Joe Miller, writing in 1874, gives the following description of the preparations of a Morris dance:—“One Molly o’ Cheetham’s sent specially to London for bows and flowerets to dress her Robin’s hat with, and Jenny of the Warden House Cottage kept her thumb nail strapped up for a month to crimp her Billy’s ruffled shirt. She was so feared of spoiling the edge of the nail: and Phœbe of the Dean Farm, took Billy’s breeches to St Ann’s Square (Manchester) to have them laced with blue ribbons and bows down the side. All the lasses of the village were as busy as bees, making bows, getting up fine shirts, and tying white handkerchiefs with ribbons to dance with.” The late Mr Alfred Burton, writing in 1891, says:—“The costume worn now and for many years past (colour being left to individual taste, except in the case of the breeches, which are generally of the same colour and material in each band of dancers) consists of shoes with buckles, white stockings, knee breeches tied with ribbons, a brightly coloured scarf or sash round the waist, white shirt trimmed with ribbons and fastened with brooches, and white straw hats decorated with ribbons and rosettes. White handkerchiefs or streamers are tied to the wrist.” Strutt, in his _Sports and Pastimes of the People of England_ (1810), observes that the garments of the Morris dancers were adorned with bells, which were not placed there merely for the sake of ornament, but were to be sounded as they danced. These bells were of unequal sizes and differently denominated, as the fore-bell, the second-bell, the treble, and the tenor or great bell, and mention is also made of double bells. Sometimes they used trebles only, but these refinements were of later times. At first, these bells were small and numerous and affixed to all parts of the body—the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, knee, and ankle: the wrist, knee, and ankle being, however, the principal places. The number of bells round each leg sometimes amounted to from twenty to forty. They were occasionally jingled by the hands. The following description of a Morris dancer taken from _Recreations for Ingenious Head Pieces_ (1667) gives a very good idea of his appearance at that date:— “With a noyse and a din, Comes the Maurice dancer in, With a fine linnen shirt, but a buckram skin. Oh! he treads out such a peale, From his paire of legs of veale. The quarters are idols to him. Nor do those knaves inviron Their toes with so much iron, ’Twill ruin a smith to shoe him.”