a peculiar kind of dance practised in England and other European countries during the middle ages; and which, while varying considerably in the manner of its performance, was usually executed with castanets, tambours, &c., by young men in light dresses, with bells fixed to their feet, and parti-coloured ribbons or streamers tied round their arms and shoulders. The English morris-dance is generally supposed to have had its origin in the morisco or Moorish dance, adopted by the Spaniards from their conquerors the Moors, and which still delights the natives of the Peninsula under the title of the fandango. Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes, &c., contends that the English morris-dance is not of Moorish origin; but Douce succeeds, in his "Dissertation on the Ancient English Morris-dance," appended to the 2d vol. of his Illustrations of Shakespeare, in turning the argument against Strutt, from a passage cited by the latter from the play of Variety (1649), in which the Spanish morisco is mentioned. According to Junius [Du Jon], in his Etymologicum Anglicanum, the Spanish morisco was also danced at puppet-shows by a person dressed like a Moor, with castanets, the dancers usually blackening their faces with soot to make them look like Moors. Peck, in his Memoirs of Milton, p. 135, supposes that the morris-dance was first brought into England during the reign of Edward III., on the return of John of Gaunt from Spain; but Douce, who is unquestionably the highest authority on the subject, thinks it much more probable that we had it "from our Gallic neighbours, or even from the Flemings." (Vol. ii., p. 439.) It is doubtful whether any vestiges of it can be traced beyond the time of Henry VII., during whose reign and that of his immediate successor, as we can gather from the accounts of the churchwardens, this pastime played a very important part in the rustic festivals of the parishes of England. In some places the May-games of Robin Hood, which were principally instituted for the encouragement of archery, were accompanied by morris-dancers, as a subordinate part of the ceremony. In like manner, other festivals had their morris—as Holy Thursday, the Whitsun-ales, the Bride-ales or Weddings, and the pageant called the Lord of Misrule. Lancham, in his Letter from Kenilworth, in his usual quaint fashion, speaks of "a lively moris dauns, according to the ancient manner: six dauncerz, Mawdmariou, and the fool;" and the Puritan Stubbs (Anatomie of Abuses, p. 107), whose "loud ravings against the fashionable excesses of his countrymen," have at once scandalized with their bitterness, and delighted with their minuteness, the antiquarian mind of Douce, gives a rough and ready picture, possibly as one-sided as it is graphic, of "those execrable pastimes" the morris-dances, and of the "terrestrial furies" who indulged in them. A similar tirade by Fetherston (Dialogue agaynt light, lewd, and lascivious Dancing, 1582) is valuable from its minute description of "your morice dauncers," who, if they occasionally practised all the abuses laid to their charge by this old worthy, "of dauncing naked in nettes," and other unmentionable doings, on May-day mornings, it was little wonder that they excited the hostility of the honest Puritan. It is to be observed, however, that the charges here introduced against it are not directed against the simple ceremony of the morris-dance, but against other hilarious festivities to which it was occasionally attached. The genuine morris-dance was, in Warner's days (Aubin's England, 1612, p. 121), celebrated about the time of Easter and before the May-games; for he tells us—

"At Paske began our Morries, and ere Pentecost come May, Two Robin Hood, Hell John, Friar Tuck, and Marian dafty play."

Douce, however, is of opinion (vol. ii., p. 445) that, when the practice of archery declined, and the May-games of Robin Hood were discontinued, the morris-dance was transferred to the celebration of Whitsuntide. The oldest as well as the most curious and complete representation of an English May-game and morris-dance is given by Douce. The dresses and costumes of some of the figures are supposed to belong to the reign of Edward IV. (Steevens's Shakespeare, note to King Henry IV., pt. i.) Another curious print of a morris-dance, executed about 1460-70, is given by the same writer. The May-games and morris in those days consisted of Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, the Queen or Lady of the May (sometimes personated by a boy in female attire), the fool, the piper, and several morris-dancers, habited in various modes, with handkerchiefs in their hands. A hobby-horse, constructed of pasteboard, and a dragon, were subsequently added. With respect to the collective number of the morris-dancers, it seems to have constantly varied. In one print they are nine; in another, eleven; in a third, twelve; and from different accounts it appears that they were not unfrequently limited to five. All that is known respecting Robin and his friend Little John will be found in Ritson's Robin Hood; and as for "Tuck, the merry friar, which many a sermon made," as Drayton has it (Polyolbion, song xxvi.), his history is very uncertain.

The origin of the epithet Tuck may be guessed at from Chaucer's Reeve—for "tucked he was, as is a frere aboute." The Maid Marian is said to have represented Robin Hood's mistress; but there is no mention of the alleged prototype of the May Queen in any authentic record of the outlaw. There can be no doubt, however, that the Queen of the May existed long before the games of Robin Hood; and when he received a place in these merry-makings he was in all probability assigned the most honourable position of protector of the fair lady. The fool, with the exception of the bells tied to his arms and ankles, was in point of dress the same as the English domestic fool of the fifteenth century. Morris-dancers are now unknown in England. Waldron informs us that he saw in 1783, at Richmond in Surrey, a troop of morris-dancers; and Ritson alleges that during his time they were annually seen in Norfolk and Lancashire. About the beginning of the present century a company of them was seen at Usk in Monmouthshire, where they professed to have kept up the ceremony for 300 years. (In addition to the works already specified, the reader may consult Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. i., and Gifford's Ben Jonson, vol. ii. The fullest discussion of the subject, however, is that of Douce, appended to his Illustrations of Shakespeare.)