Start with disclaimer: I am not a morris historian. I don’t know what the current state of knowledge is. I assume someone else has already thought about the following, and maybe refuted it.
Continuing on the subject of the Forest of Dean morris , here is an intriguing entry from Keith Chandler’s Chronological Gazetteer (under Blackwell, Warwickshire):
The Cooper family were said to have come ‘originally from the Forest of Dean and brought the dancing tradition with them.’ Relevant parish registers reveals that there are members of that family in the village by 1765, at least, and at nearby Honington by 1670.
1670 is nine years earlier than Chandler’s earliest record of post-1660 morris in the South Midlands! … Which was in Kirtlington, Oxfordshire, so it seems unlikely to have been connected. But Blackwell’s less than three km from the second earliest, Shipston-on-Stour (1688):
1688 : A side from Shipston-on-Stour was paid half a crown at Little Wolford on 7 June this year.
and Honington along with Tredington lie on an arc between the two; you could pass through all four on a 4 km walk. There was a side “composed of men from Tredington, Honington and other surrounding villages” in the mid 19th century. Blackwell is also about 3 km from Ilmington (earliest Chandler date, “during the eighteenth century, perhaps during the final decade”) and about ten km from Chipping Campden (1772).
Could it be all these sides, and others in the area, trace back to the Coopers and hence the Forest of Dean? Perhaps the Blackwell morris proliferated in that area in the 18th century, while the style done in Kirtlington was also being done in 18th century Bampton, Finstock, Woodstock, Chesterton, et cetera (see Chandler) before… the two merged? Or one supplanted the other?
But wait, this sounds familiar. Heaney’s Bedlam Morris quotes sources describing two different styles of morris in the South Midlands. From Anne Baker of Northamptonshire writing in 1854:
[The dancers wear shirts] gaily bedizened with pendant ribbons and rosettes of various colors; sometimes [with bells (note sometimes, not always)]… The dance consists of… striking first the toe, then the heel on the ground, which occasions great jingling of the bells; repeatedly clapping their hands, then their knees, and each others hands. They sometimes dance with sticks, flourishing and brandishing them about; then placing them on the ground, with the points all meeting in the centre, they dance round them in a circle. This is called Bedlam Morris…
and
The set of Morris dancers attendant at the Whitsun Ale… often consisted of six couple; they were more gaily attired, and had a larger number of bells, than those above described… On their legs they often had as many as six rows of bells, six in a row… They danced chiefly on their toes with a spring… and flourishing handkerchiefs or sticks in their hands.
Heaney also quotes an account from Walford’s Antiquarian in May 1886 which also contrasts two eighteenth century styles of morris in Longcombe (now Combe), Oxfordshire. One, attendant at Whitsun ales, danced with handkerchiefs. The other was
… the Bedlam-Morris. They did not wear bells, and were distinguished by high peaked caps (such are worn by clowns in pantomimes) adorned with ribbons. Each carried a stick about two feet long, which they used with various gesticulation during the dance, and, at intervals, struck them against each other.
The term “Bedlam morris” also turns up in account books of the Glovers’ Company in Shrewsbury in 1688 and 1689, but we have no description of that dancing.
It would appear these two styles of morris merged with one another during the eighteenth century to become what we now call Cotswold morris, with hankie dancing coming from the Whitsun ale morris and stick and handclap dancing from the Bedlam morris. Perhaps the latter also was the source for the odd Cotswold heel and toe dances such as “Monk’s March”. (Heaney also conjectures the Bedlam morris gave rise to what we now call border morris, and to the anomalous Steeple Claydon dance, but that is a subject for another time.)
But could the Coopers’ morris have been the origin, or one of multiple antecedants, of the Bedlam morris? The pendant ribbons without baldricks, the lack of or small number of bells, the handclapping, and the dancing over sticks remind one of features noted of the nineteenth century Forest of Dean morris. Granted, the emphasis on sticks seems in contrast with the lack of stick dances at Ruardean and Mayhill, but perhaps these were the exceptions; we know sticks were used at Framilode and Chepstow. And maybe the oddity of saying the stepping at Ruardean was not a heel-and-toe step was to contrast it with other Forest of Dean sides that did do that, as the Bedlam morris dancers described by Baker did.
Certainly there must have been some connection between the eventual Cotswold and Forest of Dean styles. In Ascott, Bampton, Headington, Hinton, Ilmington, and Oddington they danced over crossed churchwardens’ pipes; they did the same in Mayhill, while in Clifford’s Mesne and Ruardean they danced over crossed swords — to the same tune, “Greensleeves”. A handclap “Shepherd’s Hey” is collected from, well, most of the Cotswold villages, while in Dean Forest’s Littledean “One of their dances was a hand-clapping dance to a Shepherds’ Hey tune” and in Ruardean they did a dance with “Handclapping like Shepherds’ Hey” but to the Greensleeves tune. These can’t be coincidences, and both seem at least related to features of the Bedlam morris.
The timing for a Cooper connection to Bedlam morris seems to work out. Heaney says:
Where does Bedlam Morris come from? The scant evidence suggests that it emerges shortly after the Restoration [in 1660]. In Tudor and early Stuart England Morris dancing was performed with bells and handkerchiefs… On the other hand, some of the literary references from the eighteenth century refer to staves or swords [my emphasis]…
But Heaney doesn’t look to the Forest of Dean for origins. Nor does he trace Bedlam morris to southern Warwickshire. In fact he suggests the relatively nearby localities of Longborough, Bledington, and Oddington may have had among the least Bedlamish of the collected Cotswold traditions, with few stick dances and an emphasis on slow capers. (Then again, they did have Monk’s March and other heel and toe dances, mostly absent elsewhere.)
So, who knows? The Coopers’ morris could have been supplanted by other styles and disappeared, or it could have permeated all of what became Cotswold morris, or anything in between. Maybe some of your favorite features of Cotswold morris come from the Forest of Dean, maybe not. We’ll never know.
Bibliography
- K. Chandler, Morris Dancing in the South Midlands: A Chronological Gazetteer, Musical Traditions Supplement No. 3 (CD-ROM), 2002.
- M. Heaney, Bedlam Morris, Chandler Publications, 1985.