In spite of direct attempts at suppression, the inevitable desuetude of ancient custom, and the changed conditions of the life of the people, this dancing has come down from Catholic England to our own day. The Puritan preachers denounced it as “lewde” and “ungodlie”; but it survived even the tyranny of Cromwell’s major-generals and flourished gaily under the Merry Monarch. In the eighteenth century it had already become demoded. In a journal of the period we read of an account of a _soirée_, in which the writer said of a certain lady, with more candour than courtesy, that she “looked as silly and gaudy, I do vow, as one of the old Morris Dancers.” In many villages, particularly in the west and south-west of England, there still exist “sides” of morris-dancers to whom the tunes and music have been handed down through an unbroken tradition. The fidelity of this tradition is in many cases surprising. Mr Cecil Sharp, to whom is chiefly due the rediscovery of the ancient dances, relates how he took down a tune from the fiddler of the Bidford morris-men which was identical, note for note, with one that he had found in a version printed in 1550. But during the last twenty or thirty years many of the old morris-sides have been disbanded. The revival has come at the eleventh hour. Already dances have been collected representing probably every variety of the morris-step; but in another generation the memory of the Morris Dance would have almost vanished from the countryside. Soon after the Morris Dance took root in England it became incorporated with the old mummers’ plays, which embodied the cult of Robin Hood. The traditional characters of Friar Tuck, Little John and Maid Marian accompanied the dancers. The hobby-horse and the fool, sometimes known as the dysard, provided the necessary comic relief. But the main interest, and a very serious interest it was, centred in the dancing. At one time almost every village possessed its troupe, and among the various villages there was a rivalry of dancing as keen as the rivalry of football to-day. Occasionally the contest became so hot that the victory was only determined by a vigorous bout of cudgelling with the staves, which served as an accessory in the dance. The Morris Dance was no hoydenish revel in which any unskilled yokel could take part. It developed an intricate technique which not unnaturally lent itself to the introduction of a kind of “star” system among the dancers.