are sometimes called, were held in the hand, or tied to the shoulders. In Shirley's Lady of pleasure, 1637, Act i. Aretina thus inveighs against the amusements of the country :

to observe with what solemnity

They keep their wakes, and throw for pewter candlestickes,

How they become the morris, with whose bells

They ring all into Whitson ales, and sweate

Through twenty scarffes and napkins, till the Hobby
horse

Tire, and the maide Marrian dissolv'd to a gelly,
Be kept for spoone meate."

The early use of the feather in the hat appears both in Mr. Tollett's window and the Flemish print; a fashion that was continued a long time afterwards. Sometimes the hat was decorated with a nosegay, or with the herb thrift, formerly called our lady's cushion".

Enough has been said to show that the collective number of the morris dancers has continually varied according to circumstances, in the same manner as did their habits. In Israel's print

W

Knight of the burning pestle, Act iv.

* Vox graculi, 1623, p. 49.

▾ Fletcher's Women pleased, Act iv.

? Greene's Quip for an upstart courtier, sign. B. 2.

they are nine; in Mr. Tollett's window, eleven. Mr. Strutt has observed that on his sixteenth plate there are only five, exclusive of the two musicians; but it is conceived that what he refers to is not a morris, but a dance of fools. There is a pamphlet entitled, Old Meg of Herefordshire for a Mayd Marian and Hereford town for a morris dance, or 12 morris dancers in Herefordshire of 1200 years old, 1609, 4to.a In the painting by Vinckenboom, at Richmond, there are seven figures. In Blount's Glossographia, 1656, the Morisco is defined, "a dance wherein there were usually five men and a boy dressed in a girles habit, whom they call Maid Marrian." The morris in Fletcher's Two noble kinsmen contains some characters, which, as

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• This tract is mentioned by Sir William Temple, in his Essay on health and long life, from the communication of Lord Leicester. Howel, in his Parly of beasts, 1660, has recorded that "of late years ther were call'd out within three miles compasse ten men that were a thousand years between them, one supplying what the other wanted of a hundred years apiece, and they danc'd the morris divers hours together in the market place with a taborer before them 103 years old, and a maid Mariam 105," p. 122. This seems to allude to the same event.

they are no where else to be found, might have been the poet's own invention, and designed for stage effect:

"The chambermaid, and serving man by night
That seek out silent hanging: Then mine host
And his fat spouse, that welcomes to their cost
The gauled traveller, and with a beckning
Informs the tapster to inflame the reck'ning.
Then the beast-eating clown, and next the fool,
The Bavian, with long tail and eke long tool,
Cum multis aliis, that make a dance."

Mr. Ritson has taken notice of an old wooden cut "preserved on the title of a penny-history, Adam Bell, &c.) printed at Newcastle in 1772," and which represents, in his opinion, a morris dance consisting of the following personages: 1. A bishop. 2. Robin Hood. 3. The potter or beggar. 4. Little John. 5. Friar Tuck. 6. Maid Marian. He remarks that the execution of the whole is too rude to merit a copy, a position that is not meant to be controverted; but it is necessary to introduce the cut in this place for the purpose of correcting an error into which the above ingenious writer has inadvertently fallen. It is proper to mention that it originally appeared on the title page to the first known

Now this cut is certainly not the representation of a morris dance, but merely of the principal characters belonging to the garland. These are, Robin Hood, Little John, queen Catherine, the bishop, the curtal frier, (not Tuck,) and the beggar. Even though it were admitted that Maid Marian and Friar Tuck were intended to be given, it could not be maintained that either the bishop or the beggar made part of a morris.

b

There still remain some characters in Mr. Tollett's window, of which no description can be here attempted, viz. Nos. 1, 4, 6, and 7. As these are also found in the Flemish print they cannot possibly belong to Robin Hood's company; and therefore their learned proprietor would, doubtless, have seen the necessity of reconsidering his explanations. The resemblance between the two ancient representations is sufficiently remarkable to warrant a conjecture that the window has been originally executed by some foreign artist; and that the panes with the English friar, the hobby-horse, and the may-pole have been since added.

Mr. Waldron has informed us that he saw in the summer of 1783, at Richmond in Surry, a troop of morris dancers from Abingdon, ac

↳ Compare No. 1, with the left hand figure at bottom in the print; No. 4, with the left hand figure at top; No. 6, with the right hand figure at bottom; and No. 7, with the right hand figure at top. This last character in the Flemish print has a flower in his hat as well as No. 4. Query if that ornament have been accidentally omitted by the English engruver?

This gentleman's death is recorded to have happened Oct. 22d, 1779. Gough's Brit. topogr. ii. 239.