ABSTRACT
By the late nineteenth century, morris dancing was a rural plebeian sport in terminal decline. In the Edwardian period, the morris dance revival constituted a national movement, with perhaps more participants than ever before. The instigators of this national revival shared a common belief that morris was a vestige of a past age. Initially deriving impetus from a cultural predilection for ‘Merrie England’, the revival movement was inextricably tied to contemporaneous ideas of Englishness. As such, it both reflected and influenced how the English perceived themselves.
This chapter provides a narrative overview of the long arc of revival, from the earliest endeavours of pageant-master D’Arcy Ferris in the 1880s, through the hotly debated contests for authenticity and leadership in the Edwardian period, to the proliferation of local morris dance clubs in the post-war era. The wide chronological scope of this essay permits for an instructive comparison between the patrician-like activities of the earliest revivalists and the later self-made endeavours of local morris clubs.
