ABSTRACT
The term “Border morris” is now in widespread use and is widely understood by the morris dancing community as the dances which have their origins in the western English counties of Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire (three of the counties which form the border with Wales).
This chapter aims to provide an overview of the development of Border morris from 1963, the year of the publication of a seminal paper on the topic in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society by Christopher Cawte. It reviews the general progress of Border morris in the following 30 years and then describes in some detail the development by Leicester Morrismen. The latter element is intended to ensure that there is an enduring record of this specific development whilst the information is still (reasonably) readily available but which, it is also hoped, might help in providing one case study in the more general story of those 30 years.
The chapter concludes with a brief consideration of two topics, performance-related aspects and a snapshot of the number of teams currently involved in dancing Border morris.
