Maid's Morris: A Song History
Maid's Morris is an English country dance tune in C major and cut time.[1] It first appeared in 1689, when Henry Playford, son of the publisher John Playford, added it to the third supplement to the seventh edition of The Dancing Master.[1][2] The tune stayed in the book through its eighteenth edition of 1728, by then published by John Young.[1][3] According to the Traditional Tune Archive, the Walshes also printed it in the 1718 and 1747 editions of The Compleat Country Dancing Master.[1] Cecil Sharp later included it in the eighth set of his Country Dance Tunes, published by Novello.[4]
The Maypole, printed cotton and linen, about 1770. Villagers dancing round a maypole, shown for the morris of the title; it has no connection to the tune.
The Archive summarizes the view of Graham Christian, writing in 2015, that nothing ties the tune to rustic or antimasque performance.[1] Christian also questions the idea that the morris was danced only by men, pointing to women who joined Will Kemp's morris journey from London to Norwich in 1600 at Chelmsford and Sudbury.[1]
Mark Gilston's dulcimer arrangement of Maid's Morris is in English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2, the second half of his two-book set, where it sits alongside tunes such as "Childgrove" and "Sellenger's Round."[5]
Sources
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Maid's Morris".
- CDSS, The Dancing Master, 1651-1728: An Illustrated Compendium: "Maids Morris" (1689).
- CDSS, The Dancing Master, 1651-1728: An Illustrated Compendium: "Maid's Morris" (1728).
- IMSLP: "Country Dance Tunes (Sharp, Cecil)".
- Mark Gilston: "English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2".
- Image: The Maypole, printed cotton and linen, about 1770. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.