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| English window, c. 1550-1621 |
Where does the term "Morris dancing" come from? The phenomenon is well documented going back to Tudor and Stuart times, but what does the term itself actually mean?
One possibility is that the phrase was originally "Moorish dancing". In other words we're meant to imagine it was a style of dancing that was introduced into England from abroad during the late Middle Ages, along with curry and gunpowder.
Unfortunately this feels like too much of a gotcha from those who would have you believe that Merrie England never really existed and/or that if it did then it wasn't really English anyway. "England's always been multicultural! Diversity is our strength!" And so on.
Perhaps more to the point, the term was in use all over Europe. If Morris dancing really was copied from "the Moors", it must have been a fashion that caught on in one part of the continent and then spread this way and that. Its arrival in different countries would have been noted at the time, and by the time it had spread from Spain to France, for example, and then from France to Italy or Germany, surely it would have been thought of as "Spanish dancing", and then "French dancing", and so on. Bear in mind that turkeys aren't really from Turkey, but having arrived in England via Turkey that's what they ended up being called. And what the Americans call French fries are in reality Flemish fries, but they got the "French" moniker in much the same way.
Could "Moorish" dancing just have been introduced into the different nations of Europe all at the same time? After the Crusades, for example? Well, maybe! But there's still a huge problem with this, which is that there's literally no historical evidence for it.
And at the end of the day there's an even bigger and more obvious problem, which is that Morris dancing is quite literally not actually Moorish. At all! In fact it has nothing in common with any type of Moorish dance whatsoever. Even if Morris dancing started at exactly the same time all over Europe as a mockery of all things Moorish, it wouldn't explain why Morris dancing and the Moorish styles of dancing are different from each in every single way - or indeed why all the different types of "Moorish" dancing found all over Europe are so completely different from each other.
Another possibility that's been suggested is that "Morris" comes from the Latin word mos (moris, in the genitive), meaning 'custom'. Morris dancing, in other words, meant simply the common vernacular style of dance that was customary in any particular place in late mediaeval Europe. This of course is a slightly more attractive explanation. Unfortunately, it still has the problem that there's no evidence for it. And it also has the other problem, which is that it's too clever by half.
The real reason Morris dancing was referred to as "Moorish" is almost certainly the same as the reason why sarsen stones are named after Saracens and why King St Edmund the Martyr's Viking executioners are depicted in late mediaeval manuscripts as wearing Turkish helmets. It's because even in the late mediaeval period it was still thought of as an unfashionable relic of pagan past, and as such it belonged to the realm of all things unbaptised - in other words that of "the Moors".*
The role of Merrie England, as Ronald Hutton has pointed out, was of course to re-purpose crude and old-fashioned things for the good of the Church. In the 15th century, ales and revels and fairs, which had previously simply been condemned by indignant churchmen as occasions for sin and wantonness, were rehabilitated and put to good use raising money for good causes. Seen in this context, Morris dancing is not only a perfectly authentic part of Merrie England but quite possibly a good deal older and perhaps more interesting than one might have thought.
*It's not even much of a stretch. In both The Song of Roland and The King of Tars, Muslims are portrayed as polytheistic idolaters.
