French Canadian Morris Dancers

Most Revels productions include one or more numbers involving Morris dancers, reflecting John Langstaff’s life-long interest in and love for the folk traditions of the British Isles. Villages all over England have had Morris dance troupes for centuries. The oldest surviving written reference to Morris dancers dates from the year 1512, and Shakespeare mentions Morris dancers in at least one of his plays. Morris dances are often performed at village festivals in England. They are traditionally performed outdoors by teams of men in special costumes and involve a variety of synchronized steps in complex patterns and formations. Some of the dances use accessories: white handkerchiefs which are held in both hands and waved in specified motions, pads of small jingle bells which are strapped to the dancers’ ankles, or stout sticks which are hit against each other and the ground in a rhythmical pattern.


Each village Morris team has its own repertoire of distinctive steps and sequences, and there are traditional tunes that accompany the dances; these are typically played on a single instrument, usually a fiddle or a concertina. The arrival of the Morris dancers at a village festival, especially at the Winter Solstice or in springtime, brings good luck and a bountiful growing season. The stamping of the dancers, the noise of their ankle bells, and the whacking of the ground with their wooden sticks symbolically awakened the Earth from its winter slumber.


The sword dance is a specific type of Morris dance that is associated with the medieval Mummers’ plays performed in many English villages at the time of the Winter Solstice. These dramas were popular, earthy, and humorous, but served the serious purpose of acting out the solstice themes of death and re-birth. The main character of the Mummers’ plays is a hero, like St. George, who fights and defeats an enemy, often a dragon or an infidel. Despite the hero’s good deeds, he dies, as the Sun does at the Solstice, but like the sun he returns to life. In the Mummer’s play it is the sword dancers who often ritually kill the hero. They form a ring around him, perform a series of intricate, intertwining steps and then mesh their swords together into a pentagram-shaped figure called a "lock." (see picture at right). The lock is displayed overhead, then lowered around the neck of the hero. Then the dancers abruptly pull their swords out of the lock, and the hero "dies".

The play continues with unsuccessful attempts to revive the hero by doctors and learned men. In the end, he is brought back to life by a simple act of magic -- perhaps the laying on of a hand, or a gentle brush with a sprig of evergreen -- performed by the lowliest character in the play – a fool or a child. Symbolically, as the hero is re-born, so will the Sun be; spring will come, and the Earth will grow green once again.

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