What is Morris Dancing?

For a description of Morris dancing you can do a lot worse than to look at the The Morris Ring website.

This is an organisation to which the Men of Wight belong, which brings together male Morris sides from all over the civilised world, even the bit on the wrong side of the Solent. The Ring's site tells you all you might want to know about the Morris, so rather than repeat it all, just follow the link.

But here's a quick summary: it's an old English custom. No-one knows why it started, just that it's been around for at least 600 years, and there are similar traditions in other European countries, such as Romania and Spain. It may be a pagan fertility rite, though there's no particular evidence of this. Nowadays it's mostly done because, well, we're Morris men and it would strange to be a Morris dancer without dancing the Morris. It keeps us out of the house, too, though unfortunately not off the streets.

Earlier this year, our chief musician Mike Howley (see the music page) appeared on Angel Radio in conversation with presenter David Nove to talk about the history of Morris and the Men of Wight in particular. You can play or download an edited version of this programme here as an MP3 file.
File size 3.2 MB, running time 12 mins. - many thanks to Angel Radio for permission to make this available.