In early times the dance was accompanied by a pipe and tabor, otherwise known as whittle and dub. The pipe was a kind of flageolet, which the minstrel played with the left hand; from his left thumb was suspended the tabor or miniature drum. These primitive instruments were superseded by the fiddle, which in its turn is giving place to the concertina. The dance of the people is necessarily different from the dance of art. All national dances are characterised by vigour rather than [Illustration: MORRIS DANCE: BEAN-SETTING FROM _The Esperance Morris Book_ _By permission of Messrs. J. Curwen & Sons, Ltd._] by grace. There is lurking in them a certain note of savagery and battles long ago. The old fighting England as well as Merrie England still lives in the Morris. It is not surprising that King Charles’s men should have danced it on the eve of Naseby fight. It is essentially a dance for men, and a dance for the open air. It does not sway or glide; its movement is spirited and abrupt. The foot is lifted as in walking and then vigorously straightened to a kick; the heels come solidly to earth. The object of the dancer is to make the bells ring fortissimo, and to do this he must kick, and kick hard. The Morris does not exhibit the graceful postures and fawn-like agility of the Spanish country dances, nor the fiery energy of the Hungarian and the Russian. In its solid merriment, its even rhythm, its vigorous but restrained movements, it is essentially British. It would be impossible to describe the spirit of the Morris Dance better than in the admirable words of Mr Cecil Sharp, who is not only learned in the history of the dance, but has sought it out wherever the tradition lingers on the greensward and under the ancient oaks of an England that is passing away. “It is, in spirit,” he says, “the organised, traditional expression of virility, sound health and animal spirits. It smacks of cudgel-play, of quarter-staff, of wrestling, of honest fisticuffs. There is nothing sinuous in it, nothing dreamy; nothing whatever is left to the imagination. It is a formula based upon and arising out of the life of man, as it is lived by men who hold much speculation upon the mystery of our whence and whither to be unprofitable; by men of meagre fancy, but of great kindness to the weak; by men who fight their quarrels on the spot with naked hands, drink together when the fight is done, and forget it, or, if they remember, then the memory is a friendly one. It is the dance of folk who are slow to anger, but of great obstinacy--forthright of act and speech: to watch it in its thumping sturdiness is to hold such things as poniards and stilettos, the swordsman with the domino, the man who stabs in the back--as unimaginable things. The Morris Dance, in short, is a perfect expression in rhythm and movement of the English character.”