The idea that women’s morris dancing is a 20th century revivalist invention seems to be widely believed. Early revival folklorists like Cecil Sharp took it as gospel that the morris had always been an exclusively male activity, hypothesizing without evidence a connection to pagan fertility rites conducted by a male (of course!) priesthood. But even in Sharp’s day, women’s long historical role in morris dancing was known, and simply dismissed or ignored.

Here are the receipts.

Even the most hidebound of folk practices is never static. The morris underwent considerable evolution and divergence from its earliest mention in the fifteenth century up through the nineteenth. If the morris dancing of the nineteenth century was nearly exclusively male, its antecedents were not always so. But it also was only nearly exclusively male; even at that date, there were significant exceptions.

And why was it nearly exclusively male? There’s no need to invoke pagan fertility rites or any other deep tradition. It was the Victorian era. Women were expected to bear children, raise children, and keep the house. Morris dancers were known to go off for a week or so, walking from village to village, dancing, drinking, and fighting, and sleeping rough. It was simply not something regarded as appropriate for women to do.

The following draws on these sources:

  • Janet Blunt’s Adderbury notes (from Cecil Sharp House)
  • Keith Chandler, Morris Dancing in the English South Midlands, 1660–1900, Hisarlik Press (1993), pp. 133–136, 180, 201–203, 211, 221–223
  • Keith Chandler, Ribbons, Bells, and Squeaking Fiddles, Hisarlik Press (1993), pp. 26–27
  • John Forrest, The History of Morris Dancing, 1458–1750, University of Toronto Press (1999), pp. 279–280
  • Will Kemp, “The Nine Daies Wonder”
  • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Act III Scene V

Shakespearean times

The Two Noble Kinsmen, published under the names of Shakespeare and Fletcher (and modern scholarship apparently supports that both men were its authors, though most of it was Fletcher) has a comic scene depicting morris dancers… in ancient Athens. The performers are six men and six women. (Or are supposed to be, but one woman fails to show up for the gig. A madwoman is recruited to fill her place.)

It’s amusing to reflect that in fact the six women would have been played by male actors: Theater was pretty much exclusively male in early seventeenth century London. But they are portraying female morris dancers. One might legitimately ask, to what degree does this accurately depict early seventeenth century morris dancing? It’s a stage play, not a documentary. I have no answer to that, other than to observe one of Shakespeare’s actors — perhaps one who appeared in that scene? — famously was a morris dancer. Will Kemp in 1599, evidently for a bet, performed a solo processional morris from London to Norwich over approximately nine days, depending on how you count, over the course of about a month, and wrote about it in a pamphlet, “The Nine Daies Wonder”. According to him, along the way several other men attempted to dance alongside him and failed to last long at all. But there was one woman who tied bells on and matched Kemp step for step for quite a distance.

A 1593 book titled The Passionate Morrice depicts a morris dance of eight mixed couples. In 1602 in Tedstone Delamere, Herefordshire, Miles Conney was accused of morris dancing on the Sabbath, and he “implicated a large body of men and women from Tedstone Delamere and nearby Avenbury.” And so on; other records likewise attest morris dances for men and women in the early seventeenth century. [Forrest]

South Midlands, to 1800

After the early seventeenth century, the references to mixed sets of morris dancers largely disappear; it’s single sex morris from here on — but not men only:

From Chandler, Morris Dancing in the English South Midlands, 1660–1900:

Thomas Blount ‘recorded in 1679 that at “Kidlington” [Oxfordshire] on the Monday after Whitsun week there was a regular celebration which included “a morisco dance of men, and another of women.”’ “Kidlington” here has been claimed to be an error for Kirtlington, the reference being to the Lamb Ale.

At Woodstock, Oxfordshire in 1705 there were “three morris dances; one of young fellowes, one of maidens, and one of old beldames.”

South Midlands, nineteenth century

From Chandler, Morris Dancing in the English South Midlands, 1660–1900:

In Spelsbury, Oxfordshire, there were two sets of morris dancers during the 1810s through 1830s, one male and the other female. About 1815, celebrating “some great victory” (perhaps Waterloo), the women danced on the top of the church tower. The dancers included Mary Coulling, Martha Corbett, Charlotte Cross, Elizabeth Fowler, Sarah Fowler, Jane Hern, Mary Knight, and Hannah Smith.

In the 1830s, in Salperton, Gloucestershire, Mary Kilby “used to go out dancing the morris with her father and six brothers”.

In Blackwell, Warwickshire, one informant claimed there were three sides during the 1850s: “girls, lads and men”. Other informants dismissed this as sisters of one of the male dancers dressing in breeches and dancing “just for a game”. They included Caroline, Elizabeth, Priscilla, and Prudence Gardner.

In Kirtlington, Oxfordshire, one informant recalls seeing morris dancing by male and female sides in the 1880s.

From Chandler, Ribbons, Bells, and Squeaking Fiddles:

One Whit Monday around 1874, Sarah Ann Taylor (mother of William Nathan “Jingy” Wells) danced in kit as a member of the Bampton, Oxfordshire set.

From Blunt’s Adderbury notes:

William Walton, leader of the Adderbury, Oxforshire set in the mid to late nineteenth century, said of “Princess Royal”, “It was a man’s dance but was often (“Bless you — yes!) danced also by or with women”.