necessary, even as one should advise a change of clothing to somebody about to quit the ballroom for some rough-and-tumble pastime in the open fields.