My own experience in talking to country dancers coincides with that of Mr Cecil Sharp, who says that if you ask a sword dancer of Grenoside or Earsdon, he will insist that he is a Morris dancer, and that one is often sent after a Morris dance, only to find traces of a Mummers’ play. He adds, “In due course it will dawn upon him (the collector) that the sword dancer of Northern England, the Morris dancer of the Midlands and the South, and the Mummer of all England and Scotland are in the popular view as one and pass under the same name.” And it is the word “Morris” which gives the clue to the origin and nature of the dance, whatever the precise form which it takes. With one exception the dictionaries and glossaries I have consulted derive the word “Morris” from “Moorish.” Mr Cecil Sharp says that the weight of testimony must be held to show Morocco as the fount and origin of the dance,[1] but Mr John Graham and Mr Kidson throw doubt on its Moorish origin. The fact that the Morisco, supposed to be the counterpart of the English Morris, was a solo dance performed with castanets, and the fact that amongst Orientals only women danced, whilst the Morris is essentially a man’s dance, seems to me to put the Morris definitely into an entirely different category from the Morisco, although both words are used for the same dance. [1] Later, I believe, Mr Sharp changed his opinion. Eventually I found what I believe to be the true derivation of the word in the Glossary of C. Mackay, LL.D., published in 1887. He says that the word “Morris” is probably of Keltic origin, and comes from “Mor,” great, and “uasal,” noble and dignified. The final syllable was dropped in the course of ages, when Mor-uasal and Mor-uiseil became Moruis, great, noble, stately, dignified, solemn. Dr Mackay connects the dance with the Druidical Festival of Beltane (from Bal or Bael, the Sun-god), and he says that all traditions of the Druids show the solemn importance which they attached to May Day, or Beltane. Multitudes of devotees preceded by three orders of the priesthood—priests, bards, and prophets—marched in solemn procession to the top of a high hill to watch the kindling of a fire on May the first by the direct agency of the sun. The solemn and mysterious dance around the fire thus kindled appears to have been the origin of the Morris or Mor-uiseil dance. Many writers have pointed out the curious resemblance between the dances of the Salii and the English Morris and sword dances, and this resemblance adds to the evidence in favour of our traditional dance having originated in sun worship and nature worship generally.