the day proving windy, they apprehended the lights would be blown out, the banners tossed about, and their order much discomposed. They therefore requested of the Master of Stroud Hospital leave to pass through the orchard of his house, which he granted without the permission of his brethren; who, when they had heard what the Master had done, instantly hired a company of ribalds, armed with clubs and bats, who way-laid the poor monks in the orchard, and gave them a severe beating. The monks desisted from proceeding that way, but soon after found out a pious mode of revenge, by obliging the men of Frindsbury, with due humility, to come yearly on Whit Monday, with their clubs, in procession to Rochester, as a penance for their sins. Hence probably came the by-word of Frindsbury Clubs." In the British Apollo, 1708, vol. i. No. 25, to one asking "whence is derived the custom of setting up May-poles, and dressing them with garlands; and what is the reason that the milk-maids dance before their customers' doors with their pails dressed up with plate?" it is answered: "It was a custom among the ancient Britons, before converted to Christianity, to erect these May-poles, adorned with flowers, in honour of the goddess Flora; and the dancing of the milkmaids may be only a corruption of that custom in complyance with the town." "The Tears of Old May-Day. "To her no more Augusta's wealthy pride No more the May-pole's verdant height around, MORRIS-DANCERS. THE Morris-dance, in which bells are gingled, or staves or swords clashed, was learned, says Dr. Johnson, by the Moors, and was probably a kind of Pyrrhic, or military dance. "Morisco," says Blount, "(Span.) a Moor; also a dance, so called, wherein there were usually five men, and a boy dressed in a girl's habit, whom they called the Maid Marrion, or perhaps Morian, from the Italian Morione, a head-piece, because her head was wont to be gaily trimmed up. Common people call it a Morris-dance." The Churchwardens' and Chamberlains' Books of Kingstonupon-Thames furnished Lysons with the following particulars illustrative of our subject, given in the Environs of London, i. 226 : The word Livery was formerly used to signify anything delivered : see the Northumberland Household Book, p. 60. If it ever bore such an acceptation at that time, one might be induced to suppose, from the following entries, that it here meant a badge, or something of that kind : For 24 great lyverys Probably these were a sort of cockades, given to the company from whom the money was collected. 2 ["A kind of loose upper garment, sometimes furnished with a hood, and originally worn by men and soldiers, but in later times the term seems to have been applied exclusively to a sort of cloak worn by women,' Halliwell's Dictionary, p. 465.] 1 Hen. VIII. For 6 brode arouys 5 Hen. VIII. 11 Hen. VIII. 4000 1600 To Mayde Marian, for her labour for two yeers 0 20 Reed for Robyn-hood's gaderyng 4 marks' Shoes for the Mores daunsars, the frere, and 13 Hen. VIII. Eight yerds of fustyan for the Mores daunsars A dosen of gold skynnes2 for the Morres 15 Hen. VIII. Hire of hats for Robyn hode 16 Hen. VIII. Reed at the Church-ale and Robyn-hode, all things deducted 6 For spunging and brushing Robyn-hode's cotys 0 2 4 Payd for 6 yerds of satyn for Robyn-hode's For makyng the same. For 3 ells of locram3 4 yerds of cloth for the fole's cote 2 ells of worstede for Maide Maryan's kyrtle To the mynstrele To the fryer and the piper for to go to Croydon 0 0 8 29 Hen. VIII. Mem. lefte in the keping of the Wardens now beinge, a fryer's cote of russet, and a kyrtle of worsted weltyd with red cloth, a mowren's cote of buckram, and 4 Morres daunsars cotes of white fustain spangelyd, and two gryne saten cotes, and a dysardd's5 cote of cotton, and 6 payre of garters with bells." After this period, says Mr. Lysons, I find no entries relating to the above game. It 1It appears that this, as well as other games, was made a parish concern. 2 Probably gilt leather, the pliability of which was particularly accommodated to the motion of the dancers. 3 A sort of coarse linen. Probably a Moor's coat; the word Morian is sometimes used to express a Moor. Black buckram appears to have been much used for the dresses of the ancient mummers. 5 Disard is an old word for a fool. 6 In the Churchwardens' Accounts of Great Marlow, it appears that dresses for the Morris Dance "were lent out to the neighbouring parishes. They are accounted for so late as 1629." See Langley's Antiquities of Desborough, 4to. 1797, p. 142. was so much in fashion in the reign of Henry VIII. that the king and his nobles would sometimes appear in disguise as Robin Hood and his men, dressed in Kendal, with hoods and hosen. See Holinshed's Chron. iii. 805. In Coates's History of Reading, p. 130, Churchwardens' Accounts of St. Mary's parish, we have, in 1557, Item, payed to the Mynstrels and the Hobby Horse uppon 0 0 20 In the rare tract of the time of Queen Elizabeth, entitled Plaine Percevall the Peace-maker of England, mention is made of a "stranger, which, seeing a quintessence (beside the Foole and the Maid Marian) of all the picked youth, strained out of a whole endship, footing the Morris about a May-pole, and he not hearing the minstrelsie for the fidling, the tune for the sound, nor the pipe for the noise of the tabor, bluntly demaunded if they were not all beside themselves, that they so lip'd and skip'd without an occasion." Shakespeare makes mention of an English Whitson Morrice-dance, in the following speech of the Dauphin in Henry V. : "No, with no more, than if we heard that England "The English were famed," says Dr. Grey, "for these and such like diversions; and even the old as well as young persons formerly followed them: a remarkable instance of which is given by Sir William Temple, (Miscellanea, Part 3, Essay of Health and Long Life,) who makes mention of a Morrice Dance in Herefordshire, from a noble person, who told him he had a pamphlet in his library, written by a very ingenious gentleman of that county, which gave an account how, in such a year of King James's reign, there went about the country a sett of Morrice-dancers, composed of ten men, who danced a Maid Marrian, and a tabor and pipe: and how these ten, one with another, made up twelve hundred years. 'Tis not so much, says he, that so many in one county should The following description of a Morris-dance occurs in a The piper then put up his pipes, And all the woodcocks look't like snipes." As is the following in Cotgrave's English Treasury of Wit and Language, 1655, p. 56 :— "How they become the Morris, with whose bells They ring all in to Whitson Ales, and sweat Through twenty scarfs and napkins, till the hobby horse Be kept for spoon-meat." [Compare, also, the following curious song printed in Wits Recreations, 1640 :- "With a noyse and a din, Comes the Maurice-dancer in, With a fine linnen shirt, but a buckram skin. Oh! he treads out such a peale From his paire of legs of veale, The quarters are idols to him. Nor do those knaves inviron "Twill ruine a smith to shooe him. The wiser think it two ells: While the yeomen find it meet That he jingle at his feet, The fore-horses' right eare jewels."] A |