Note 55 — 117 A GEST OF ROBYN HODE

It need hardly be remarked that the morris was neither an exclusively English dance nor exclusively a May-game dance. A Flemish morris, delineated in an engraving dated 1460–70, has for personages a lady, fool, piper, and six dancers: Douce, p. 446 f. In Robert Laneham’s description of a bride-ale at Kenilworth, 1575, there is a morris-dance, “according to the ancient manner,” in the which the parties are Maid Marian, the fool, and six dancers: Furnivall, Captain Cox, p. 22 f. A painting of about 1625 has a morris-dance of seven figures, a Maid Marian, fool, piper, hobby-horse, and three dancers. A tract, of Elizabeth’s time, speaks of “a quintessence, beside the fool and the Maid Marian, of all the picked youth, footing the morris about a Maypole,” to the pipe and tabor, and other music; and a poem of 1614 describes a country morris-dance of a fool, Maid Marian, hobby-horse, and piper: Ellis’s Brand, p. 206 f.