 
**Hockle Back**

By Sean Arthur

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2018 Sean Arthur

**Smashwords Edition, License Notes**

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Hockle Back

##  Introduction

A Morbo Dicitur Morris

There are generally three ways of writing a semi-historical story about anything.

One way is to meticulously research, interview people, record everything and take extensive notes. The opposite is to just make stuff up as you go along. I have taken the third route, and probably the most unreliable because even making stuff up has the easily-won virtue of being entertaining. Anyway, as you will soon find out this is not really history of anything, it is a pile of disjointed thoughts mostly on the topic that the world doesn't care about. Inside of this I provided titbits of my personal life to give the bigger story a bit of context. Morris dancing does not happen in a vacuum. Morris is attached to real people who go about their nondescript lives, for better and for worse, along the way.

In the story, I have put my faith in memories which is a dangerous methodology as anybody who knows me can attest. My memories can be very dodgy. If I can't remember where I left my car keys yesterday, I have probably little hope of faithfully remembering everything that happened 35 years ago. The annoying thing about memories is that some very insignificant moments are as clear to me as daylight, and some very important Morris episodes are as dark as if I was not even an eyewitness to them. Particularly as some of those events have photographs of me front and centre providing primary source evidence of me actually being there against my hazy recollections disputing the events. Still, while many recollections can be challenged without too much effort, others I will die in a ditch defending as solemn and holy truths. The trick for me is trying to remember which is which.

That said, what I am trying to achieve is not just a history of a few little Pommie folk clubs struggling for existence, mostly unsuccessfully, at the edge of _Gondwanaland_ _._ _I am also attempting to include a serious thread of actual Morris philosophy. What does Morris mean? Why do we do it? How and why Morris culture has changed and why will continue to change. Most of all, having danced the Morris most of my life, with many breaks, I find my own lack of explanation for having done so rather annoying. It doesn't matter that it is Morris, it could be anything at all. Ballet, fly fishing, star gazing... anything at all? Hmm, probably not ballet? But, it was Morris, damn it all. It was the Morris. People have endlessly explained why they have obsessed about the great visual universe over our head. Hobbyists have written thousands of books about their chosen field of time-wasting. But Morris Dancers? At best, we have two or three lunatics arguing on the internet about which foot one galleys after the second lot of plain capers. That or the idiotic and self-serving attempts at proving one's particular Morris cult is superior or more authentic than the filthy and wrong-headed Morris side down the road._ 1

_So, like any other study that tries to reach too far, so too this one will probably overreach. That's OK. Think of my story simply as one man's journey into the peculiar, but rewarding, world of Morris Dancing. A creaky older chap cursed with wonderful and meaningless flashbacks._

_Lastly, I must emphasise that I am not an actual authority on anything at all, much less Morris. My only merit, if I have any at all, is that I have remained breathing throughout a certain period of Morris history in Brisbane, Australia. Whilst remaining in a conscious state (more or less) I have seen stuff, experienced stuff and have the faculties sufficient to record some of that stuff. In addition to that, over the long and pointless years as a Morris dancer I have formulated some ideas and random thoughts about the art. I would very much like to say that there is great depth to my understanding, or opinions, but we both know that not to be true._

_I crash tackled into the Morris world in Brisbane, Australia, at a particularly meaty time in what was a particular epoch. Morris dancing was occurring in this city before I became aware of it, and Morris dancing will continue in this city long after my small part of it turns to dust and fades away. We are just links in the Morris chain, as it were. I have stood on the shoulders of many other dancers more talented than I, and I'd go so far as to say that they were supported by dancers just as good, or better, than they were themselves. That's the way of it. The chain goes back to Cecil Sharp and William Kimber._ 2 _And that pair stood on the shoulders of all the countless dancers proceeding the great folk revival of the 1910s and 1920s, going back deeply into the mists of time or at least back to the 15th century. That's still pretty fucking misty!_

_In the present-day Australia, Morris Dancers are unwittingly writing their cultural traditions on water as Morris dancers throughout history have always done. That's a damn shame. Nothing we do seems to be very permanent. All the effort we take, all the care that we make, are all for naught. Our life's work simply disappears like smoke. Even as a young dancer I recognised the truth of this and would often remark to other people that we should be recording this better. It was as if saying these words somehow made it happen. But it doesn't work that way. Somebody must make it happen. When Moreton Bay Morris (MBM) was having its sixth birthday in 1985, I made a small effort. And believe me it was a small effort and I wish I could go back in time to make larger. Back in 85 I did talk to those MBM dancers who were there at the beginning, and I did ask certain questions, but as it turns out not nearly enough questions. Still, I was able to nut out the basic story of MBM that would otherwise have been lost. Now I find myself on the other end of that long chain where I am one of the knowledge holders, but by no means the only one, and once again realise that unless the story that I hold is recorded, this too will be lost._

_Well, fuck that for a joke._

_I think that all Morris sides, in all places around the globe should take time out to record the thing that we do. It's no longer good enough for cultural or political history to be the preserve of the elites. How many poor country lads and lasses in Lancashire working the mills, and stomping out rhythmic beats in their boots and clogs are now lost to us? How many working men came back to the villages of their birth, from the mud of Flanders and the pointless death of the Somme, and never again picked up Morris sticks as they did when they were teenagers? Cecil Sharp did not die until 1924. He lived long enough after the war to know that the Cotswold villages that he once toured with notebook in hand were now often empty of music, song and dance. The devastation was total, save a few villages that relied on the folk memory of the youngest boys and girls, and the older parents who no longer held an interest in village festivities after burying fathers, sons, brothers and uncles._

_In more modern and less tragic times, including the 70s, the 80s, the 90s and now, as the older generation shuffles off - if not off the mortal coil just yet, then at least onto other activities that don't involve Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) - how is our Morris culture going to be remembered? It was only at last week's practice I was observing in my current side, Belswagger, the foreman and squire teaching a new dance. It struck me, and not for the first time, that this new and ordinary development shall also be lost in time. It really shouldn't. And these new Morris developments, one built upon the other, are all being lost every single day. They are lost because it's only Morris dancing, and Morris dancing - as everyone knows - is stupid._

_Chapter One_

In principio fecit

_I saw my first Morris dance about 1980. It was also first time I saw MBM perform in public. This coincidence can be explained by the simple fact that it was MBM what done both._

_In 1980, I was still a soldier in the Australian Army, undergoing my fourth year of service with about a year and a half to go. My service contract was for six years and at that stage I didn't know whether I would re-engage for another term, or not. I was 22 years old, and bullet-proof. At least I hoped I was bullet-proof, which would be a handy attribute for an infantry soldier. At that stage, I had fallen extremely hard for the Brisbane folk scene. I wish I could give someone who had never seen the folk scene in Brisbane at that time a small taste of what it was like. Because my descriptive skills are not up to the task; I'll just say that the folk scene was absolutely exploding. Try and imagine what this means in your own mind, and then doubled down on it._

_Back then it was possible to go to a bush dance every day in every given week in Brisbane. The folk environment at the time had to be seen to be believed. For someone who couldn't sing or play an instrument, it was torture because everyone I knew had those skills. If I couldn't play music I could at least dance and did so as much as possible. I made a practice of going to Bush dances at least four times a week. The week would start for me on a Sunday night, at the_ _Lone Parents Association_ _Hall. The_ _Lone Parents Association_ _was something that I never really considered to be a thing. Such was my age and disposition I wasn't into relationships, although I knew that romance between homo sapiens sometimes failed. An association actually existed to give company to single or separated parents and this was before, actually a long time before, online dating and Tinder. This was old-school analogue romance. I had no interest at 22 in any sort of serious relationship anyway. The big thing about the association for me was that they rented out the hall above the very sad bar downstairs. More importantly, that it was rented out by a fantastic little folk band combo called, the_ _Rantan Bush Band_ _. In those days, every bush band had their own style, and all were great. Other than Rantan, there was the_ _Veranda Band_ _, who played at the Blind Hall at West End on a Thursday night. The Veranda Band were extremely talented and very attractive, which I think was part of the mandatory requirements to be in that particular band... talented and attractive. They played a lot of_ _Steeleye Span_ _numbers in the breaks between dances and also performed many other cappella songs._

_On a Friday night, once a month, there was a massive open-air bush dance down the Brisbane Bayside. It was held in a paddock so big that it would hold a couple of hundred dancers, easily. If you have never tried to bush dance in a paddock in the dark it is not really to be recommended. A paddock contains dips and holes all over the bloody place. In winter, they would often build a bonfire about the size of a four-wheel drive, and we would dance around that initially for warmth, but after a couple of dances it was just too hot for any semblance of comfort. Of all the many and varied bush bands of the era, the "_ _Bail 'Em Up Bush Band_ _", held the most vibrant and energetic bush dances of them all. We would dance until midnight and then walk stiffly into the pitch-black night back to our car. The next night, we would do it all over again at a new venue and with the new band. The day after that, Sunday, it would be back to the Lone Parents Association Hall opposite the Royal Brisbane Hospital, and the weekly bush dance circuit would start anew._

_The Sunday night session hosted by Rantan had a special, comfortable flavour. It was generally recognised as a "dancer's" bush dance, in that little time was expended in talking you through the dance moves. You already knew the dances and the band knew the music, so that people just showed up and got on with it. It was during the winter of 1980 one Sunday night, that a bunch of weirdos showed up at the Rantan bush dance. They formed themselves into sets and made an excellent meal of all the dances as if they had been regulars. I knew for a fact that they weren't because I was a_ _regular_ _and these people were just_ _ring-ins_ _._

_During the break, Rantan actually supplied a light supper, which was rare for a Bush band. I still remember it as if it were yesterday. The new group in the funny costumes made themselves absolutely prominent at that point during the break. The ladies team Morrised-on, bells a-ringing, and began a wild military formation set to music and completely flabbergasted all witnesses. I'd never seen such a sight previously and had no idea how much this craft would dominate my future. After the MBM Ladies North West team danced off, the men's Cotswold side swaggered into the middle of the hall. Before they even started dancing the men were projecting attitude as well as energy. Don't forget, this was 1980, and these guys were big burly men, and they had flowers on their hats and were bedecked with coloured ribbons. It was also plain that although it was a Sunday evening, some of them had been drinking. Their's was a combination of delicacy and menace that grabbed your attention. And this was even before the music started playing. When the Morris tune lit up in these big men began to dance with incredible precision and lightness and they clashed heavy She Oak_ 3 _sticks with careless noise and violence. It certainly focused the observer's mind._

_These strange individuals finished their dance sets, and pretty much disappeared into the night. Gone! The regulars were left to finish off the bush dance, but I couldn't help wondering what it was that I just witnessed. The group didn't much announce what they are about to do and they didn't say much about who they were. Perhaps they did and I was just too stunned to process what they said? Perhaps I just didn't pick up on any announcements due to the spectacle of the dance itself? While it was certainly impressive, and it did leave a mark on me, shortly afterwards I gave it no more thought about it. This is fairly typical for my attention span._

_Roughly six months later I had the excellent fortune to go to the National Folk Festival (NFF). The NFF moved around every year like some stray dog birthing puppies. This time it was Brisbane's turn to host the massive folk event. As I said previously, the early 80s was ground zero for the folk movement. It was truly spectacular, and folkies were young. Most of the attendees were my age or perhaps slightly older. The 1981 event was held at Queensland University, and it was my first Folk Festival. Because it was Brisbane I didn't even have to camp out, and because it was Easter there was no call on my services for military exercises. I spent the entire time attending concerts and bush dances. Heaven on the stick! I have one enduring memory of that time particular person who, I would learn was one Peter Auty. He called all the dances at one bush dance, and he was totally and soundly asleep on the stage at another bush dance I attended. He lay in what looked to me a very uncomfortable position around the cables and microphone stands with his head awkwardly using a fold-back speaker as a pillow. The bush band did not seem in the least concerned that a drunk Morris dancer lay unconscious at their feet. This was my first introduction to Peter Auty, though there would be many other occasions just as memorable._

_As it turns out, I contributed to the 1981 Brisbane NFF in my own tiny way. Back in those days it was the custom for the NFF to provide a crash pad of sorts for those who arrived without better accommodation. Of course, this arrangement never lasted into modern times, but it was a quaint courtesy that was offered back then. Essentially all the Festival offered was a massive hall and people could simply crash on the floor. It was pretty impressive to see 300 odd bodies lying in a messy arrangement in a big room. It was also incredibly noisy and couples were not beyond enjoying intimate moments amongst several hundred of their folky neighbours. I was approached by Robin Craig, who was one of the organisers of the NFF to supply a couple of hundred plastic covered army mattresses for the crash pad. I went and asked the quartermaster of my battalion for a loan of 200 mattresses expecting to be told to "piss off". To my surprise he said that I could sign them out as long as they were back on the absolute dot of 2 PM on the Tuesday following Easter. He left me in no doubt what would happen to me if they were as much is 15 minutes late. It was either precisely at 2 o'clock or my head was in a noose. Such was my naivete that I placed my future freedom in the hands of Queensland folkies. If you are a civilian reading these words you probably have little comprehension of what guaranteeing a return of mattresses to an army quartermaster means. It means_ _exactly_ _that, it means_ _precisely_ _that. There is no such thing as_ _late_ _, there may be such a thing as_ _early_ _, there is definitely such a thing as "_ _on time_ _". But let me be absolutely clear on this point,_ _there is no such thing as "late."_ _It is not a small thing at all. I was also guaranteeing that every last single one of those 200 mattresses would be returned, at the_ _completion of a folk Festival_ _. And I don't mean 199, there had better be 200. As I read these words 36 years later I can still manage to feel a shiver up my spine that I took such a terrible risk; that I trusted that all 200 mattresses would be returned on time after a four-day National Folk Festival. I must've been out of my tiny ignorant mind._

_Anyway, on the Tuesday I was back at Enoggera Barracks awaiting the return of those fucking mattresses. Naturally these were the days before mobile phones. The one contact number I had for Robin Craig kept ringing out, as it would do if you were the head of the NFF the day after that big Festival had finished. She had plenty of very urgent things to do, of which returning mattresses to little private soldiers at Enoggera was way down on her priority list. So, I couldn't contact her, and she couldn't contact me because, well, I didn't have a phone of any description. By lunchtime my skin was approximately the same colour as my army uniform. I began to idly wonder what military prison would be like. Lunchtime arrived and I knew that I had two hours of actual freedom left. It may surprise you to know that in the Army you can actually get jailed for not returning something on time. I shit you not._

_As it was lunchtime, and possibly my last free lunch for a little while, I went to the mess hall for a final meal. I sat there somewhere in the middle of the green horde and poked a burnt sausage around my plate with a bent fork and cursed my stupidity. It was at that exact moment that two unlikely fellows burst into the mess hall and in doing so actually created a sort of "non-sound" about the place. Where before several hundred young men had been eating, chatting and sometimes yelling in what was a single enclosed room and creating the sort of general rowdiness usually associated with an average football stadium, the sight of these two blokes crashing into the hall stilled the day. The two men in grubby civvies, I would learn were Morris dancers from MBM working for the Festival._

_One of the men, "Gazza" (Graham Crawford) was a shearer_ 4 _from Western Queensland and stood at least 8 foot tall. Gazza had never got the hang of city life, nor city folk. He trusted neither completely. He was a big man, and for a Morris dancer, he did not move delicately. Oh, there are so many stories about Gazza and his ability to step on people who were completely removed from his immediate person. Dancing opposite Gazza would lead to severe thrombosis of the arms in any stick dance you care to mention. He tended to be prominent in a crowd. At that moment only one other person could have garnered more attention than Gazza in that mess hall, and that was the person standing right next to him. Peter Auty stood adjacent to Gazza holding a piece of paper. Both men had beards as wild as bushrangers and considering that they were sharing a room with about 500 men with short back and sides haircuts they sported a certain presence about themselves. To add to the pair's general wild demeanour, Peter Auty was sporting, not one, but_ _two_ _black eyes. He looked like a rather annoyed raccoon. The last time I had seen this man, he was drunkenly, and peacefully asleep on the stage. Between that moment and now he had somehow engaged in what appeared to be a fistfight with at least two trucks. Apart from the black eyes, he had bark off his skin in several prominent places. Quite unnecessarily, Auty bellowed out to the absolutely quiet mess hall, "which one of you bastards is (consulting his note) Sean Arthur."_

_For a second there was no sound, save my chair scraping backwards as I stood up. Five hundred sets of eyes fixed upon me as I made my lonely way up the aisle towards the two bushrangers/Morris dancers/NFF helpers. When I got to them, Gazza asked me where I wanted the mattresses, indicating a truck parked just outside the mess hall. I glanced at the window and there was a beaten up old truck containing my plastic-covered gold. I could have kissed them both as I was about 40 minutes from jail. Subsequently, if I had a dollar for every question about Gazza and Auty that was tossed at me by other diggers over the next week or so I would have made a tidy sum. The quartermaster ticked off all 200 mattresses as present and correct, and all these years later I still consider that fact to be one of the biggest miracles of my life so far. I did not know at that stage that these two chaps would one day be my firm friends. But on that particular day they were just two random hippie lunatics who had saved my bacon._

_A few weeks later I went to the Brisbane Mediaeval Faire as just as a nameless visitor. The Faire was held every year at the Anglican Friary next to the Forex brewery at Milton. I spent a happy couple of hours admiring the costumes and enjoying the atmosphere, as one does. Eventually I heard that same kind of jaunty music in the background that I have experienced all those months before at the Rantan bush dance. I made my way over to the village green to see that same odd group performing their peculiar, vibrant dances and with the same violent energy. This time I was determined to at least find out who or what they were. At the completion of their first set I started to chat with a couple of them and discovered that they were very friendly bunch. They were Morris dancers and the team were_ _Moreton Bay Morris_ _. I had no idea that I would be also meeting my future wife, Debbie Seligmann, and her brother, Matthew Seligmann. I started going out with Debbie and became increasingly involved with Moreton Bay Morris. Another quirk in my personal timeline, was that it was at the Milton Mediaeval Fair, exactly one year later that I first danced out with MBM, and the year following that, I performed my first solo jig for my sash at the same venue. Even now the Mediaeval Fair resonates with me, despite changing venues at least four times in the intervening years. Just for the record, the first Morris dance I ever performed was_ _Beaux of London City._ _Who cares, you ask? Me, I do... I care!_

_Thus, I entered the strange world of going out with a Morris dancer, yet not being part of the Morris itself. At that point, I had no interest in donning bells nor in clashing sticks. I still had almost a year of military service to complete, and then a decision to make whether I want to make the army a career. I had joined the army just before the Vietnam war had even officially ended. I was 17 when I joined for a six-year term and that was almost complete. I loved the army. I couldn't believe that I was being paid to ride in helicopters, travel to distant lands, fire weapons that other people only see in movies, and generally gad about like a big kid. I was still only 23 years old, but the folk world was showing me that there was another universe out there which didn't include saluting idiots nor painting rocks. As an example, in my last year of service I joined my Battalion's Pipe and Drum Band. The fact that I could operate neither bagpipes nor any of the drums did not deter me. This being an infantry battalion, it meant that as a band member when I wasn't on exercise or operations, I was committed to study music, and be paid for doing so. Out in the bush all infantry band members are officially medics. So, when I wasn't studying music theory I was learning how to patch up battle casualties and snakebite injuries. Luckily no soldier had to depend upon my services in that role, medicine held no interest for me anyway. On the other hand, learning how to play the bagpipes did interest me greatly._

_I was sent on a three-month course on the highland bagpipes in an effort to bring me up to speed with the more experienced players. This was a disaster in so many ways. As any bagpipe player will tell you, it takes seven years to learn the pipes, and a lifetime to master them. A three-month course was never going to do it. It took longer than that to just learn how to hold them. The pipe major kept on telling me that I looked like I was trying to fuck an octopus. The other problem I had was that the bagpipes took a certain amount of circular breathing in order to play them properly. I discovered to my horror, that I was forever on the edge of blacking out because of my talent for musical hyperventilation. This is why the best pipers begin playing before they can walk. Starting anything as an adult is difficult, and the bagpipes especially so. Still, I was being paid to learn music and play, after a fashion, during big and fancy military parades. I was one of a number of apprentice pipers, but I was the only one of us who was taking music seriously. When I think back to those times I now see how strange life was. One minute I was banging away with the practice chanter, trying to master extremely complicated grace notes. Then it was off to the range after lunch firing five or six hundred rounds at maximum distance on the M60 machine gun. And, later on that night, playing jaunty 4/4 marching tunes for a_ _Beating the Retreat_ _ceremony for my battalion. At the time was just another day in the office. Now that I reflect upon it they were strange times indeed._

_For any crazy people, out there who are contemplating military service there are only two ways of behaving in the army. The first is taking everything seriously, no matter how ridiculous the task, or regardless of how limited the intelligence of the tasker. You devote time to your uniform, equipment, weapon and appearance. You are orderly and punctual in your attendance of military duties. You show respect, and you obey orders. This is how you get ahead, you learn this early on and you see excellent examples all around you. Then there is the other way of treating your military service. That is, you set out to enjoy yourself. If you see where I am getting at, I chose the_ _second path_ _. The second path, in a nutshell is doing the opposite of the first path._

I'm skipping over a lot of detail here. I loved the service, but I outgrew it. I had joined before my 18th birthday and got out just before my 24th. Six years in jungle green and very few life skills for civilian life. Civil society has few uses for former machine gunners.

_Chapter Two_

Morris Conscribere

_I managed to score a job a couple of days before I left the army as a greenkeeper on a golf course in west of Brisbane at the posh suburb of Indooroopilly. I knew nothing about keeping greens and knew even less about golf. When I arrived for the job interview there were about 20 other people sitting on benches awaiting their turn. Every last one of them looked like they knew how to expertly care for golf courses. They looked like the kind of people who could drive tractors and operate grass cutting machines. I certainly didn't, and my initial impulse was to lie, but I doubted I'd get away with it, or even last 20 seconds before I said something counter-productive._

_What I didn't realise was that I had one advantage that those other 20 people didn't have. Possibly two things? One, I had a short back and sides haircut and the interviewer was an old guy with the matching haircut to mine. And, two, I definitely didn't look like I was a meth addict, and I believed on that front it helped me to knock out every other contender on the benches. Within a few hours of my starting the job, my boss, the kindly old Scottish gentleman named Doug, was probably pining for the meth addicts. My first task was to cut a neat circle around each green after the bloke on the riding machine had manicured it all around the flag. My job was to concentrate on the no-man's-land area between the green and the rough and I had to cut the circle around the entire green short and neat. I was given a petrol push mower and in only an hour the things that I did to five or six greens was a crime against botany. I had the blades of the mower set way too low and as a result I kept burning miniature crop circles all around the green. I was very inexperienced in this kind of work and it was another example how the army had made me functionally useless in so many ways. Here I was at 24 and pushing a lawnmower for the very_ _first_ _time. I didn't know what was normal in the grass cutting world and what was idiotically destructive. In my mind perhaps every five feet you were supposed to cut a tight circle right through the grass and into the very earth beneath? What's normal?_

_During the previous six months I had slowly but surely became increasingly engaged with Moreton Bay Morris (MBM). I wasn't a member in any official capacity, but I wasn't an innocent bystander either. I supported my girlfriend, Debbie, in that I drove her to Morris practice and foot-ups and attended social Morris events. I had one mental golden rule, however, even as I toyed with actually becoming a Morris dancer. And that was it was never going to happen whilst I was still soldier. The opportunities for incredibly painful sledging were just too great given that I would be wearing flowers in my hat, bells on my shins and waving hankies. My strength of character did not extend to actual courage. In any case it was a big decision to join the Morris side because as I now know for certain, it's easier to quit being a Scientologist._

_So, for about six months I was neither a dancer, nor was I socially excluded from the world of Morris. I inhabited and in-between world where I could stay remote but still kinda involved. I was like a non-Italian member of a Mafia gang. While could just stay outside the circle indefinitely, I was secretly very attracted to the Morris world all the same. In those days, the Morris was very interactive. It was like a real life and bizarre computer game. One was never quite sure where the boundaries were between reality and make believe. Socially it was exciting times. Morris parties were legendary. For that matter, folkie parties were definitely out there too, and the participants of both groups were usually the very same people. But folkies tended to have an earnest, slightly serious streak even within their humour boundaries. Morris dancers had none of this and their humour was almost dangerous in its outlook. Later on, in this sordid tale, I will provide several clear examples of this. As an outsider looking in it was all very enticing and the social life was definitely the most attractive part of the Morris world at that point. After I joined MBM properly, the dance itself gripped my soul and I was lost to all earthly dimensions. Eventually all Morris dancers become misplaced in time and space. That is the hazard of performing an art form that is at least 600 years old. But in those way off days the guys just had demonstrably great fun, and that became the invisible hook upon which I was reeled in._

_It was at the function that the German club at the Gabba where I drunkenly announced that I would join the Morris. Such was my many refusals from previous offers my explicit intention to joining was met with genuine disbelief. I was a bit annoyed. While I didn't think that the group would welcome me with open arms (actually, that's exactly what I did think) I didn't consider they would hear my affirmation and just discard it as the booze talking. It wasn't until I showed up following Tuesday night at practice that they took me seriously._

_What was 1982 like for those who were not yet even part of the cosmos? That year, the movies,_ _Das Boot, Porkies, Rocky III, Blade Runner,_ _and_ _Toot_ _s_ _ie_ _were all released to varying levels of critical acclaim. The top 100 song hits included Olivia Newton John's,_ _Physical_ _;_ Chariots Of Fire by Vangelis, and Pretty Woman by Van Halen. In politics, Malcom Frazer was still PM and his opposite, Bill Hayden, still had a year to run before he was rolled by Bob Hawke. In the news, Lindy Chamberlain was committed for trial for the murder of her daughter Azaria. In June, the Premiers and the Commonwealth agree to abolish appeals from the State Supreme Courts to the Privy Council, thus making the High Court of Australia the final court of appeal. In December the Australian Women's Weekly was first published as a monthly magazine. Everybody happily speculated that the magazine will now be known as the Australian Woman's Monthly, but unhappily, it kept to its old moniker. In August, Costigan Royal Commission into the Ships Painters and Dockers' Union began. And, in the old familiar way of Tory Royal commissions into the unions, it ended up examining senior members of the Liberal Party for tax fraud.

_Thus, amidst all this boring turmoil, I began my first year as a MBM Morris dance rookie in February 1982._

_As a MBM Morris apprentice you were expected to be a general slave in those days. On the first night after practice I was handed the big bag of sticks and told it was my job to carry them until I got my sash. Dancing for your sash means that you have achieved the minimum standard in dancing to be considered as a full member of the side. On the first night, they made that possibility sound very remote. I was also in awe of the MBM's men's foreman, Paul Wilson. He was the eldest of the 176 Wilson brothers. At any given time, and in any given situation, and in any given place if you are chatting to a random Morris dancer in Brisbane the chances were excellent that you were talking to a Wilson brother. Paul Wilson was quietly spoken but had an air about him that made you not want to disappoint him. He was quite passionate about the dance and he had a sense of remoteness which made it difficult to ask questions. By joining the Morris, I had passed invisible line from being the boyfriend of a Morris dancer to becoming an actual one. Now that I was a baby Morris dancer it was army recruit training all over again, but with the significant involvement of a lot more alcohol. I have often wondered how that was even possible?_

_I suppose at this point I should explain what Moreton Bay Morris looked like on the Tuesday night in March, 1982._

_First of all, I thought that all Morris sides around the world, even in England, followed the MBM pattern. I didn't know any better. I'd go so far as to say without any supporting evidence to back me up, that MBM was one of the largest Morris sides in the world. This was so because MBM was actually two Morris sides, and had been almost from inception. The ladies team were Northwest dancers and the men's team were Cotswold dancers. We had a squire who was in charge of both sides, and the two forepersons, who acted not only as dance teachers, which is their traditional role, but they were also Assistant Squires, if not officially, then in actuality. Each internal team had an assistant foreperson designed to, well, to assist the foreperson. The other office bearers included a Bagman to act as treasurer/secretary and a scribe who would, mostly badly, record the side's activities on a daily basis. We all practised in an office building in South Brisbane's Merivale Street. The men practiced downstairs and the ladies upstairs. Not that everyone made a showing religiously every Tuesday night for practice, we still had a huge turn up. Usually we would have two sets of six dances for the Cotswold team, and 10 or 12 ladies upstairs practising north-west. We also had enough musicians to divide between the two groups. When I joined MBM in February 1982, I would guess that the side had about 30 engaged members. In over 10 years of dancing I estimate that the side had well over 100 dancers and musicians as part of the troupe. The trouble was that, during the entire period, no one properly recorded anything._ 5

_As could be expected, because I was a Cotswold dancer, I mainly got to know the men at first. They were a lively bunch always fooling around, but still taking the dance itself seriously. MBM men's side, apart from Paul Wilson, the foreman, included another Wilson, Philip. Phil was one of the few MBM people in the side who had previously had involvement with Morris; the other being Clare Throssell. Clare had started dancing in a Morris side in Brisbane back in 1973, the natural forerunner to MBM. This side was started by a Brisbane Morris legend called Sid Perry. Their group was called the_ _English Folk and Dance Society_ _, which doesn't sound all that inspiring, but give them a break, they were dancing Morris in the early 70s. Not that we are going for bragging rights, but they were probably the first ongoing Morris group in Australia?_

_Other prominent Cotswold men included, Frank Ramsden (Fizz), Peter Lobbin, Mick Hendrickson, Matthew Seligmann, Graham Crawford, Terry Jacob, Greg and John Sunter, Simon (NFI), Don Nichols, Ian Drynan and Peter Auty. I now realise there is a danger recalling names from those days because there are so many I can't remember; it was just too long ago. I hope anyone from those days reading these lines and feeling left out knows that is a tall order to remember a single and ordinary practice night from 35 years ago._

_My first few practice nights were taken up solely by me repeating the basic Morris four-step, over, and over, and over again. Two hours of it straight. And the following week, more of the same, all the time in the background I could see the rest of the men actually dancing the Morris. And then it was me back to the four-step_ _ad nauseam_ _. I didn't appreciate at the time but the four-step is the basic foundation for all Morris dancing. Until I mastered that perfectly I wasn't allowed to do anything else. MBM had a practice of utilising the assistant foreman for training the apprentices. They were generally responsible for the Cotswold learners, and eventually I was elected into that position a couple of years later. As assistant foreman, I made my apprentices undergo the same boring drill that I went through myself. The credo was that if you couldn't four-step properly you'd never dance the Morris properly. Who was I to argue with the credo?_

_As it turned out I was an inpatient little shit. Even after I got the four-step mastered and was starting to dance the traditional stuff, I was eager for more. In 1982, the MBM side had three male apprentices. There was a real sense of competition amongst learners. I was determined to be the first of the three to dance a solo jig for my sash._ 6 _My biggest competition was Greg Sumter, a red-headed lad and he had the distinct advantage over me. His brother, John, was a most excellent Cotswold dancer from Canberra, and both had recently moved to Brisbane. Greg, I believe, was getting private tuition from his brother because his style had suddenly and mysteriously improved out of sight. I decided the only way to fight was with fire. So, I metaphorically beat Greg over the head with a burning branch. I went to the undisputed best dancer in the team, Matt Seligmann, who was also my girlfriend's brother, and in time he would be my brother-in-law. I approached him for private lessons on Sunday afternoons. He agreed and for a couple of months I would spend two hours at a time dancing in his tiny carport, practising steps, hops and leaps. I couldn't get enough of it and while he was always courteous and helpful, I imagined that he got sick of my face showing up every Sunday and demanding instruction. The extra practice paid off, and my dancing began to improve out of sight._ _Suck on that_ _, Greg Sunter!_

_By coincidence, my first year of Morris, 1982, was also a significant year in Brisbane's history. Later that year the city was to hold the Commonwealth Games. Not only were the games a rather big deal for Queensland, they also heralded a full year of marketing opportunities to promote the games. MBM went from doing the odd church fete to a packed schedule of multicultural events. Almost every second weekend the side was involved in some large promotion. In many ways, it was the forerunner of six years later with Expo 88. We danced so much, and at so many different events, that some of the side were a bit burnt out by the process (just like what was to happen at Expo). So, the three apprentices in the men's side actually became a valuable resource and not just a pain in the butt. By the time the games rolled around, all three apprentices were just as capable as most of the more experienced Morris dancers._

_One night as part of the festivities, we were warned that a group of VIPs would be arriving to briefly meet with us. So, we were standing with a substantial gathering which included all the usual suspects; Morris dancers, Tongan dancers, German dances and the rest, all biding our time. It was with no small surprise that who should walk up to us but the Queensland Premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen_ _,_ _the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh. Yup, old Phil the Greek himself. Just as Joh came up to us leading the noble throng, the side squire noticed Peter Auty becoming agitated, and had started to push his way forward to the front of the pack. As Auty was actually a genuine member of the Australian Communist Party (ACP), and in so many ways a certified lunatic, the squire of the side believed he could very well say something exceedingly inappropriate and "Auty" like. In the only occurrence of absolute censorship, I have ever witnessed in MBM, Auty was physically removed from the front rank by his fellows and pushed to the rear. Luckily, he was so surprised by his ejection that he never even raised a complaint. This was a man whom one did not ordinarily lay a hand upon. However, Auty took it all in good spirits, which was fortunate because it could have gone bad very easily. If Auty had tried something, even by way of a gag, he would have been in serious trouble. This was the years of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and the years of the police special branch which his government controlled. One could attract a whole lot of bad karma, in fact, actual political harassment, by making a negative comment about the Premier or any one of the numpties who made up his government. Communist Party members suffered police surveillance of their most boring and everyday activities. Every ACP member had not only a Queensland police special branch file, but also an ASIO personal file. In democratic Australia of the 1980s the right side of politics brooked no opposition other than the rather tame ALP version. The only reason that Auty probably wasn't recognised by the security services was because he was wearing the outlandish costume of your average Morris dancer. Regardless, we had to protect Auty from himself._

_On approaching us, Joh asked us who we were, and on being told we were Moreton Bay Morris Dancers, he asked us what part of Moreton Bay did we come from? There was no way to diplomatically reply to that question, so our squire just smiled weakly. Joh was a fascist prick anyway, fuck him! Because we danced for the Queens consort, the side awarded itself a big gold badge, and given that virtually every one of us were staunch Republicans, it gave us great pleasure call ourselves, the Royal Moreton Bay Morris ever after (_ _as a joke, mind you_ _)._

_By Christmas, and after the Commonwealth games, of which I have no recollection at all, all the apprentices had earned the right to be called Morris Men, even though we still lacked the coveted gold sash. I well remember when the Squire tapped on me on the shoulder and told me find someone to teach me my jig. It was a nice feeling. I decided that I would perform my solo jig at the very place where I first danced the Morris. I was to go solo at the Anglican Friary during the next Mediaeval Faire in 1983. I danced_ _Highland Mary_ _, Bampton, if anybody cares to know._
_Chapter_ _Three_

Intellectus Morris

_Back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth and You Tube never existed, if one wished to learn a new dance, tradition or jig, one had to consult both the "Bacon" and Cecil Sharp directly. Lionel Bacon, one of the many English Morris authorities wrote his dance notes in the mid-1970s. The Bacon, or the "Big Black Book", is the most wonderful resource even today. Especially today. Just like Sharp's recordings from before the first world war, unfortunately, both books also suffer from being considered holy doctrines never to be departed from in any way_ 7 _. This is pure nonsense of course. Lionel Bacon did his level best with his research but the limits of interpreting a verbal tradition of dance are pretty evident. Scanning pages of the Black Book at random will show that in many cases all that remains are the dance names. Sometimes not even that. If you seriously wished to learn a dance, one had to learn the dance notation first of all, and in many instances the Bacon notation went into more additional and explicable detail than Sharp's efforts._ 8 _This was because Sharp is often ambiguous, but so too is Bacon at times. In both books, the authors interviewed actual dancers. Many times, the ancient dancers were questioned when they were in their advanced years, and of course their memory was creaky. Both Bacon and Sharp (besides others) had to try and fill in the forgotten blanks. What the reader often gets are dance instructions that raise more questions than they provide answers._

_However, I think that the ambiguity in Morris is more than fine. Not having explicit directions allowed a certain licence. If Sharp and Bacon both left out what might be considered an important detail then the reader themselves could apply an answer that made sense to them. As long as it generally fitted with what was known of a tradition there was no harm in extrapolating those little details that were no longer evident. In this way, Morris sides all over the world would learn the self-same dance in a way that was quite exquisitely different from all the others. Better still, everyone could argue a case for_ _their_ _version as being the truly authentic one. My favourite Morris dance, the_ _Queens' Delight_ _, is a Bucknell tradition. It is danced by some English sides in a way that I cannot even recognise the tradition according to the way we dance it, let alone the dance itself. That's absolutely fine._

_Nowadays, however, thanks to the search function on_ _You Tube_ _I've noticed that sometimes there is a distinct lack of originality caused by the "copypasta" effect. People learning a jig, for instance, simply look for it on the video and replicate it as they saw it. There is often little intellectual rigour, only mimicry. Because this book is a raging warning against doctrinal prohibitions, I cannot say that viewing and copying dances from_ _You Tube_ _is in any way wrong. Perish the thought. What I can say is that if Morris is only to be a facsimile of Internet renditions eventually the spirit and culture of Morris will suffer at some point. But, as I say, do what you have to do to get the dance done._

_I sit here trying to think what the Morris side might be compared to and nothing comes to mind. A sporting side shares some characteristics, but it just doesn't bend itself into a proper Morris shape. The organisational structure works, to some extent as a sporting metaphor. You have the captain, the coach and the players. You have a team treasurer, I guess, and the spectators. However, you definitely don't have fans. A Morris side's biggest fans would be family and friends but that's about it. Even when it comes to the players, there is only a superficial resemblance. Morris dancers tend towards being rebels, or rogues, and only the most straightforward fascism can keep them locked down towards the slightest level of discipline. The captain, more properly known as the "Squire", is in charge of group, but only by the consent of those in his/her charge. The foreman, or foreperson, is the spiritual choreographer of the team. They are the one with the vision of how the team will look and perform as dancers during their tenure. The squire is not divorced from the sides performing outlook, they share responsibilities with the foreperson to make it all happen. However, if the squire is the undisputed leader of the side then the foreperson has artistic control._ 9 _It generally works as a team of two, and more importantly, it just generally works._

_If we look at the players, or as we like to call them,_ _"the dancers"_ _, the sporting example has no longer any resemblance to reality. The dancers do, however, often assume archetypes that are common to most Morris sides. First of all, there are at least two dancers in any side that have golden threads of pure talent running through their bodies. When you see them dance they look just like liquid in motion. Morris is all about movement. A talented dancer listens to the rhythm of the music and plugs themselves into the vibration and pattern. In those rare cases when you are confronted with talented individuals you just teach the stepping to them and get the hell out of their way. Talented dancers often lack empathy for the rest of us. It is too much for them to comprehend that ordinary people have to work at it. That said, some of the best dancers I have ever seen lack a natural talent. They make up for that by the sheer bloodied grind, and deliberately making an effort when they and everybody else is tired and sore. At practice when you just want to sit down because it's been a long night they are the first people to stand up and demand another round. In my experience, they comprise at least half of the side._

_Then there are the rest of us, and we occupy the most important role in any Morris side. Some people are not great dancers, sometimes they are fucking horrible dancers. It is often the dancers who don't dance very well who are the glue that keeps the whole balsa wood model together. I'll give you an example. In Moreton Bay Morris, there existed for many years one Kevin Kelly Esq. Kevin was not a great dancer, nor was he even a good dancer. He danced the way some people experience a cardiac arrest. He would forget most dance calls, up to and especially including, "foot-up." But he was one of the most joyful, happy people that you'd ever like to meet. Moreton Bay would not have been the side it was without Kevin. His favourite trick at Morris parties was to suddenly, and randomly, do one quick walk-through entire room completely nude. He would then appear, drink in hand fully clothed at your side 30 seconds later. You were not quite sure if your eyes had deceived you? He was the only person I have ever met - dancer or no - who once worked as a bottomless waiter. I'm not kidding. He bought stuff to a Morris side that you couldn't buy, and he was as every bit as essential as the most talented dancer on the Morris block. Yes, Kevin was a weirdo, but he was our weirdo, and it broke everyone's heart when he died way before his time. I will remember our clumsy Kevin Kelly long after I have forgotten every other talented dancer I've ever met. Dancers like Kevin supply one of the most important elements of any Morris side. They embrace the Morris attitude. You can in fact, polish a turd – they provide the polish._

_Getting back to the squire, if I may, it really is a thankless job. After several years of being part of the peanut gallery, someone nominated me in 1987 at an AGM for the top job in MBM. I didn't expect to be nominated that night, I tended to avoid all jobs with even a hint of responsibility. That's why the only office bearer position I had filled in five years as a dancer was scribe and assistant foreman. Both positions allowed a lot of wriggle room where work was concerned, and still gave me the ability to make smartarse comments about the people who were out there actually doing stuff. Possibly I was nominated by Jeanette Pembroke, just to see me pinned to the corkboard like a bug. As I was elected, I set out to prove that I wasn't all mouth. Jesus, I was such a babe in the woods. It's often been said that when someone is in a leading position, you hear them say it's like "herding cats". Being in charge of Morris dancers is more like herding raptors. In a few months, I learnt what all Morris Squires eventually learn: you have to be a complete bastard to the side in order to get_ _anything_ _done. Morris dances tend to whinge. They complain like the last fellow in a group being chased by a tiger. They are also bolshie, and refuse to cooperate, even in things that they agree with. They don't take the devil's advocate position, they take the devils mate's position. That guy they know down at the pub whose brother-in-law is the devil's advocate. Honestly, why they allow Morris sticks with reach of the squire is beyond me. On any given practice night, I could have cheerfully pulped seven or eight of the worst offenders._

_So, with this in mind I slowly turned into what I always recommend that new Squires should learn as soon as possible. Become a fascist, but more like Mussolini than Hitler. You don't need to gild the lily or go completely overboard. Only once I began threatening, bullying or otherwise acting like an all-round tyrant, they began to listen to me, occasionally. One must take one's victories where one could. I have seen other styles of leadership in the Morris over the decades, and by better people than I ever was. Trying to reason with dancers is a short train ride to the nuthouse. This is how I handled my first ale as MBM squire. I removed all choice from each of the 30 dancers in the side, and just was an absolute dictator and made every decision myself. This was a tip given to me by previous squire, and it was a tactic that rattled me to my very democratic bones. My predecessor reminded me of what happened the previous year when the then squire allowed freedom of choice to the group. What happened was pure shambles with the entire meeting going for about two hours and not getting past what type of beer should be purchased. The group didn't even get onto what food should be provided for the ale, because many believed that food shouldn't even be part of the ale. They said the hint was in the very name: "ale". And so, for the next three weeks the arguments went on and on. Alan Bannister (Banno) who was the squire at the time, and a hippie at heart, walked around the entire time with clenched fists and a big red face. Given choice, nobody in the side was happy about anything. No suggestion by another person met with approval. It was chaos._

_When this alarming advice was handed to me I gave it every consideration and questioned whether 30 independently minded individuals would let me get away with being a dictator. I was reassured it would be fine provided I was a decent and benevolent dictator. I was told that the Morris raptors can smell blood, so what I would have to do is stare them down a bit. When the time came I had the entire organising meeting for what was a quite a big ale wrapped up in about 25 minutes. Of course, I was conflicted. On one hand, I had just denied a lot of free choice to adults, but on the other hand there were no arguments. They just sat there and politely nodded to all my dictates. It was certainly a revelation. After that it was all plain sailing, and to any fledgling squires out there who are struggling to get their voice heard that's my advice. Rule with a fist of iron, and only execute the most obstructive and you should be alright. A couple of years later when I became foreman of Belswagger Morris, I doubled down on that method of control. Possibly I went too far as so many dictators before me had learned to their cost? It is a delicate balancing act, be a dictator, but better make it a benevolent dictator. Look what happened to Mussolini in the end._

_Outside of Morris my life was bopping along just fine. In 1982, after I had left the army, rejecting any possibility of glory and a few weeks after I discovered that the Indooroopilly golf course could not afford my professional talents, I joined the Queensland railways and became, for a 12-month period, a railway carriage cleaner. On my first day, the manager of operations told me that I had been recruited to be a cleaner, and a cleaner I must remain for at least a year before I would be permitted to try my hand at other jobs. That year was one of the best employment periods of my life, and I've had a few. The work had few responsibilities other than cleaning. The carriages to be cleaned were the ancient red rattlers which would roll out in the morning and return for the cleaning staff to give them a once over with a short broom on the floor and to hit the bench seating with an absolutely filthy rag. I'm sure the application of my cleaning rag destroyed business suits and lady's smart skirts every working day. The crew of cleaners, my compatriots, had not a single worry in their world. I think back and wonder why I ever bothered to leave that carefree existence. The only thing I hated about it was the shift-work, and I never managed to lose my loathing for working such unsociable hours. Shift work sucks and because of it I missed out on some of the best footups._ 10

_Chapter Four_

Formas in Memoriam Redigunt

_Queensland has been inflicted with several bad cases of Morris over the years. Here are some of them:_

_Q.M.F.D.S_

_It might surprise some people to learn that Moreton Bay Morris was not the first group to perform Morris in Queensland. In early 1973, a loose dance group was formed. It consisted of a few people who had danced Morris before in England and the remainder who were strangers to the dance completely. There was no squire or foreman, as such, but the leadership was mainly left to one Sid Perry, an ex-Oxford side dancer and Jeff Welham who had danced the north-west traditions of England._

_As far as the Morris went, it was a mixed side, but to supplement the few Morris dances they could do, they also danced folk. They called themselves the Queensland Morris and Folk Dance Society (Q.M.F.D.S). I don't think, that even if you held a worldwide competition to choose a name for a Morris side, you could manage to find a lamer title for your group. That doesn't matter, by my reckoning they were the first proper Morris side in Australia._

_The side slowly turned into a precise and hard-working Morris team; they practiced twice a week on Wednesday nights and Saturday afternoons, and that alone speaks volumes about their dedication. As the side became more proficient at Morris, the folk part of it dropped away until it was a true Morris side. Unfortunately, the music originally came from a tape recorder, so to rectify this they tried to bring in musos from the folk world, but folkies back then as some folkies are today, were not interested in the precision, repetition and the peculiarities that are the Morris muso's lot. As a result, they came and went rather haphazardly. This was coupled with the fact that Sid Perry did not suffer fools gladly (possibly excepting Morris fools) and he sent one or two of the more unreliable ones packing with a few choice words. One musician did stay, his name was Phil Wilson, and he was to become one of the giants of Moreton Bay Morris. Because this side mostly practised with recorded music, Phil would sometimes get into trouble for not playing the music properly. On one occasion, he had to demonstrate that he was playing music "correctly", the fault lay in the tape recording playing a glitch that was not possible for a human to replicate. He suggested to the non-musician dancers that they let him stick with the music on the grounds that he could read music and they couldn't._

_The thing I most like about this group was that from the very beginning of Morris dancing in Brisbane they clashed with the folk community. The Morris community started the beginning of a much-loved war between the Morris and folkies. In Moreton Bay Morris, I was to enjoy battling the folkies and took every opportunity to throw petrol on that particular fire whenever I could. The folkies enjoyed annoying us as well, and for both sides this conflict remained an enduring and much-loved element of the Morris folkie world we inhabited in Queensland._

_The_ _Queensland Morris and Folk Dance Society_ 11 _danced out quite a bit, often going away for weekends. They charged a small fee, and like other sides which came after them, they used the fee to discriminate which foot-ups they would attend. At their peak, they had about ten members and they were a very close-knit group. There traditions included: Bampton, Bledington, Headington, and Adderbury._

_The Q.M.F.D.S side folded in 1978 after going for approximately five years. It is significant that this side even existed at all, and some of those members became founding members of Moreton Bay Morris. The links in the Queensland Morris chain had now been forged, however the very first links of that chain were forged in Mother England a long, long time ago._

_Moreton Bay Morris Dancers_

Figure a: MBM Ladies in their 'new' costume

_Moreton Bay Morris was born because June Nichols could not afford to buy weekend ticket at the 1979 folk Festival at Melbourne. Not to be put off, she decided to make the best of it by wandering between the little music sessions that dotted the campus. It was at one of these little nomadic side trips that she came across a weird group of men and women, dressed mostly in white, but also bedecked in bells, ribbons and flowers. They were leaping and bounding to a jaunty rhythm set up by half a dozen similarly dressed fiddlers, concertina and melodeon players. They danced as if they were in a world of their own and the poor wretches seem to be ever so thirsty. June spent the rest of the festival following this motley crew, enjoying herself immensely and thinking it was all too good to leave behind, she began planning for a Brisbane Morris side._

_In Brisbane, the ball started rolling. June contacted Jeff Welham who said that he was interested but would not consider anything to do with Morris this time, without proper musicians (no doubt remembering the Q.M.F.D.S experiences.)_

_This problem was overcome by June herself, and her husband, Don Nichols, playing the concertina and Ian Drynan willing to play his melodeon for the brand-new side. The first couple of tunes were learnt from the "_ _Morris On"_ _and_ _"Son of Morris On_ _" records put out by Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, Dave Mattacks, John Kirkpatrick and Barry Dransfield. Over time tunes also came from word-of-mouth, or word of ear, I suppose._

_It was in June 1979, that they first got together at Jeff Welham's house at Wellington Point, for the first general meeting and from that point Brisbane once again had a working Morris team. Morris dancing in Brisbane is a result of a select group of odd people: June Nichols, Sid Perry, Jeff Welham, Trish and Paul Wilson, and Phil Wilson. This was a unique combination of people with different and varied experiences and skills in Morris dancing; and, in the case of June Nichols, just raw enthusiasm._

_From the first couple of meetings all that was decided was that the new side would dance Morris and not much thought went further than that. So, for the next six weeks practices were rather peculiar with men and women both learning and dancing Cotswold in the same hall but remaining separate. As there was to be no mixed dancing, a problem was emerging. The ladies were outnumbering the men. It wasn't smooth sailing, but more controversy was to follow. Paul and Trish Wilson burst into the MBM limelight having been exiled from Sydney. They went to a couple of practices and soon realised that the side was going nowhere at a great rate of knots. In order to bring matters to a head the Wilsons called a special meeting at their house promising food, grog and possibly fisticuffs._

_At the meeting, Paul Wilson suggested the radical idea that the men dance Cotswold and the women take up the Northwest traditions; this being two different forms of Morris in the same side. A couple of the ladies rejected the idea altogether and it eventually caused them to leave the side never to return. It apparently also sunk the plans of some of the men who had a few Northwest dances lined up. But the overwhelming majority wanted the separate traditions in the same side; so, it was adopted._ 12

_That same night, in the name of unity, the rule was formed. It was to be that all bookings would be accepted on the basis that both teams would be able to perform. However, there was a rider stating that, in the event of only one team having the numbers for a foot-up, the available team may still perform if there is a member of the other team attending in colours, whether dancing or not. And indeed, this did happen a couple of times to both the men and the ladies at different times. The only exceptions to the "no mixed" rule were_ _Abram Circle Dance_ _, which is mainly used as a Morris off and any Maypole dances which were only to be danced during the English and Australian Spring. Also, "made up" dances such as_ _Bobby Dazzler_ _could be danced together and at our Morris Ale no restrictions were to exist as to dancing mixed._

_Moreton Bay Morris' first ever practice was at Kangaroo point, St Mary's Church Hall. Tuesday nights at St Mary's must have appealed to everyone's sense of the ridiculous. The Hall was so small that only one dance team (men's or women) could come to practice at any one time; the other team would make do in the even smaller side room, or outside on the footpath. Not an ideal arrangement, but it did its job until the side moved to South Brisbane where room was not a problem._

_Moreton Bay's first official foot-up was 28 January, Australia Day, 1980. The event was slightly unbalanced as only the men's Cotswold team danced out that day. The ladies North West team had not got their act together by that date, given the restructure previously mentioned. The ladies North West team had to start from scratch, learning a very different form of Morris while the men who danced Cotswold Morris had a huge head start. In spite of this the day was said to be a good one with dances performed at Queensland University and drinking performed at an anonymous pub in Indooroopilly._

_All through that Australia Day the ladies did their best to look bored and thoroughly be pissed-off. But they did not have very long to wait to shake their booties, for on the 3rd March, 1980, the women's team had their first official foot-up at the Dayboro Market. The men being kind souls only danced a couple of times leaving the majority of the day to ladies. For the record, Australia Day is considered to be in MBM's official birthday._

_In my time in MBM I actually talked to many of the original players who were present at the birth of that side. I took down their story without judgement for the benefit of posterity. In the intervening years, I can't help but feel that the history that was given to me, in some cases, reflected values honestly held, but still may not have presented a true and accurate historical case. As any historian can tell you history can have an imposed value. You don't know what I am talking about? Allow me to explain._

_I believe at the heart of MBM's decision to avoid mixed dancing may involve simple sexism. In my early years of Morris, circa 1982, the side had been going for exactly two years from their first foot-up. I remember early on, out of ignorance, asking one of the male leading lights of the MBM side how it came to be that the ladies didn't do Cotswold, and the men did? This was said over a quiet beer to someone who is quite knowledgeable about both general Morris traditions and MBM in particular. I will not say who I shared the conversation with, because that is not as significant as the answer I was given. I was told that mixed Morris dancing was an unattractive thing, because it was neither fish nor fowl._

_Men danced the Morris with strength and masculine agility. Women danced the Morris, just as effectively, but their style is more prissy and feminine, and when the two styles danced together in the same team the effect is extraordinarily bad. Then my_ _confidant_ _started expounding upon the traditional aspects of the Morris. I learned that the Morris was purely masculine in nature, and more importantly, by tradition. Boys learnt the Morris from their fathers, who had been taught by their fathers... and daddy upon daddy going all the way back to Noah, or something like that. The one thing you learn as a new Morris dancer is that tradition is a vital component of the dance. It's usually an argument stopper as soon as you bring out the word_ _tradition_ _. I got the impression that the real reason that mixed dancing was frowned upon was old-fashioned, English, privileged, white male, working-class sexism. This is the very same sexism which prevented women, mixed sides joining the English Morris Ring._

_More than 30 years ago, as I listened to those words about mixed dancing I considered them. I had never seen mixed dancing in the same side at that stage, and I had no evidence to suggest that what I was hearing was wrong. But, it didn't seem right to me. How could I contradict it? The decision to divide the genders happened more than two years before my time and the MBM side was, obviously, a raging success in the template that was chosen for it. So, why did I think it didn't ring true? When the MBM travelled down south and was involved with the southern sides I can't recall ever seeing mixed-sex side._ 13 _To my hazy knowledge every team I have witnessed was of the same gender._

_I was to think about this conversation often, about mixed Morris sides being an aberration. The person who conveyed it to me, I would learn, had definite opinions about women dancing the Morris. I began to suspect that the meeting at Paul and Trish Wilson's house back in 1979 may have been a political ambush that only Morris dancers and the CIA are capable of setting? After all, the previous Brisbane side had danced the Morris for five years as a mixed team, and it involved two of the most brilliant dancers in existence; Jeff Welham and Sid Perry. Those two male Morris dancers didn't consider mixed dancing to be repugnant? As the years went on I became more convinced that what happened back in 79 was probably a coup some sort. Naturally, I will never know for sure but it remains a niggling feeling._

_About 1984, a female Cotswold dancer, Robin Coy, arrived in Brisbane from Canberra. If she wanted to dance Morris at all she had to dance in Moreton Bay's North-West team, which she duly did. However, in her heart, she was a Cotswold dancer, so she eventually formed an all-female Cotswold team, which became_ _Ladies Pleasure Morris_ _(LPM). Of course, by that stage I had seen female Cotswold teams at folk festivals. Ladies Pleasure's performances around Brisbane demonstrated to me that women made excellent Morris dancers. They definitely weren't prissy, and anyone who had ever danced opposite Ladies Pleasure in a stick dance could not say that they lacked strength. Still, they were a single-sexed side, but later I on would dance with them quite a bit when I was part of another Morris team called_ _Rapscallion._ _When I did dance with Ladies Pleasure I_ _didn't believe that the Morris world would fall apart at the seams from having danced in a mixed side. Nor, did I ever hear that the dance was performed badly due to the variance in genitals. Over time I did hear, however, rampant sexism from other single-sexed male sides operating in Australia and that tended to confirm my original opinions that the decision to adopt single-sexed North West and Cotswold sides in Moreton Bay was a prejudicial one._

_Back in mother England the issue of mixed dancing was pretty ugly and raw. The official guild for English Morris, the_ _English Morris Ring_ _, had an official ban on women's membership going back to the 1920's. It wasn't until 2011, that English Morris Ring was forced to join the 21_ _st_ _-century. Even then the Morris Ring fought a desperate rear-guard action. Their answer to actual legislation designed to include women in all aspects of social and cultural activity was to permit chicks to join the ring, but not as dancers. Morris men were forced to include women inside the Morris Ring – but they were not allowed a dancing role. Damn uppity women!_
Traditional Morris dancing clubs have been forced to accept female members to comply with the new Equality Act – but the women will still not be permitted to dance.

By Jasper Copping

24 Apr 2011

_For centuries, traditional Morris men have been able to shake their hankies and wield their sticks and bells unencumbered by female involvement._

Now Labour's Equality Act has forced the country's men-only Morris dancing clubs to open their doors to female members.

To head off the threat of a legal challenge, the Morris Ring, the country's oldest Morris dancing organisation, has changed its constitution to allow women to join.

Equality, however, only stretches so far: women will be allowed as musicians and in other "organisational" roles but will still not be permitted to dance with the men.

The Ring's hard-line stance on women has divided the Morris world for decades and its partial lifting of the ban on women has not gone far enough for many, with critics accusing them of being "anti-women".

_The Ring, which represents 200 Morris clubs across England, claims that the folk dance is a traditionally male activity and that because of its arduous nature, women should not be able to dance with men._

Under the new rules, women will be able to provide accompanying music on instruments such as the accordion, melodeon, concertina, fiddle, pipe or tabour, a type of drum.

Peter Halfpenney, squire - the equivalent of president - of the Ring, said: "I would liken it to Manchester United not having any females in their first team. Their prime performers are men because they are physically stronger.

"The physical difference is not going to change, but of course, we recognise that ladies have as much ability to organise or play music."

Morris dancing dates back to the Middle Ages and the role of women has been fiercely debated for decades.

The Ring, which represents 200 clubs across England, was founded in 1934, following a revival of interest in folk dancing, but because of its exclusion of women, two other rival organisations, the Morris Federation and Open Morris, have been established more recently.

The Federation, which now has about 450 member clubs, allows men's and women's sides, while the Open, with 130 clubs, has mixed teams.

Although relations between the groups has thawed in recent years, women's Morris dancers have criticised the changes being introduced by the Ring as "too little, too late" and accused it of continued chauvinism.

One, who declined to be named, branded the group "boring old farts".

Jan Dickins, from Belfagan Women's Morris, a Federation group from Cumbria, said: "The Ring has certainly given the impression of being anti-women and anti-women dancing. I don't think their older, traditional members are embracing this change very easily.

"I think it is being forced upon them. It is absolute rubbish to say that the physical nature of Morris means men must dance with men."

Cressida Pryor, squire of Winchcombe Border Morris, a mixed side from near Cheltenham, said: "The Ring promulgates one particular view of Morris dancing, which is that it is all-male, but the evidence does not support that. In terms of the physical strength of the dancers, age is the greatest ruler of how you dance."

Lawyers have advised that the organisation will be able to continue to exclude women dancers, because the clubs' "men-only" dancing is a "protected characteristic", under the Equality Act.

The legislation was introduced by Harriet Harman, the equality minister in the last government, to give women more rights in work places, but its effects are only just being felt by many organisations.

The Ring's new constitution is intended to head off any attempt to force its clubs to become fully mixed. It was voted through in February, with about three quarters in favour.

Mr Halfpenney said that some Ring sides already had women musicians and added that if member clubs wished to continue to exclude all women, then the Ring would allow them to do so. Clubs with fewer than 25 members do not have to comply with the Act.

Timing! Just as I finished this fucking book, the English Morris Ring announced that it is abolishing the requirement for membership to be male only. While this is very welcome news, it does diminish my stinging attack on Morris sexism - and fancy the Morris Ring itself undermining ancient Morris sexism. I think that as the rolling years slowly and inevitably soften the old Morris prejudice, and the struggle of female dancers is forgotten, let these words be a reminder that things have not always been this way. After 100 years the official news that one doesn't require a dick to half caper is great news, is it not?
_Chapter_ _Five_

Praestans ille Eventus

At MBM's 1987, annual general meeting I found myself to be the accidentally elected squire of the largest Morris side in Australia. When I showed up for the AGM that night I had no idea that I would end up as the squire. I didn't ask to be nominated, and I had given no thought to taking the job on. MBM was over-stuffed with competent people who were more able to take on organisational duties. In many ways, my time as a Morris dancer was a continuation of my time in the army. I enjoyed clowning around too much and not taking on responsibilities. When somebody nominated me for Squire, I was quite shocked, and I at first refused the nomination. What's worse, my nomination was opposed by another dancer who would have done far superior job (in my opinion). I had a full minute to think about it and consider withdrawing the nomination. I had been with the side for five years at that point and had only acted in the position of assistant foreman. I enjoyed Morris, and maybe I owed it to the side to make more effort and proper contribution? I decided to keep my name on the ballot and let fate decide. I expected to lose, but if the unthinkable would happen I would pull my socks up and serve for the full year. As it turns out the unthinkable did happen and I became squire.

_My reign as the El supremo of MBM trundled over into 1988. Rather rudely, the side was immediately confronted with Expo 88 which had been rolling towards us at the speed of tectonic plates. For those not yet born, or who were too young to experience it, Expo 88 was a big deal for Brisbane. The city would never return to its former ways and was changed forever after._

Figure b: MBM Men dancing at Expo 88

_Politically the state government was on fire and well ablaze by 1988. Think of an old Queenslander house in which every room was stored gunpowder, nitro-glycerine and cheap fireworks, and the caretaker was a chain smoker who was spooked rather easily. The premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen and his government never saw the storm heading their way. They remained oblivious and corrupt as they ever were, and who could blame them, as this circus had been going on for more than 30 years. Queenslanders were pretty comfortable with their lot and could not perceive an alternate political reality. The trains still ran on time_ 15 _and the police were exceedingly polite to middle-class voters. For those who could see the ugly undercurrent snaking all around us, it was sinister and dangerous. To survive and thrive in Queensland you had to be either wilfully blind, corrupt, or on the make._

_When the Bjelke-Petersen government had first made the bid for Expo 88 it was a time of peace and contentment for the fascist state. Queensland was cursed with an electoral gerrymander which meant that the Conservative Country Party was the permanent overlord of the state. Our natural heritage could be destroyed in a single bulldozer raid in the night. Individuals who complained would find themselves under surveillance, and if they complained too loudly, they were often actually sued for their boldness. But by 1988, things had started to unravel. It was like a blindfold had been removed and people could not now un-see what they had been forced to gaze upon. The National party was starting to lose control: one or two of the more educated and moderate in their party had found their voice for the first time and were actually challenging the status quo. It was indeed an interesting time to be around. If someone were to chop a couple of legs of the Eiffel Tower the observation could not have been any less dramatic to those of us milling around watching._

Perhaps the most surprising thing of all was that 30 years of corruption was faithfully undermined by the TV documentary, The Moonlight State. While the atrocious political conditions had been apparent for decades to anyone with half a brain, this documentary was the spark that caused the blaze, which caused the Inferno. Every day there was a new allegation and the premier Bjelke-Petersen shouted it down in the old way with terrible aggression. However, the startling thing was, Bjelke-Petersen's timeworn methodology wasn't working anymore. His opponents within Cabinet smelled the blood in the water. There is no foe as terrible as an internal enemy. His former outstanding political radar was unaccountably on the blink. After years of being outrageously aggressive, he discovered that there were now too now many enemies to concentrate his fire upon.

In late 1985, Queensland's famous "white shoe brigade", Gold Coast property developers, instigated a weird-arse campaign called, "Joh for PM". Yes, apparently, Joh Bjelke-Petersen was the answer to all Australia's problems. In this way Australia has always had a problem with political personality cults. Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer are merely following a well-trod path going back to the Master himself. However, by 1985 trying to sell a toxic Joh Bjelke-Petersen to the rest of the Australian community was beyond bizarre. Whatever Queensland was trying to sell in the mid-eighties the rest of Australia wasn't the least bit interested in buying. For that matter, Queensland for the first time was starting to get a whiff of something very smelly in George Street. After the Joh for PM campaign, he managed to become a national laughing joke. Bjelke-Petersen was fatally wounded. He wasn't dead on his feet at that stage, but he was limping badly and leaking blood. The man who had abused the entire state of Queensland like no other person before him, and someone who had terrorised every opponent, (and sometimes even his own cabinet) had overreached.

The Queensland government bid for World Expo 88 began five years before in 1983. Back in those peaceful days of political repression Joh Bjelke-Petersen and his National Party government were safe and solid. The gerrymander that he kept his party in power for three decades had not been breached at that point and appeared to be impervious to attack. Using near dictatorial powers, the Bjelke-Petersen government pretty much annihilated the south bank of Brisbane. They virtually destroyed every single building, business or home in the vicinity to make the Expo 88 dream possible. Mind you, the precinct was an eyesore. It had developed, or not developed, depending on your point of view from the days of pre-World War I as a dockland, complete with sailors, wharfies, rough pubs, prostitution and murders. It would be insane to go to Southbank area after dark. It was dangerous even on weekends, and even in broad daylight. Southbank was then a place where the buses would hurry through in order to transit through to the Gabba. When the Bjelke-Petersen government annihilated the Southbank precinct very few tears were shed. However, Expo was to last only six months and the property developers were drooling at the prospect of getting their dirty mitts on the area forever. Nothing happened in Queensland without Joh's homies getting a slice of the pie.

Ironically, Joh's political set piece, World Expo 88, did not have Joh at the helm when it was opened in April 1988. He had been dumped in December a few months previous to the opening. It was a crazy time ladies and gentlemen. It was really the beginning of the end, for within a year and a half the entire government was under a cloud and investigated by the Fitzgerald Enquiry. As he was getting frogmarched out the door, Bjelke-Petersen actually tried to have the Governor General sack his own entire cabinet. They don't make crazy dictators like that anymore. By the end of the circus two former ministers of the Crown would get locked up and Joh himself would go to trial for official corruption. True to form, Joh's trial led to a farcical conclusion when a member of the Young National's party volunteered to become jury foreman and afterwards refused to convict the hillbilly dictator under any circumstances. Mistrial! It was decided that Joh was too old to go through the trial process again, so the matter was dropped. It was probably the best end that the political desperado would ever enjoy. Joh shall go down in history as charged for official corruption, but neither convicted nor found not guilty. He was never refunded his legal fees and the trial broke him.

Politics aside, MBM now had a most marvellous opportunity to raise the Morris profile, and perhaps even make some money. World Expo 88 was going to be big; massively huge in fact. How would MBM exploit this very rare opportunity? While we were arguing about possibilities during Morris bags, opportunity came busting through our door to us instead.

An English chap by the name of Paul Sharratt contacted MBM. Paul Sharratt had been a well-known Brisbane/Gold Coast Music Hall entertainer for decades. He ran his own agency and put on dreary shows for television that used to run on Saturday nights in competition with Hey Hey It's Saturday. Consequently, if you happen to catch Sharratt's show on TV it meant that you were in the process of flicking to another channel and had accidentally lingered for a bit too long. Actually, Paul Sharratt music hall program was very English entertainment. But it was in a way that working class in the UK had stopped watching since the Second World War. It amazed me that his shows were still on TV. It was very black and white minstrels stuff, though less offensive but just as boring. Anyway, Paul Sharratt had the entertainment contract for the British Pavilion and he contacted MBM with a view to us performing at Expo 88. I was squire of MBM, but I was also a shift worker working horrendous shifts. Terry Jacobs was the initial contact, so I asked him to accompany me to the meeting with Paul Sharratt.

I learnt a lot at that meeting, and all of it pretty damn good. The Expo 88 authorities were very uneasy about the concept of Australians waiting patiently in queues. I'm serious about this. They believed that the Australian culture would not allow people queueing patiently. And there would be some serious queues at all the popular International Expo pavilions. It was estimated that at some pavilions, people would be in a very slow queue line that lasted two hours. It was believed that Australians couldn't do it, at least couldn't do it without entertainment or entertaining violence with each other. Therefore, most of the big and popular pavilions would have a budget for street entertainment. Don't forget that Expo was to last six months, and that would have to be reflected in the street entertainment budget. Today people are used to seeing street entertainment. We see it at folk festivals, we see it in the CBD, we see it at tourist destinations. In Australia in 1988, you really didn't see all that much of it. Paul Sharratt was offering Moreton Bay Morris a six-month entertainment gig at the British Pavilion, which was expected to be one of the most popular international pavilions at Expo. From memory, he was offering us about $500 per performance, as well as free entry for the dances. The offer was disgustingly excessive and very tempting. Of course, for five hundred bucks he was getting about 20 performers. The downside was he wanted MBM to dance every weekend - that's both days, and at least one mid-week performance. This was not good news. I was the Morris squire, not an employer, and all the dancers were volunteers and had a real life outside of Morris. What is worse, Paul Sharratt wanted me to sign a binding contract. I told him that we were happy to work with the British pavilion, but it couldn't be under any circumstances every single weekend for six months. Even every Wednesday night would be pushing it, though doable. It was a guarantee that I was unable to deliver upon. We left it that no contract would be signed, but we would dance for the British pavilion is much as we possibly could. We were also getting offers from some of the other international pavilions as well, but nothing as magnificent as the Brit pavilion's offer.

Upon leaving Paul Sharratt's office, Terry Jacob told me that perhaps I was being a bit sensitive about the contract thing. He himself was in an offshoot of MBM, a folk band called the Champion Moreton Bay Band. He said that they signed contracts all the time, even for performing overseas. This was true, but not true to the extent of a six-month commitment for approximately 20-30 people. To me was a bridge too far, and I believed that we could perform almost this much without putting anything on paper; a gentleman's agreement, as it were. As it turned out handshake agreements are worth as much as you might suppose they might be. Within a couple of weeks into Expo, Paul Sharratt discovered that he could pretty much dispense with our services because it turns out that Australians will not turn to mutiny and riot if forced to stand in queues for extended periods. We, as a nation, were apparently, quite content to stand in an orderly queue for two hours at a time to see bright and shiny objects in a big warehouse. This was before theme parks and queueing became a regular thing. All that was for the future. Terry Jacob also did me one massive favour. He agreed to my suggestion that he'd be the side's Expo 88 Commissar. Terry would be the liaison point for Expo and manage all the arrangements external to MBM. I would run the side outside of Expo and organise the foot-up itself. Any arrangements I wished to make about Expo for the group I'd go through Terry and he would organise it with the different pavilions. This arrangement lasted right throughout the Expo period and worked very well. Terry Jacob, despite all his many, many other obvious shortcomings, sometimes displays a degree of unlikely competence.

As time rolled towards Expo, MBM lifted its game and practised hard. Almost everyone personally bought an Expo 88 six-month season ticket which cost $99, an outrageous ticket price at the time, but laughable today. Some dancers didn't even bother buying a ticket and were content going in on dance days for free and looking around between gigs. The British pavilion was actually a British pub, or the most popular part of it was a British pub. The English expats amongst us reported that it was furnished like 25 different village pubs. It had exposed beams, deer heads on the wall, bubble glass windows, dark wood panelling, tankards lining the walls, barmaids wearing fanny caps and white aprons. It was Hollywood's version of an English pub. On the plus side, it had English beer on tap, something that many of us had never tasted before. It was the beginning of a long history of me trying to like English beer and largely failing.

So almost every weekend, for at least one day of every weekend, MBM would go through the entertainer's gate before the Expo proper had even opened and we would waltz in without queuing for the most popular pavilions. After which, and at the set time, we would show up and do our thing for the queueing masses. I'm not sure if it was the captive audience or whether we were truly magnificent, but the people in line could not get enough of us. Truly whenever we danced the crowds were six or seven deep. The people at the very back would not be able to get more than a glimpse of our dancing. To this day, it's a marvellous thing to me that so many people enjoyed the Morris. Sometimes when I look at the scanty crowds that we attract today I think back to 1988 where the side's fool had a full-time job just trying to push people back to give us room to dance. Street performance was relatively new to Australian audiences. Even magicians and mimes were extremely popular. Yes, you read that right - street mimes were once popular. And, if they were popular, try and imagine how interesting we were back then with the flowers, the colours, the music, the bells, stick-clashing and rhythmic movement. Street entertainment was so popular during Expo 88 that we would even attract an audience when we sat down to have lunch. People thought that just because we were wearing costumes and weird get-up, that eating a hamburger en masse was a thing. I kid you not!

MBM still danced at the British pavilion, because why not? The pavilion was a pub after all, and we were Morris dancers....so... As a rule, we just didn't get paid in cash by the Brits for dancing anymore. I think in the end we danced at the Brit pavilion for beer, which would have turned out to be more than the promised $500 anyway. We danced at plenty of other pavilions too; the Australian pavilion four times, the Kiwi pavilion several times, the Nepalese pavilion once, and even the Lincoln Cathedral pavilion. The Lincoln Cathedral brought out one of the surviving copies of the Magna Carta for Expo. This was kind of strange because the Australian Parliament also has its own original "copy" of the great Charter. Still, we weren't going to look a gift booking in the mouth. So, we danced for the Cathedral and mugged for the camera.

There was one last peculiar thing about our dancing and world Expo 88. While MBM got the sack from the British pavilion, the British Royal Ballet did a short tour and performed in association with the pavilion. One might say that this was a brilliant piece of marketing; what could be more British than the Royal Ballet. That's not peculiar bit, this is: The Royal Ballet had formed a Morris side in its spare time. Yup, that's right. At the posh Royal Ballet, they sometimes slummed it by performing Morris dancing! The result was a weird combination of strength, precision, timing and creepiness. It's difficult to describe, but they danced Jockey to the Fair in a way that was just wrong. It was beautiful but was also so very wrong. It illustrated to me that you can't fake the Morris. You are either a Morris dancer or you are not. These guys should have been brilliant any way you looked at them. But they just weren't, they were absolutely icky. Not that the crowd gave a shit - they were the Royal fucking Ballet, weren't they?

As a rule, we performed at Expo 88 at least once every weekend, and once a fortnight during the mid-week. I am absolutely clear in my mind that MBM had never danced better in the entirety of its existence. The sheer amount of public performances and the sheer amount of practice made us red-hot. We were also able to get all the Southern Morris sides who wanted to visit Expo through the gate. We danced so much that we stopped having regular practices. There was simply no point. Dancing out roughly twice a week for a couple of hours at a time made practices pointless. During that six months, we did not learn any new stuff, but what we already had was finally honed to an extremely sharp edge.

Looking back, I can see that the amount of work we put into the Expo performances caused cracks to develop in the side that led to MBM eventually falling apart. It didn't happen overnight, it took a couple of more years and a few key players leaving the team, but the cracks started with all that intense activity. Even though I was squire, and a complete Morris moron, by the end of the six months I was sick of the sight of sticks, hankies and bells. The other dancers who had young families were pretty much over it too. At the end of world Expo 88 we were glad to take a break and I was happy to hand over to the next squire, Hilary Marston. Hillary became the first female squire of Moreton Bay and one of the best we've ever had. The thing I learnt about being squire was to assume an absolute dictatorship because showing fear or uncertainty to the Morris mob is almost certain destruction. Hillary was a schoolteacher so therefore she had complete control and mastery of simple and distracted minds. She could achieve control simply by poking her finger at the primary troublemaker de jour. For my part I learnt a lot about managing Morris team, and I would use the same skills when I became foreman of Belswagger a couple of years later.

The Wider Morris Community – 1980s

Morris dancing does not operate in a vacuum, but just like outer-space Moreton Bay Morris did operate in a "near vacuum" within the Australian Morris community. Unlike most of the Morris sides in Australia, Moreton Bay was not very well integrated with the wider body politic. Morris sides in those days related to each other mostly in terms of proximity. That meant Brisbane and Perth were very much on the periphery, and Adelaide a little less so. Once again, context is everything. In the days before the Internet, communication across a thousand kilometres was positively prehistoric. One must write a letter - not type a letter - write a letter freehand, in cursive. After which one would discover that they've misplaced the fucking envelopes, and which bastard used the last postage stamp? It was either writing a letter or making a phone call. Generally speaking, making a long-distance phone call was an exercise in raw extravagance. Nowadays telephone calls are practically free within Australia. Back then long-distance telephone calls were costly beyond a Millennial's capacity to really appreciate. Consequently, nobody made them unless at point of actual emergency and somebody better be at death's door. This is where proximity is important for social cohesion. Brisbane is thousand kilometres from Sydney and even further from Melbourne. At best, Moreton Bay Morris socially engaged with the wider Australian Morris community perhaps once a year, usually at the National Folk Festival which landed at a different capital city every year (in those days). Even then it was a rare year when an entire side could get to the NFF. It was even rarer for the Perth Morris Men to get to any Eastern seaboard Morris activity. I'm not sure about their current state of being, but in those days the Perth Morris Men were the Amish of the Australian Morris Ring. You never saw a complete side outside of their home state, mostly you would only see one or two at a time, sometimes riding in horse drawn buggies calling the rest of us "English". It wasn't till 1994, when I actually visited Perth that I saw the entire team performing together.

It could be truthfully said that if Moreton Bay Morris did not interact much with the wider Morris community, it can also be said that Queensland's contribution to Australian Morris was mostly restricted to our own region. The Southern sides crossbred ideas between the peoples to a much greater extent. They personally knew each other better, they danced more often together, they travelled to each other's home turf. They got drunk together and very usually, were arrested in each other's company. Queensland Morris dancers accepted that we were outsiders to some extent, sometimes feeling jealous about our nonaligned status, but overall pretty comfortable with our lot. If the negative was that Moreton Bay Morris couldn't always socialise as much with the Southern sides, the positive was we were usually left out of the usual Morris dramas. You can always rely on the certainty of Morris dramas.

That said, Moreton Bay is not a leper colony. We did try and mix it up every chance we got. When a couple of foreigners from Canberra lobbed-up to Queensland and joined MBM we began to see a lot more of some of the Southern sides. Robin Coy started Queensland's first female Cotswold team, Ladies Pleasure, and as a consequence encouraged the Canberra Morris Men in particular to visit often. Moreton Bay really enjoyed the company of the Canberra Morris men. They were a funky crew and didn't take themselves too seriously. It was the Canberra Morris men who famously danced Morris outside the Argentinian Embassy in 1982, to protest that country's invasion of the Falkland Islands. It was a cheeky bit of politics that was considered outrageous even at the time and would be impossible to replicate in these more conservative ages. We danced less often with the Sydney Morris Men and we thought them to be more, IDK..., "cliquey" than most of the other teams. This is a very unfair description, but that was how it was felt at the time. The Sydney Men were universally recognised as the most skilful Cotswold team in Australia. This opinion was held principally by the Sydney Men themselves, but it was also undoubtedly true. The Canberra Men on the other hand, were pirates through and through. Ladies Pleasure, Rapscallion and Canberra Morris played-up disgracefully at the annual LP ale at the NSW bush town Glenn Innis every year. Not to leave out the Adelaide Men, for some reason they always appeared to be positively British in every aspect and demeaner. These are all fairly faulty memories and feelings from 30 odd years ago – probably they are even defamatory. What I'm trying to say is that MBM didn't get out much. While we can't be blamed for most of the dramas in the Australian Morris community at the time, it must be said that, likewise, we can't clam credit for a lot of the undoubted innovations of the period.

As far as isolation goes, it wasn't until 2018, that Queensland produced its first office bearer of the Australian Morris Ring when Andrea Skerritt became the AMR's national Scribe. In almost half a century of Australian Morris, Queensland never contributed even a single office bearer before this. It is not actually something to be proud of, but it does exemplify our state of sublime isolation. Thankfully the new generation of Queensland Morris dancers are fully and successfully integrated into the social aspects of the Australian Morris community and are also gloriously plugged into every aspect of any Morris drama to be had. Queensland has arrived!

_Chapter_ _Six_

Rapscallion Nobis Nativitas

Figure c: Rapscallion – the "A Side"

I was there on the day that Rapscallion Morris Men was born. Or rather, I was there at the afternoon that Rapscallion was conceived; it took a few more weeks for the actual birthing process. For those who are wondering the need for a third and concurrent Cotswold side in Brisbane at the start of 1984, the reason had everything to do with Morris politics. Morris politics was (and is) always present, but at that stage I didn't recognise it for what was. In 1984, I was still wet behind the ears as a dancer.

About that time, Robin Coy and her partner, John Sunter, had arrived in Brisbane from Canberra. Both parties were originally Cotswold dancers of some particular skill. John, of course, was able to join in MBM's male side automatically. But Robin had no Cotswold team to go to. In the Brisbane of 1984, Robin had to join MBM's North West team if she wanted to dance Morris at all. This is what Robin did, and she was a brilliant North-West dancer too, make no mistake about it. At heart, she was a Cotswold dancer, and her style when dancing the Northwest traditions was very... say... "jaunty". She danced the north-west in an, almost, Cotswold style. There were always plenty of knees in the air when she danced and she was very unrestrained in performing. Apparently, she missed Cotswold dancing so much that she started to plan an all-female team not long after arriving in Brisbane. She largely did this in secret because she understood that her plans for a female Cotswold team would not impress certain MBM members. I was oblivious to the early planning, and it didn't concern me anyway. John Sunter was a brilliant dancer, one of the best in Australia, and for a small guy he could attain unbelievable heights in all types of leaping.

MBM in those days was roughly, and unofficially, divided into two parts even within the two different traditions of dance. Simply, the grand division, or even clique, if you will, was between those who had families, and those who did not. My partner, Debbie, and I didn't have a family or responsibilities beyond ourselves at that stage. We were also absolutely keen to dance and perform at every opportunity; a lot more so than was the case with some of the older dancers. For us a problem was emerging that we wanted to dance more, but not everyone was as keen as the younger people for excessive foot-ups. This situation coincided neatly with the emergence of Robin Coy's Ladies Pleasure Morris side. In one fell swoop we had a new Cotswold team, albeit female, and an opportunity for the younger dancers of the male persuasion to also get out and cause mischief a bit more. In my case, in particular, I had an unswerving loyalty towards MBM. I would never do anything to hurt it and MBM would always be my primary Morris side in every case.

The suggestion was, for those blokes who wanted to dance more, they should form a Morris "travelling side"; a purely fun Cotswold team that could dance hither and yon when the men weren't needed for MBM. It seemed a perfect solution that suited our particular needs to dance out more whilst saving our primary loyalty towards MBM. As was have pointed out before, if the men wanted to dance in Moreton Bay colours, they would have had to have a female from the north-west side just to hang around in costume. It seemed like a pointless rule, and one designed to keep MBM locked-in to a certain structure. Rapscallion was not about subverting MBM, it was about dancing the Morris more. Not one single man in the side wished to pull down MBM over our heads. Plus, those ladies wishing to dance Cotswold, particularly those who wished to dance Morris with their partners, could do so without upsetting any sanctions against mixed dancing. Thus, Rapscallion was founded one afternoon amidst many, many stubbies of Tooheys Old.

During the course of the evening Rapscallion would have the icon of an elephant rampant as a badge, and the colours gold and black would form our baldrics. Officially Rapscallion Morris side was raised in 1810. This is completely accurate fact and no discussion or debate will be entered into. I wish that I could report the reasons for the elephant, or the choice of the new side's colours, but my mind remains blank on the subjects. Highly likely this is due to the refreshments repeatedly served? I do know that later on I wasn't a great fan of the black and gold baldrics. One reason was that black and gold were the corporate colours of a particularly ultra-cheap and cut-rate grocery store that abounded Brisbane's suburban shopping precincts at the time. Now that I think about it, this may have been the very appeal of the idea amongst some of Rapscallion's leading lights (Peter Auty). Rapscallion could always accurately be described as ultra-cheap, and definitely cut-rate.

I do remember a couple of rules from the very first evening. Number one, there were to be no practice sessions attached to the side, ever. Rapscallion Morris does not practice, they dance. And, number two, the squire for the side would be refreshed at every single foot-up. The squire's position would be filled by the last person to say "not me" at the particular foot-up. It is a point of pride that in all the years of dancing with Rapscallion I was never the squire, not even once. On the other hand, it was a point of general hilarity that on most occasions Frank Ramsden (Fizz) got stuck with the job of squire because he tended to arrive at a foot-up a bit later than the rest of us. Also, after a while we engineered the situation so that Frank ended up being squire on most days anyway. The prime reason for us doing so was that Frank hated the Squire role which made it well worth the trouble to see that he ended up as squire almost every time that we could.

So, Rapscallion was formed as an unintended consequence to the formation of Ladies Pleasure Morris. The male and female Cotswold teams would often dance together in a joint way at different venues. But, Ladies Pleasure would normally take independent bookings without us males featuring in any way. They even had their own musos. Ladies Pleasure Morris didn't need Rapscallion as much as Rapscallion needed Ladies Pleasure. That said, Rapscallion occasionally went off on sole forays just for the hell of it. If any Rapscallion booking clashed with a MBM booking we would always prioritise our interests with that of Moreton Bay. Even then there was some resentment in MBM for the new Cotswold teams. At the time, I did not know what could possibly be the problem? It had, I now think, everything to do with females dancing Cotswold, because while the possible coup back in 1979, which may or may not have happened, killed-off mixed Morris dancing in MBM, there was a realisation that nothing could prevent Ladies Pleasure from doing what they damn well liked.

I think that I am in danger of over-egging MBM's sexist pudding. The side didn't operate in a dark dingy cloud of sixteenth-century thinking. For a start, there were more female dancers than men. Secondly, the female Northwest dances did not take a step backwards to any male in the side. When I was squire of MBM I had, for necessity sake, to be a belligerent dictator, but I was secretly terrified of the female North-West team. If you think that male Morris dancers are assertive you do not know the meaning of the word until you have worked with the ladies. What sexism existed in MBM, existed in the structure rather than in the practice of a working Morris side; and MBM wasn't in anyway unique during this period. Where it was unique was that the side usually showed a united front in the face of sexism. An example of this happened early in the piece. In those days, a brand-new Morris side had to present themselves before the Australian Morris Ring (AMR) for judgement as to whether they could join. The formal viewing happened at the AGM, which usually happened as part of the National Folk Festival (NFF). I guess there is nothing wrong with putting on a couple of party pieces to demonstrate that you were a serious side and had done the hard yards in terms of quality. After witnessing the new side's performance, the Ring would vote for the new side to be included as a member, or not, depending on how slick they were as Morris dancers (in theory). In 1982, MBM travelled down to Sydney to dance at the NFF. As it happened after watching MBM perform, the men were notified that they were successful in their application to be part of the Australian Morris Ring. MBM's ladies, however, were told that their application was unsuccessful. I'm happy to report that the men's Cotswold team were outraged at the insult, perhaps even more so than the ladies. MBM told them that they could stick their decision up their Australian Morris Ring! MBM would go alone without official sanction. In a matter of hours, the decision was overturned and the entire group became members of the Ring. I would dearly love to know how such a ridiculous decision was arrived at in the first place? Plus, why in God's name did they imagine that the MBM men would happily cut the rope and allow the ladies North West team to fall down the sexist crevasse? I guess I shall never know. An indication of the thinking of some of the male single-sexed sides in Australia at that time is that whenever they danced (informally) with females in the same set - such as at ales \- some of the men would turn their baldrics inside out, so not to "discredit" their masculine team. It's hard to believe, I know, but it is all too true.

I really loved MBM. I love watching the Northwest dancers perform, even though I had no interest in dancing Northwest myself. I loved how the two sides got on and worked together. The ladies North West team were liquid perfection in their style. Many years later while visiting folk festivals in England I have witnessed some magnificent male Northwest performances. I do get that men and women dance differently. I've seen one all male North-West team in particular who are outstanding. I get that Northwest can be danced with energy and aggression. It can be danced with the power that only a man can display and utilising strength in a mass formation can be quite impressive. As I said, I get it. However, the MBM ladies, while naturally, exhibiting less strength, also had the precision in movement that would enrapture a c1901 British Sergeant Major. The male North-West sides with their impressive energy did not necessarily have the timing of MBM's ladies side, nor did they have the feminine poise, nor any sense of subtlety. You want aggression, you get aggression, but you lose the subtlety. Like any argument based on genitalia, comparisons fall over with the slightest nudge. What one sex excels in a certain characteristic, they generally fall down slightly on another. It really is a pointless exercise to begin with. If you want a more rounded experience, just dance in a mixed set. I promise you that hens will still lay milk and the cows will still produce eggs.

There is one last thing about MBM as a Morris group that I utterly miss today. Having two different and separate traditions of Morris in the same team meant that everyone had a three-minute rest after each and every dance. The men would dance a set, and then the ladies, and so on. Not only would everyone catch their breath, but that three-minute segway allowed time for the respective foreman to bully the recalcitrant members so that they were ready to go on immediately upon the other side dancing off. This allowed MBM to be as slick as goose shit when performing. It looked ultra-professional when we danced out because there were no loose ends, and we were all relatively rested. Apart from maintaining our breathing, we could dance for long periods utilising all these sneaky rest breaks. We could also offer the punter a solid hour's performance without repeating a single dance. That is at least a dozen dances to a single set and with our collective heartbeats barely operating above resting. Normally today in Belswagger we might be able to manage 10 to 15 minutes, or about three dances, and then we move on to another location for another 10 minutes. This is no negative reflection upon Belswagger; that is just the way it works. And to continue to use Belswagger as an example, this modern side is much better prepared than we ever were back in the day. The squire and foreman actually have a dance list nowadays, which MBM never bothered with or had no need for because we could argue the play during our three-minute break before the next dance. As I have said before, comparisons are odious because the downside was MBM having to organise up to 30-40 people every single time. Belswagger has to deal with about 10 performers on a normal day. To cope with so many goldfish-minded dancers who usually comprise any Morris side in the world, the organisation really did need an assertive squire and two very proactive foremen.

_Chapter Seven_

In Tanta Perturbatione Est

I previously alluded to MBM being very tired and rundown after Expo 88. Apart from the cracks they were evident to everyone the side rolled on towards Christmas and beyond. The cracks took the form of some of the most devoted Morris dancers in the side sometimes not been available for practices or foot-ups for extended periods. Everyone misses some practices occasionally. The real-world intrudes on hobbies, and sometimes it's not possible to go to a particular booking. But after Expo, it became commonplace for people to be missing in action quite a lot. I would sometimes wonder if MBM had run its race, or if Expo had fatally wounded it. But no, the side continued on its merry way and those people who were often absent, largely came back even if they weren't as regular attendees as before. Ladies Pleasure Morris continued on in its independent trajectory, although Rapscallion started dropping off everyone's radar, even amongst Rapscallion's members. Expo 88 pretty much killed Rapscallion dead.

I loved Rapscallion for different reasons to that of MBM. Rapscallion was pure fun, and less responsibility for all concerned. I was never even involved in any workshops that produced the baldrics. They were just handed to me by Peter Auty who made them. I already had the cricket whites and the bells. Three quarters of us were already Morris musicians. Rapscallion was a play Morris side. We had no practices; what few bookings we got were easily managed. There were no egos involved, which usually destroys Morris sides through small-group politics. It was quite freaky in that nobody wanted to be in charge but things got done despite of it. For the most part Fizz or Peter Auty would just tell you to do this job, take that booking, or show up at a particular time or place, and we would do it. I can't remember a single drama, or problem or issue that we had to deal with. Looking back, it might be that it was an "invitation only" side and so the people selected to be members were probably chosen not to be arseholes. Whatever the point of difference, it had a dissimilar feel to that of MBM. Not better than MBM, just different. The other side of that coin was that we only had friendship binding us together and all of us were already in MBM. Rapscallion as fun as it was, had only one purpose and that was dancing Morris. MBM could supply that and everything else besides.

Ladies Pleasure Morris used to run what I considered to be the best ale in the world. It was an entire weekend of debauchery in the little New South Wales township of Glen Innes. Glen Innes used to run a weekend bush festival, called Festival of the Beardies. Yeah, I don't get it either? It was a festival about blokes wearing beards, or something like that? It doesn't matter, it was simply bush town that enjoyed running a weird bush festival. Ladies Pleasure organised their ale in that far-off location from Brisbane so as many Southern Morris sides could attend as possible. Everyone had to drive there from somewhere else. Rapscallion attended, but MBM men generally didn't. Quite often we had quite a selection of the Morris community all staying the same pub which virtually guaranteed that sleeping was never an option. On the Saturday would be a day of dance somewhere outside of Glen Innes, but that night would be the occasion of Ladies Pleasure holding their notorious three-legged pub crawl race. In that two people would have their inside legs tied together and they would have to race through every pub in the town sculling a schooner at every stop. The ale after the race was a spectacular success because everyone was entirely blotto before we had our first drink at the ale. The owner of the pub where we stayed every year, I think his name was Tim, adored the Morris and the attention we attracted. We also attracted the attention of the police during the night, pretty much every single year, so Tim would have to go out on the footpath and make promises and negotiate some sort of compromise with the coppers that he would never reveal. It was a great ale, no doubt about it. Thank you, LP.

Expo had seriously and negatively impacted upon MBM, and therefore it virtually annihilated Rapscallion Morris. If Moreton Bay had trouble maintaining enthusiasm and energy during that period, Rapscallion had no chance at all; primarily because we were Moreton Bay too. I can't recall that much about Ladies Pleasure in the aftermath of Expo, but I know that Robin Coy split up with her partner John Sunter and a lot of the joy seeped out of that enterprise as a result. All the Brisbane sides were struggling, it seemed, but MBM had a greater capacity to survive due to its size and complexity.

In the later part of 1989, I was struggling in a personal way with my future. Professionally, I had gone all the way from soldier, railway carriage cleaner, shunter, railway guard and at that point, two-man crewmen on locomotives. Railway shift-work was killing me. I would work a different shift every goddamn day. Two in the morning one day, 4:00 pm the next and the day following, midday. I had been carrying a shift-work hangover for years. I was perpetually groggy and disorientated.

The Keating government had recently funded a scheme designed to allow those people who had never previously had an opportunity to attend university. The University of Southern Queensland (USQ) called their program, "Access and Equity". If you could stick with three-month Access and Equity course, completing the coursework and passing the program, you were permitted to enrol in any of the USQ degree programs on offer. That is, you could do any course you wished without restriction in the entire university. I applied and was accepted into the program.

It goes without saying, such as the nature of human psychology, that I immediately flipped into my next area of anxiety. I was actually doing a university course, but I had only a ninth-grade education behind me and a complete lack of self-confidence that I could pass the required standard. Once again for those after my generation, tertiary education is now considered always a possibility, almost a human right. Of my generation, university for the vast majority of people wasn't even on anybody's horizon. Neither my parents nor my three siblings had attended university. With a single exception, neither had any of my uncles or aunts. In my wider family, that is the family unit stemming from my grandparents, only two cousins out of about 20 had attended university. Nowadays the figure in the general population is about 25% of all Australians have a degree. In my generation, it was only approximately 2% who had a degree. This meant a couple of psychological things for me. For my friends, my family and my social cohort, tertiary education was not only out of reach, it was out of mind. In my social network growing up, smart kids finished grade 12, and I didn't even manage to do that.

Another thing that would appear unlikely to the current generation is that when I was a young fella, anyone who had a degree also had a job for life. No matter what, no matter how lazy, no matter how careless, no matter how unreliable you were, if you also had a university degree you always had a job. Of course, you would be sacked for any of those particular nasty traits, but within a day you would have yet another job, and one that paid very well indeed. You were a graduate! Nowadays I look about me and see extremely qualified PhD graduates who can't get a decent job of any description. I think how ridiculous and bizarre the changing of social norms, and how poorly we reward excellence. But there you have it. Enjoy your new runners, your cheap fast food and your purchase of unnecessary shiny crap for nickels. Globalism has a price, and that price is you yourself.

In my time as a soldier I personally knew exactly one person who wasn't a commissioned officer but who had also been to university. I'm talking about a young bloke about my age and social position. He attended a single semester at Uni before jacking it all in and joining the jungle green, just like me. I was amazed that he could do such a thing - be accepted for a bachelor's degree course and just toss it all away. I continually asked him about his short university experience until he was sick of the subject. We would be digging some shit pits in some remote hellhole in the Australian outback. We would have blisters on our fingers whilst digging away in the blazing sun, our backs aching. At that point, I would casually mention to him that if he had stayed at Uni he wouldn't be balls-deep in a stony hole in the ground right in the middle of fuck-nowhere right now. Oh, how he laughed.

Anyway, as I worked railways trains all over Brisbane, I commenced my program studies for university entrance at USQ. I figured I had nothing to lose.

The three-month course for Uni entry was as difficult for me as I expected it might be, particularly the mathematics. The other thing I was worried about, and one that I had held lifelong shame, was my inability to spell. I have always had this block about spelling. Any time I had to write anything of note it embarrassed me that the writing was often shamefully incorrectly spelt. As a schoolboy, I had my knuckles beaten with the edge of a wooden ruler for every misspelt word, wielded by the ironically named "Sisters of Mercy". My spelling wasn't worth a damn. Perversely, I had a larger than normal vocabulary due to excessive interest in reading. To this day, I am often corrected on my poor pronunciation of words due to not having heard them spoken out aloud before. My only contact with those unusual words comes from books; so how the hell would I know the correct pronunciation? In the intervening years, my spelling has improved out of sight due to writing thousands of complex intelligence reports. But I would hazard that my spelling is still not far off grade 10 level. My particular trouble is that I can easily detect misspelt word, but that I do not know how to rectify the error without the aid of a dictionary or spellchecker.

As luck would have it, in early January 1990, I was notified that I passed my university entrance program for USQ Toowoomba. The choice of leaving the railways was pretty easy at that stage, I had developed a taste for higher learning that exactly matched my hatred for weird and antisocial shift-work hours. I passed on a further railway career and resigned on the same day that my confirmation for university came in. This meant that I would be moving from Brisbane to Toowoomba, so would my wife Debbie. She was never exactly in love with her job either. So, with this in mind we packed up our stuff, and our entire lives, and moved a hundred kilometres west to a new and uncertain future. Although neither of us knew it at the time by moving to the Darling Downs it was the last time Debbie and I would have anything to do with the Moreton Bay Morris side ever again as members.
_Chapter_ _Eight_

solliciti esse negotio

There is virtue in common human experiences.

Common human experiences create mutual understanding. Because we all share the trials and tribulations of certain activities I do not have to go into the particular pain of describing a house move of 100 km. Because Debbie and I had just quit our jobs, money was definitely an issue. We got around a lot of the costs by hiring a small truck ourselves and making perhaps half a dozen roundtrips to and from Toowoomba-Brisbane carrying every item that we owned. But first we had to find inexpensive accommodation, and anything close to university was not within our budget. We, eventually, did find a little house that met our needs within walking distance of the CBD. This became ground zero for the next couple of weeks - load after load from Brisbane to Toowoomba, and back again, until were entirely residents of Toowoomba.

I began my first week as a mature-age university student with a ton of confidence. This confidence lasted almost until lunchtime of day one. I was meeting for the first-time what hundreds of thousands of 18-year-olds had discovered before me: that the mapping of a modern university is pure bullshit! I couldn't find where my tutorials were to be held, where my lectures were, and timetable management was a matter of pure guesswork. I began to think if I couldn't find how to get to a lecture, there is probably a reason why I never attended university in the first place. Orientation week was no help. They were all about offering condoms and trying to sign me up to tai chi classes. I would probably never be able to find the tai chi venue even if I did sign up. Luckily, I discovered the university refectory, a locale that would be more useful to me than anything else at USQ.

By the Friday of the first week I came home feeling slightly depressed and believing that perhaps I had made a massive mistake. What were we doing here, I thought? I came home and Deb made me a nice cup of tea. In addition, she had two interesting pieces of data for me to digest.

  1. The house that we were living in - the place that we had only just moved into a few days before had been sold from under us and the new owners wanted us out. We had less than 30 days to pack up our bongos and be gone. All of a sudden that one-month lease thing that the owners insisted upon made immediate sense. We've been living in the house for less than a week and now we had to find a new place with all the trouble and expense that would entail. I asked her for the second bit of news because the first bit of news felt like a kick in my tender parts.

  2. Deb told me that she was pregnant with our first child.

For a second, I thought she must've been joking, but then realised that it wasn't possible for her to be under the circumstances. I confess that for about ten seconds I experienced real despair before snapping out of it and taking in all the news like a big boy. Before the cup of tea, I only had a rough first week Uni. Now I was getting kicked out of home and was going to be a Dad! That was it, really. It snapped me out of my self-pity and by the end of the day we had resolved find a new place to live, for me get on with Uni. Deb was going to find a temporary job for a few weeks, and both of us were going to commence the eccentric profession of being parents.

And so, it happened. We moved to temporary rental accommodation for six months and used the sale of land that we had at Rainbow Beach to fund a twee little cottage couple of kilometres from USQ. And if the person of one Kim Brown had not invaded our little boring piece of existence, the world would have probably have taken a different trajectory, and Belswagger Morris may never have seen the light of day.

Ex-MBM dancer and all-round rascal, Kim Brown had arrived in Toowoomba slightly in advance to our own arrival. He was attracted to the Darling Downs because he had met a local lass and had tossed it all in in order to live in Toowoomba. By the time we had bought and moved into our little cottage, Kim had still not found a job, well, not a full-time job at any rate. Being the social butterfly, as well is being a talented musician, he had thrown himself into the local folk scene and he knew everyone and everyone knew him. I had been there six months and did not know that Toowoomba even had a folk scene. I was still fully committed to my university course and terrified of failing. I was studying for an arts degree majoring in Media Studies and Production. Media Studies consisted of one-year print journalism and two years of radio and television production. Because USQ was a "cow university" - excuse me - rural university, the course was designed to put graduates into regional newsrooms. My minor, and, as it turned out my real love, was history. I would have switched to an arts degree majoring in history if USQ was offering one, but it wasn't. Nevertheless, I did enjoy the world of journalism and do so to this day. Pity we do not see much journalism anymore.

My good friend Gerry Amos, would occasionally tease me over the years by introducing me to newcomers as the person who started Belswagger Morris. That really is incorrect on so many levels, not to mention a vile slander if ever I've heard one! For a start, I may have been the first foreman of the side, but even so there were two Belswagger foremen (forepeople?). My wife, Debbie, was also a foreman of the ladies' North-West team. And secondly, I didn't start anything I was practically dragged into Belswagger in a way that I will outline shortly.

In the winter of 1990, we had not long moved into our new cottage and had employed Kim Brown to paint our house. This worked the benefit of both of us because Kim didn't charge us much for the job and he needed the money. Kim had practically finished painting the house with only the roof to go, if I recollect correctly, when he scored a commercial artist position at USQ. I was into my second semester when he pulled me aside as he was finishing painting for the day and asked me and Deb if we were interested in forming a Toowoomba Morris side. Knowing the amount of work in raising a Morris side, coupled with the teaching a couple of dozen new dances, plus getting bookings and all the other palaver, the idea seemed ludicrous to me. My main concern was doing well at Uni and preparing for the birth of my kid. Neither of those two goals could be achieved by burying myself in the creation of a new Morris side. After carefully explaining all this to Kim and having him nod with evident understanding at all key points, he still insisted that Deb and I get involved help start a new Morris side. No matter how many times I said "no" over the next couple weeks, the more he insisted that was possible. I never told him how much the idea secretly appealed to me even though I couldn't possibly see it happening. I missed the Morris and would love a break from all the hard work that we had undertaken during the past six or seven months. Yet I didn't believe it could be more than wishful thinking. With absolute persistence Kim Brown kept working on Deb and myself to try to start a Morris side. Deb had by that stage quit working due to the increasing size of her belly. With more nagging from Kim I started to weaken. In the end I made no promises but put down several conditions for my possible involvement.

  1. If there was no community interest in the project I would not be involved further. We had no time or interest in recruiting people.

  2. We would only consider it if we could mimic the template of MBM; the Cotswold team and a North-West team dancing in conjunction. The reason for this was that I genuinely believed that Moreton Bay Morris had cracked the secret for a successful Morris operation. By this stage I had over eight years' experience as a Morris dancer and had seen a dozen Morris sides start and collapse right across the country. I believed at the time that MBM had accidentally stumbled upon an ideal Morris situation. If I was to be involved in the new side I'd like it to be pretty much identical to the ideal.

  3. That I university studies would come first on every occasion.

Kim Brown readily agreed and furthermore insisted that he would do any required heavy lifting. He also had put in a lot of ground work already despite my repeated insistence that we weren't interested in the idea. He asked Deb and I if we would take on the job of foreman, teaching the new team. That was an interesting question, as he was more than capable of being the foreman himself, at least for the Cotswold side anyway. He insisted that he wasn't ready to be foreman, which is a crock if ever I've heard one. I think that he just wanted more active involvement from us because starting a Morris side with three experienced dancers is a lot easier than with just one. Kim had, furthermore, taken liberty of organising a meeting amongst interested parties for that same Wednesday evening at Toowoomba's Metropole hotel. All Deb and I had to do was to show up; Kim would do all the rest. At that point, we were committed to at least taking the project to the next level. We had run out of excuses to deny Kim his project. I say this with all honesty and sincerity, if Belswagger Morris was whelped by any human being, it entered the world via Kim Brown's birth canal. And that's probably the most disgusting image I could possibly leave you with.

_Chapter_ _Nine_

Belswagger nobis Nativitas

I can't remember the exact date, or even the exact month, that Deb and I arrived at the Metropole hotel for a preliminary meeting about possibly starting a Toowoomba Morris side. I know that it was 1990, it was winter and therefore cold as buggery. I also remember arriving at the Metropole a bit late and seeing nobody I knew including Kim Brown. I thought that the absence of interested parties would mean an aborted attempt. Kim Brown popped out of a side room and ushered Deb and I inside. If anything was even colder inside this room than out on the footpath. The second surprise was the sheer number of people seated around the room chatting with each other. Evidently, either Kim Brown had worked a miracle in getting the numbers, or there was actual interest in the prospect of the Darling Downs Morris side.

The only three experienced dancers in the room were Kim, my wife Deb, and myself. There were least a dozen other people, almost all of them consisting of the ancient enemy of the Morris world - they were all folkies.

Folkies and Morris dancers have a long and interesting history. Think of us as elves and trolls, with the folkies being the evil ones. The Folkie/Morris war is an old conflict going back to the early seventies. I don't know how it started in the beginning, possibly a random sledge by some toothless, banjo picker, at some early National Folk Festival? No doubt some handsome, intelligent and wise Morris person gave them some excellent advice on where the geography was best suited to store the said banjo. Whatever the occasion, that lit the wick, the tone was set for more gory battles between the un-bathed folkie world and the shining light of the Morris universe. It didn't help that Morris dances were always to be outnumbered 50 to 1. The Morris never took a backward step and always struck the first annoying blow in any encounter between folkies and Morris. Our primary weapon systems were our bell pads. Oh, the joy and mirth we would encounter upon all 30 of us broaching into the folkie session tent and drowning out whatever idiotic tune was in progress, just by the simple act of walking. The folkies, as part of their retaliation, did their damnedest to make life inconvenient for the Morris at any festival. Our allocated camping was usually the shittiest position on site. Our dancing displays or workshops were programmed for when no one around to observe, usually mealtimes. And they would always insist that we take off our bell pads as we moved through the festival site. It was a point of honour that we never removed our bell pads. Never, Goddammit! Morris are the bells and had been so since before Shakespeare's time. Insisting that we remove our bells is pure provocation on the folkies part, as they damn well knew. For decades, Morris dancers have treated the demand for de-belling with contempt. If you take the bells off a Morris dancer all you have left is a weirdo in strange clothes. The adornment of bells separated us from looking like a religious cult. And since I have introduced the topic of religious stubbornness - from this day forward I am going to be like Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses onto the church door in Wittenberg. I am going to refuse to remove my bell pads when transiting folk Festivals. Apart from which, the very notion of preserving silence on a large folk Festival site is nonsense. In any case, I will fight the ancient folkie foe as I have always done, and as my Morris ancestors have done before me. For when I'm in the presence of a folkie, my Morris bells glow bright blue.

Of course, all this is a bit awkward as I am also folkie myself, but the principle is the thing.

My Morris bells was glowing bright blue that night at the Metropole hotel when I found myself in strange position of being surrounded by folkies who wanted to start a Morris side. By the end of the night Deb and I were quite keen on the idea as well. There was one fellow, who we thought to be clearly insane, who was the keenest Morris folkie I had ever met. He hadn't danced the Morris before but he had an unnatural love for the idea of Morris. I know that doesn't make sense, at least it didn't make sense to me at the time but this chap, Gerry Amos, was to become the single most important and critical figure in Belswagger's history. It was he who would do the massive mountaineering for more than two decades after my all too brief initial involvement. But that was for the future, at that stage Gerry was just another enthusiastic folkie. As I have really outlined, folkies who are enthusiastic for the Morris are politically suspect, at the very least. I'm well aware what Joseph Stalin would have done in the situation where he was confronted with a member of the bourgeois who so readily change sides and enthusiastically adopted the new movement. Up against the wall for him!

Anyway, at that first night Deb and I outlined our vision for the new Toowoomba side and how it should be formed. As I had ready mentioned I wanted to use MBM as a general template. It was my most sincere belief at the time that MBM had a fantastic formula for Morris. It was also successful in that it was one of the older sides in Australia and it just worked. Also, my first commitment was to my university studies. Debbie was keen to take on the role of Northwest Foreman, even though she was preggers. I was happy, if the side so wanted, to be Foreman of the Cotswold half of the side.

The side's first squire was Ken Walsh, assisted by his wife, Yvonne. As Ken had never performed in the role of a Morris squire before, Kim Brown and I assisted in bossing around and shaping the team as it should be. That's not to say that Ken was a sock puppet, no one in Belswagger could be considered one of those. Morris dancers tend towards being extremely individualistic. I knew what I was getting into that night at the Metropole hotel. Luckily, I had been Squire of a large side previously and I knew the only way to get in maintain control was to be an Australian version of Robert Mugabe with a bad headache. In a short time, I had a reputation for being an absolute dictator and the artistic Kim Brown began producing cartoons of Nazis marching Morris dances up and down the street where the chief Nazi had a remarkable resemblance to yours truly. In my defence, anyone who has had anything to do with running a Morris side either sinks into the swamp or goes the full Rambo. There is nothing in between. Ever since I was first in charge of a Morris group I have become very sympathetic towards pirate captains. Unless you flog or hang a few of the crew, you will never survive beyond a couple of weeks. I can remember the early practice nights well, with Gerry Amos leading all the distractions in partnership with Kim Brown, who should know better, causing chaos to the training of newcomers.

Then came the discussions about the side's name and kit. I was not overly engaged in either subject. I didn't want us to be called Toowoomba Morris Dancers on the grounds that I never liked geographical descriptions as part of a side's name because they seem too functional.

I have always wanted to call a side the Sturdy Beggars Morris after the English Vagabonds and Beggars Act 1494, The Act stated that: vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the Hundred (County Division) where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid. The act was designed to enforce people, particularly the poor, into strict social groupings. It was also an attempt to combat unlawfulness at the time where there was no police force. Morris dancing outside of the usual spring festivals often amounted to performance and busking, which was often seen as little more than begging. Some argue that the use of Morris blackface was a way of disguise and evading prosecution. Apart from which, the Sturdy Beggars sounded like a grand name. Naturally, nobody in the side liked to be called a sturdy beggar so the arguments went around and around. To try and break out of the endless arguments about the side's name I brought a book of archaic English words to a meeting. It was a popular move, a dozen likely names were collected from the book and put up to a vote. The winning entry was "Belswagger". At first, I detested the name, because according to the book it meant a "swaggering bully". In a short time, however, I reconsidered because that is how the establishment in England at the time might have viewed Morris dancers. And so, it became the name of the side, and it's a good one I think.

As to the kit for the side, I wasn't really involved either and had no opinion at the time. I supposed that the men would probably wear cricket whites, and the ladies would wear skirts similar to that of MBM, but I didn't really care all that much. The only thing I asked, and the only thing that Kim and I were queried upon, were the colours of the different Australian Morris sides because naturally we had to have our own unique colours. It's quite sad I think that I have no memory of how we arrived at black white and blue for Belswagger. Perhaps one of the other Belswagger old farts might be able to supply this critical information, because I can't?

Other notable side members were Ronnie and Greg from South Australia, Doug Murray and Mike Power, Joan Chenery and her young daughter, Kirstie. Ronnie and Greg (Gekko) were our primary mussos, but Joan and I could step in as required.

On 29th of September 1990, Belswagger performed its first official foot-up at Webster's Hotel in Stanthorpe. The men were assisted by two MBM dancers, Frank Ramsden and Matt Seligmann. In a few short weeks Belswagger had gone from a stupid idea of Kim Brown's to an actual Morris side that almost 30 years later is still infesting the folkie world like a virulent pathogen. I do remember that first day of dance, but the details escape me as they generally do. The one thing I remember was particularly tragic. On the drive back to Toowoomba following our foot-up, I was one of the first to leave Stanthorpe for home. Ken and Yvonne Walsh were following my car about 15 minutes behind. Their travel back to Toowoomba was interrupted by coming across a terrible car crash. Ken Walsh was a trained nurse and he assisted at the crash site trying to keep the driver alive. He worked on the casualty until the ambulance arrived but there was nothing to be done for the poor driver. I believe that afterwards Ken had to throw away his Morris whites for obvious reasons. The news when we heard about it cast a dark spell over what was Belswagger's inaugural foot-up.

The next couple of years the side went from strength to strength. Belswagger had its first ale on 17 May 1991. We invited for the occasion the two Brisbane Morris side's, MBM and Ladies Pleasure. I was amused because Belswagger had been in existence for about a year at that stage, and they had never seen a Morris Ale before they had actually hosted one. I think it was a bit of a surprise for them to see all the debauchery. I must say that Gerry Amos did the side proud in the "Drunk's March" and that even when MBM tried to engineer Amos getting drenched in beer, it proved impossible to fill his tankard due to his enthusiasm in draining it. I had a little bit of anxiety about the Ale on account of this being our first real introduction into the wider Morris community. Of course, both teams had danced together previously. The most part, however, this was done in the very early days at the Cabarlah Folk Festival the year before. Back then Belswagger had only learnt a couple of dances and nothing much was expected of them. A year later I was interested to see what MBM thought of their baby sibling. The feedback was excellent; not only were the dancers extremely proficient, if not extremely experienced, but they had also absorbed a Morris ethos. Or perhaps it was the Morris spirit, whatever that beast may be? I felt that the group had done Kim Brown, Debbie and I proud.

About halfway into 1992, when my young son, Patrick was about a year and a half old and getting into no end of trouble, the Morris side was doing extremely well. Kim Brown dropped in for a cup of coffee and a proposal. Since we had collectively started Belswagger, we had also started a folk band called "Swaggering Bony". Swaggering Bony is a beautiful Longborough Morris dance and it seemed ideal to name a bush band with such Morris connections. So, from my point of view I was three quarters into finishing my degree, I was in a bush band and I was foreman of an extremely talented Morris side. I was also taking whatever part-time work I could get my hands to the feed the family and being a dad to my young boy. Life was certainly busy. That was the background to Kim Brown's afternoon coffee and his subsequent proposal.

Kim had what he believed to be a delicate subject to bring up with Deb and myself. Apparently, the side had been talking amongst themselves and had approached Kim to suggest something to us. Kim said that many in the side wanted to dance Cotswold and drop Northwest as a tradition. Kim was sounding out us with a view to considering a change. I am not sure what Kim believed my political allegiances were. I think that his hesitancy had a lot to do with a belief, which was ubiquitous amongst male Morris dancers of the time, that we might be against mixed dancing. This idea could not be furthest from the truth. I considered that we may have made a mistake to have taken the route that we did back in 1990. Back then I was influencing the MBM model primarily because I thought it was a good one. During the last two years Belswagger had been dealing with a number's problem. Brisbane was several times a bigger population than Toowoomba and could cope quite easily with two different traditions in the same side; Toowoomba, not so much. Whilst we had the numbers for a dance out, we had no reserves. Many was the time when it was touch and go. If I had my time over, I would have picked the single side template, either Northwest or Cotswold. At this late stage of the game, changing Belswagger completely to a mixed side and teaching eight or 10 people who were completely new to Cotswold the entire traditions was beyond our capacity for involvement. Kim's proposal made perfect sense to me and Deb. We understood where he was coming from and we were sympathetic to the side wanting resolution to both the numbers problem, and to the common desires of the team. However, it was convenient for Deb and I to continue on as we had been going. Most of the hard work had been already completed and as foreman, we just had to roll on the rails that we had collectively built two years previously. One of the problems with being a dictator is that the side may not have felt confident even broaching the subject to us directly, and who can blame them? Poor Kim Brown was elected to tell us that the side wanted to make what was a radical change.

Deb and I told Kim that whilst we understood what the side was proposing, we just couldn't be part of it at that stage. We felt at the time that we were being pulled in so many different directions that starting from scratch was beyond our capability at that point. I said to Kim that we were happy to stand down as foreman and no hard feelings. We had been office bearers in Belswagger for the last two years and had achieved great things, but we didn't need to be upfront anymore. Kim himself was more than capable of taking Belswagger to the next stage, and Gerry Amos was proving to be exceedingly capable as well is impossibly enthusiastic. I had been offered a job in Canberra as soon as I finished my degree, which was only about five months away. Deb and I were almost certain to leave Toowoomba in a few months anyway. Given all that, we were not interested in being the leaders of the change in the side. So, we asked Kim if he would take on the job himself. Our interest in dictating Morris was restricted to practice nights, not enforcing an entire mode of operations. Kim said that he would rather that we keep to the current plan a least until the end of the year and he said that it was his wish that we stay in place as foreman until that time. Deb and I did feel a bit funny about staying on when the side had signalled different intentions. Either way we were on our way to Canberra by the year's end and after that Belswagger would most likely take on a new direction. Good luck to them because they were a fantastic group.

And so, for the next few months Belswagger ran the practices out under our direction and guidance. We still had many Morris bookings about town and did the odd foot-up for ourselves and danced increasingly in conjunction with other the Brisbane teams. Sometime about November 1992, I distinctly remember driving over to Kim's house in order to return my Belswagger bells and baldric. I felt extremely sad to be doing this as I had nothing but the deepest affection for Belswagger and the side's members. Every one of them was a dear friend of both Deb and myself. In addition, as performers, they were outstanding. I couldn't credit that only two and half years ago that we had first sat down over a beer at the Metropolitan hotel to discuss the possibility of forming a side. I handed my gear over to Kim, who at first tried to refuse taking it. I told him not to be ridiculous as Belswagger was short of kit generally, and every bell pad counted. He reluctantly took my gear, I gave him a big hug and a short time Deb and I had left Toowoomba and Belswagger behind us. It would be another 15 years before I would once again re-join that side. In the intervening years Belswagger looked remarkably different. The once fresh-faced amateur, Gerry Amos, was running the show but now he was a hard-bitten Morris veteran with the scars on his bell pads to prove it.
_Chapter_ _Ten_

Continuatam Scilicet Annorum

The time I spent in Canberra was reasonably weird. I had become a professional spook which added to the general weirdness. I can't speak of my day job on account of ethics and the official secrets act, but it paid the bills and was interesting work. Within months of taking up my new position I had a brand-new baby daughter, Becky, joining her brother, Patrick. Previously I had been accessible as a full-time uni student anytime Patrick wanted to play a game. Suddenly I was away all the daylight hours, and in wintertime Canberra I was away, virtually, most of the kid's waking hours. There were not too many opportunities for Morris at the time, but I did dabble here and there trying to find a nice fit. In 1994, I was posted to Alice Springs, which was a fascinating experience but no Morris was to be had out in the desert. The following year I returned to Canberra and pottered a bit with the Canberra Morris Men (CMM), but not enough to be considered a side member. By 1995, the Canberra Morris Men was still alive and kicking, but they were not the same team as I had remembered from 10 years previously. Like Moreton Bay Morris, a certain tiredness appeared to have set in, and a distinct lack of enthusiasm where previously they had been crazy trendsetters. I can't put my finger on it exactly, and I fear that I am being very unfair to them, but they were lacking a certain something. The Canberra Morris Men had always been my favourite non-Queensland side. For a start, the Canberra men were the most cerebral side in Australia, and the most educated. Between them they had more degrees than a handful of thermometers. But a Morris side is not judged by education, it is judged by how they dance the Morris and their general attitude to life. The Canberra Morris Men were excellent in dancing and had very high standards in the art of Morris lore generally. They were usually in direct competition with the Sydney Morris Men (SMM) for a long period, and both sides encouraged each other towards excellence. When I went to a few practices with the CMM about 1995, I did have visions of becoming one of their number. However, for the time I was there the spark appeared to be extinguished. The Canberra men seemed worn-out, very similar to that of MBM. I understand that they staggered on for another decade before folding, so it is possible that I drifted into their orbit during a particularly flat period. All Morris sides experience dead spots over the years. Sometimes a change of leadership can do the trick of pulling them back into line. Sometimes nothing will save it because the team has run its course. Most usually if a Morris side stays flat for more than six months it's a sign of terminal decline. Anyway, I did not pursue membership with the CMM at that time and it's possible that my short presence was not even detected, let alone remembered.

In the same vein, I joined Paul Carr's border side, Molonglo Mayhem Border Morris for about three months. Molonglo was high-energy, as are all border sides, and Paul ran a very tight ship. However, it soon became apparent to me that I was a Cotswold dancer at heart which impacted upon my interest in border dancing. It had nothing to do with Carr or his excellent team - it had everything to do with how I viewed the world after almost a decade and a half of dancing the Morris. I knew at that point I was a square peg and every other Morris tradition besides Cotswold was a round hole. I never persisted with Molonglo either, although that team impressed the hell out of me. In the end, I gave up trying to find a Morris side that fitted, besides which I was hellish busy at work and had a young family at night to keep me fully engaged. These became my slow years as far as Morris was concerned. In fact, I didn't even bother keeping up with the Morris gossip from Queensland and therefore had no idea how either MBM or Belswagger was doing. Queensland seemed so far away anyway. I did catch glimpses occasionally.

One year around the mid-nineties, the family went to Toowoomba as part of a holiday to Queensland. I got to see my old side, Belswagger, performing at USQ one afternoon. I think this was about 1996, or around that time anyway. I believe Kim Brown was the foreman at the time, but I could be wrong. The side was operating as a mixed team and was looking exceedingly professional. It would appear that the change in leadership had only enhanced the general skill and talent pool. A few years after that, the family attended the dawn Mayday celebrations at Mount Coo-tha in Brisbane. We had a great time catching up with the mob, but of course we had no idea just how the old Brisbane sides were existing in a "survival" sense. On the surface, everything seemed to be okay. On the surface, that is.

I returned back to Brisbane in June 1998 and learnt that MBM was no more. They had a pretty good run, all things considered. There were not too many Morris sides of the same vintage still around at that stage. The Canberra and Sydney Morris Men had drifted away and danced no more, but some sides such as the Adelaide and Perth Morris men still danced on, as they do to this day. It still bit of a mystery to me how it all went down, but MBM changed its mode considerably on its journey towards final closure. In its final years MBM had changed from being dual Cotswold/North West sides to a single mixed-Border side. I still have trouble making the adjustment in my head because Moreton Bay was so incredibly distinct in the dual Cotswold/North West traditions. I'm thinking that perhaps it became a numbers game and enough critical people from the side had drifted away and the hard-core Morris folk remaining had to make some hard-core decisions. It is a credit to them that they were able to extend the life of MBM for a few more years than otherwise would have been the case. As for me there was no Morris to be had in Brisbane unless I was prepared to start another side. Excuse me for saying this, but fuck that for a joke.

I did not know at the time, but Brisbane did have a Morris side in existence. I attended the National Folk Festival about 2005, but who should I see in full kit but one Gerry Amos and one Greg Hall. They were at a colonial dance venue and they were holding each other up because it didn't take a genius to determine that both Morris dancers were in full "Morris Dancer" mode. By that, I mean that they were both pissed as newts. I was very happy to see them and surprised that they were in kit and apparently Belswagger was still alive and kicking. I learned that Gerry was now squire and Greg was the Foreman. The team was now straddling between Toowoomba and Brisbane, with most of the dancers now residents of the latter. In fact, the only Darling Downs dancer left was Gerry himself. This was an interesting discovery.
_Ch_ _apter Eleven_

Et Redi

_I think it was about 2007, that Karina Berry and Ian Redpath approached me with a request that we dance with a temporary border side for a Woodford performance. I think that is how it went down, at any rate? Once again not archiving these sorts of details in Morris means that they are now largely lost. The border side did not have a name and to make up the numbers I recruited my two kids who were then teenagers into the dance. I also eventually asked my new partner, Andrea Skerritt, to dance with the new side. Andrea was an excellent dancer in a whole range of disciplines but had no experience in Morris at all._

_I have said before that Border is not really my thing. Once again, I must say that I have no bias against any form of Morris. However, as any dancer will plainly tell you, we all have a default setting as far as traditions go. Mine is Cotswold. Still the request was genuine, and Ian in particular had a vision that he wanted to enact, it would be churlish to refuse. Also, in the group was an ex MBM dancer, Joyce, and her partner Eric Simpson. Since leaving Brisbane, and MBM, Joyce had lived in the UK for a period where she met Eric._ 20 _Both of these parties took on Border Morris at different points in their life, and apparently found it to their taste. I approached another ex-MBM dancer, Jenny Corrin, and asked her if she was interested in joining the group, at least for a little while. So, for the next few months I once again became a Morris Border dancer in this unnamed side, which eventually became the "Ragged Band". Once the Woodford performance was over I had no further interest in continuing with "Ragged". I think that Ian Redpath, another certifiable lunatic in an ordinary sense, is one of the most creative or artistic Morris dancers in Australia. As part of the Ragged Band, we put on a "Green Man" performance which involved all the different Morris traditions and sides in Brisbane at Woodford one year. It was a complex and multilayered piece of art that would have done credit to a professional theatre group. This vision was largely one of Ian Redpath's and Karina Berry's. As of 2017, the ragged band is still in technical existence in the form of Joyce and Eric, but their residence on the Sunshine Coast coupled with Karina and Ian moving to Canberra has robbed the Border side of numbers and energy. Let us just say that at time of writing, the Ragged Band is still technically alive, but it is most certainly on life support._ 21

_Roughly the same period, about 2007, I was walking through the West End of Brisbane with my then partner, and my now wife, Andrea Skerritt, when we heard the haunting melody of Morris drifting to my ears from some off-street car park. Upon investigation we were surprised, poor word for what it actually was, to discover Belswagger Morris hard at practice. I was speechless, it is not every day that you bumble into a Morris side that you had a hand in starting. They were all there, Gerry, Greg, Jeff and a whole bunch of youngsters whom I had not met before. We stayed for a while and watched the practice and listened to the music. I must say that the group was pretty tight. Greg was still foreman, and I believe he had been in that position for quite a while. We didn't immediately join the side, but now that I knew about the practice we started turning up on the odd Sunday and eventually Andrea and I became members. Gerry would make the trip down from Toowoomba on his green Triumph Bonneville 900cc, if the weather was fine, just for the practice. I contacted Jenny Corrin and in short time she had joined the side as well. I was impressed that the lads, against all odds, had kept the creaky old Belswagger well-oiled and had all the machinery running perfectly fine._ Thus, I became a Belswaggerin once more.

There is a complete joy in being simple dancer in a Morris team. One of the best features is that you are permitted, even encouraged by ancient tradition, to complain and whinge about everything, and you have no or little responsibility in actually fixing the problem. As a dancer, all you have to do is to report your particular bitch to the relevant authority and make it their problem. Only someone who has previously been a Morris office bearer can truly luxuriate in the lack of responsibilities that a dancer enjoys. Gerry Amos was knocking himself out keeping the side running from 100 km away. His stress sometimes leaked out in the way that he grinned insanely all the time. He made no complaint apart from the odd sarcastic comment. If you are a Morris squire sarcasm is your only real release and an aid in preventing physical violence upon some wretch who so sorely deserved it.

The side had made significant changes to the way they performed the old dances and tunes. A lot of the changes I heartily disliked. This should be no surprise to anyone. I had left the side 15 years previously. Why did I expect things to be the same? Also, I reminded myself that there is a certain degree of fucking arrogance to expect that a Morris side who had enjoyed my absence for a decade and a half should change its operations to suit me, a new blow-in. All previous office bearers have to learn to suck in their opinions. And it is a skill that needs to be learnt. It is forever on your tongue to either correct the foreman or argue that there is a better way of doing, "that thing." I found myself constantly trying to control the urge until it went away, or if I couldn't control my opinion, I tried to make it quietly to the foreman directly instead of blabbing to the entire side. I confess this poor behaviour openly to the world because every former squire and foreman needs to take a lesson from me. Don't be a Dick  Undermining the foreman's authority is not cool, you may be a smartarse, but challenging them unnecessarily only makes an already difficult job harder. To this day I am still a bit of a dick about this, but I do try and rein it in as much as I can.

After a few months, I did have a quiet word with both Gerry and Greg, that two of the Morris apprentices, Kevin Jones and Dan Townley were more than ready to dance for their patch. Both dancers were very competent and confident, and they knew the side's repertoire much better than I did. The lads were very impressive, and were a real asset to the side, particularly their sense of humour and willingness to get on. Belswagger then had a practice of making the apprentices wear a printed T-shirt until they danced solo jig for their patch – an L Plate design. After which they wore a dark blue vest with a circular Belswagger patch on the back. In my opinion, the apprentices wearing a T-shirt stood out too much in the set distracting the look and feel of the group. I believe that there should be a method where a new dance earns their stripes. It always is a sign of achievement and evidence that you've made the team. In my opinion, the award should be subtle and not a highlighting of their inexperience.

After re-joining Belswagger I soon found my stride and it was as if I'd never left. The team was strong, healthy and had great numbers. It was essentially being run by Gerry Amos, as squire, and Greg Hall as foreman. At this point I must introduce the topic of Greg Hall. When I was assistant foreman of MBM, I remember Greg just joining the MBM side. He and a friend used to do Danish dancing, if I recall correctly, and was trying out Morris after some joint multicultural gig we were all at. I do remember that Greg, in particular, had trouble with the basic Morris forestep, which is slightly amusing as he was to become one of Australia's longest serving Morris foremen. I had a lot of sympathy for him in this, because it gave me trouble at first too. Little did I know that I was teaching Morris to someone whose knowledge of the traditional aspects would one-day dwarf anything that I myself could ever muster. When I joined Belswagger again after so many years Greg Hall and Gerry Amos were an excellent Morris executive. Greg was engaged in the traditional foreman role, keeping standards high, and running practices. Gerry was a whirligig of organisation, perhaps one of the best squires who had ever flogged a poor dancer. He did all this from his home-base hundred kilometres from his dancers. As I said previously, the apprentices were well and truly cooked at this stage and really needed to dance for their patch. They did this eventually, and the entire side was a credit to both Gerry and Greg. I was more than happy just to be a dancer and throw crap from the sidelines as is the right of any dancer in a Morris side. I was always careful not to make too many suggestions in case they were taken on board and I would be given responsibilities to see that they were carried out. This happy state of affairs went on for a few years, practising at West End and dancing out in the back blocks of rural south-east Queensland which is Belswagger's traditional happy hunting ground for foot-ups.

In May 2010, my wife Andrea and I departed for our annual holiday in Europe. We returned about June of that year and got back into the Morris. We almost immediately began to hear rumours about another Brisbane Morris side starting up. It seemed to be a half-secret project, and perhaps not even that. I don't know how to describe it, it's just that the participants didn't speak of it outside their group. That doesn't make it half-secret really, that just makes it a private group. It even had a sort of a name, "Green Bridge Morris", and it was said to be a jig side. Now none of these particulars may be true, and I only record them here as part of the rumour mill. I didn't particularly care at the time and even less so at this distance in the here and now. And if people wish to confirm them or dispute them with me, please don't bother. I'm not that interested, I'm just recording what the general belief was at the time amongst people external to that group. As far as I know they involved Greg Hall and some of the younger dancers. When the rumours first started to pop-up it didn't bother me in the slightest. Why can't a bunch of dances get together and do whatever the hell they wanted to do? I have some experience in this myself, after all. Rapscallion was formed using the entirety of Moreton Bay men, there is no reason why a subgroup couldn't get together and dance. Good luck to them I say.

Then in July 2010, at the conclusion of the first day of a two-day Medieval Faire foot-up, Greg Hall abruptly sent a very brief email to the group saying that he was taking a six-month break. He didn't offer any reasons apart from reasons of 'burn-out', at least initially. It might be said that Belswagger was shocked. When the foreman of a Morris group of 10 years standing resigns that position without warning there is no use saying that people wouldn't be rocked. In addition, a few of the best dancers were also taking "a break". Even though the events happened seven years ago, from time of writing, it is still a painful subject to think about. At the time, I refused to be judgemental about the rupture. And, all these years later I still refuse to be judgemental about what went down, and how it went down. One of the reasons that I've always taken this position was that I still don't know, or at least don't understand all the implications that led to the walkout. What I did know, instinctively, was that this is the kind of Morris drama that I have seen at least a dozen times before in different sides right across the country. Morris drama is famous, and the most famous being the English Bampton Morris side, which is now two English Bampton Morris sides, even containing family members in both sides that do not dance with each other.

The emotion in 2010 was raw and real in every direction. In my ignorance of the actual cause of the 2010 walkout, I put it down to a massive communication breakdown. Every single person in the Belswagger side was affected, no one gets to play the victim. Everyone was a victim. Sometimes this is just how the Morris plays out. Thankfully, the entire episode is now largely a forgotten subject and we are all friends again. At the time, however, it was all a bit fraught and sad. I almost did not include the Belswagger walkout in this little history on the grounds that it may stir up old feelings, and I most definitely not want to focus on the bad events in Morris life. However, if I am to be honest in this little story I would be acting false to not record the important facets, and this be one of those. Saying this, I admit to having only my own perspective. There would definitely be other viewpoints, but as I am writing my own potted history of my own involvement in the Morris, I can hardly be expected to have a handle on 30 other people's views. They can tell their own story.

Belswagger was faced with the aftermath of some of the most talented dancers leaving the group in one big hit. For myself, I could see the side folding very easily. Morris sides are fragile entities and are capable of disappearing like smoke within a month. Anything can kill-off a workable Morris side. A couple of key people leaving for ordinary reasons, a musician departing the city, or a significant personality clash amongst the members. At the time, there was a lot more reasons for Belswagger to fold than to survive. Overnight, I came up with the plan to try and keep the side going. In truth, I didn't see it actually working out. I contacted Gerry and told him that I was interested in taking on the foreman's position. At the very least I was going to put my name forward at a meeting to be held at a pending practice. This was a gamble for me, because I really wanted the foreman's position to enact my cunning plan, but the same time the last thing I wanted to do was the foreman's role. I had been there before and done that. And the requirement to put on the bosses' boots once more held no particular appeal for me at all. Besides which, I had no dance plan for the future and the foreman always needs to plan for the future. Even worse I couldn't remember the dance calls and had not studied any of the traditions in years. Can you imagine wanting to be the foreman for a specific purpose, but not wanting to be the foreman for a whole bunch of other reasons? That was the way I was thinking at the time. It may be egotistical of me to think the way I did, but the only plan I had was to hold the side tightly together with both arms until those people who had walked out could walk right back in again. That was the sum total of my plan. When I left Belswagger at the end of 1992, I believed it was the last time that I would be foreman of Morris side. As it turns out I had one last go in 2010.

And thus, started Belswagger's next exciting chapter. Actually, the side was in a bit of trouble and everyone could sense that we were lacking in Mojo. I worked hard to try and convey a 'business as usual' approach. Of course, business was far from usual and we missed the old gang. The people who did remain are the ones who kept Belswagger going. People like Lisa Kennedy, Barney Bishop, Jenny Corrin and Paul Barber Riley, Meg and Gary. Really, a whole bunch more people besides them. I won't bore you with the foot-ups, and practices for that year but on the surface, we sailed through and Gerry and myself papered over cracks any place we could find them. Almost from the very beginning I was sending out peace feelers to the 'walk outs' trying to woo them back. The thing is with this kind of breakdown in Morris relationships is that no one wants to make the first move. Because I wasn't directly involved in the walkout, (at least I didn't think I was), I was prepared to be a peacemaker. I wanted those people back, every last one of them. Kevan Jones was half-involved in Brisbane's North-West side, South East North West at the time. Whenever I saw Kevan at a North-West practice I encouraged him to come back to Belswagger and drag along the other scallywags with him. I promised that if they came back I would guarantee no hard feelings and that whatever the hell that just happened between all participants was just the usual Morris bullshit. Morris and bullshit are always best mates, it was ever thus.

Kevan started coming back to Belswagger practice, and I kept on working on him to drag Dan, Greg and the others back as well. I asked Kevin to tell Dan that if he came back I would support him as foreman of the Belswagger, after a slight waiting period. Actually, making Dan foreman was not a gift that I could make, as it was to be the side's decision. However, it was time for a generational change and Dan was not only a good dancer but I had observed leadership material in him for some time. In my time as foreman one of the only structural changes I had made to the side was getting rid of the apprentice T-shirt and having them wear ordinary dark blue vests, sans patches. I think that was about it really. What the side needed was a breath of fresh air and I was keen for that to happen. Eventually Dan did come back, and so did some of the younger dancers. Neither Greg Hall nor Saskia was amongst that number at that stage, unfortunately. But we were making a start. I can't remember exactly when it was but I think it was about nine months into my position as foreman of Belswagger Morris, that I called for nominations for the foreman's position. Dan Townley nominated for the job, and he was the only nomination in the hat, so the following week I handed the job over to him with much appreciation and he has been the foreman since that time and is done an excellent job.

In the time since, our beloved squire of so many years, Gerry Amos, has handed the role on and unfortunately, is rarely on the scene much anymore. The side owes Gerry such a big debt, it is largely due to his active involvement that we are still wearing the black, white and blue to this day. He handed the job over to Lisa Kennedy, a first female squire, and she managed the difficult transition extremely well. Lisa is the most diplomatic, measured and personable person that it seemed unlikely to be a good fit for the role. I thought that Squires needed to shout and yell a lot. Bigger fool me, because Lisa proved that you don't have to do bully people, like I did, to be good squire. At least, unless you possess the saintly qualities that Lisa always demonstrated, you don't have to bully people. Most of us unfortunately do.

In turn, Lisa, after her long stint as squire enlisted the undoubted skills of Lorelei Voisey. Lorelei had the annoying capability of being one of those fantastically talented Morris dancers seemingly from birth. I had never witnessed someone who had picked up the moves so quickly to the point of being a brilliant dancer. All too soon Lorelei and her partner Rachel Hunter, started a family and in just over a year later moved to Tasmania. This is where the real trouble began with the election of Kevin Walter Jones as squire of Belswagger.

_Chapter_ _Twelve_

Job mulierem A est scriptor

Most things have a culture, even Morris Dancing. Or, I might say, particularly Morris Dancing as it appears to be made up of little else. At certain times when I pull my trackie daks almost up to my tits, settle back into my most comfortable old man armchair and reminisce about the old days I see that the Morris culture has changed a tad from earlier times. It has changed mostly for the better I have to admit. Maybe we did one or two things a bit better, but mostly the new Morris could have taught my generation a thing or three. One of the things we did do a bit better was that we tended to be less earnest, took the piss a lot more and were, perhaps, a little bit more confident in ourselves. There was never a suggestion that we would ever - and I mean ever - remove our bells for the convenience of folkies at festivals. Folkies were our sworn enemies in those days. And, to be fair, they also grooved in the mutual unanimity just as much as we did. You have never lived until you have enjoyed a decent class war, even if your class of enemy were unwashed hippie _bodhrán_ thumpers. Good times! They dished it out to the Morris in spades too. That was the deal. I was shocked the day a few years ago when I was asked to remove my bells when transiting dancing venues at Woodford. We must, it seems, consider folkie sensibilities as they blast amplified music into the streets, forcing the Morris into hot remote corners of the festival site. Our Morris ancestors would have been spinning in their silk cocoons. Still, the world does indeed turn and we all must turn with it. I guess?

On the other side of the coin, today's Morris Dancers are a close-knit group and very accepting. Actually, is very difficult for me to find any particular issues with today's Morris dancers. As far as the actual dancing goes they are more devoted to the art than we were back in my day. Of course, there were always individuals from any era that stand out as skilled practitioners who believe that dancing the Morris was not a joke and is an exercise in raw dexterity.

It is the area of Morris culture that I want to explore a lot deeper. As I write this little essay I straddle the barbed wire fence of two Morris generations. I instinctively understand that one generation cannot clearly see the other generation's perspective as I do, or at least those of us who haven't participated in the Morris during both eras. Mostly the perspectives are trivial and not worthy of comment. But when you go deeper into the wormhole things are clearer to me in some of the differences because there was an institutional environment that does not exist anymore to the degree that it did previously. When I were a lad, first donning bells and baldrics, there was a real, though low-key, environmental misogyny in the Morris. It was so low-key that I have no doubt that many of the dancers from the 1980s would dispute that misogyny existed at all. That's because mostly it wasn't operational so much as institutional. Even then, Australia wasn't anywhere near as bad as the UK at the time. In my early days I took particular note and was particularly fascinated by this attitude because I always strained to understand the history of Morris dancing. When it was impressed upon me that historically women didn't dance the Morris, I believed it. It follows that if something isn't historical, then it also isn't traditional, and if it's not traditional it is an exception. Therefore, having women dance the Morris today is simply a bolt-on to what was an acceptable and traditional practice. Of course, women are used to being a bolt-on to previous practice. I mean, today we have female doctors, airline pilots and astronauts, neither of which conformed with traditional cultural trajectories concerning those professions. But denying women a role in employment is still very different from denying them a historical or traditional existence. For example, it is against the law to prevent a female in Western society from pursuing a profession in medicine. It was not against the law to show bias against female Morris dancers back in the 1980s, or for that matter even now. Even if that bias was not profound back then and is pretty much non-existent today. Back in the day sexism was a kind of background radiation. It was invisible and almost undetectable, or at least it could only be detected with the right kind of instruments.

But, as always, I'm getting ahead of myself. Back in 1982, I believed that Morris dancing was largely a male pursuit, was handed down father to son, forever and ever, amen. If in these enlightened times the ladies would like to join in, why not? As long as there are set rules that they stick to, all should be good. This is what I was told, and I accepted it in the same way that I accepted that dancing Headington would knock you out from exhaustion. It's called received wisdom.

A few years ago, I started digging around on the Internet and I discovered something quite wondrous. Whilst playing around with the Trove newspaper archive, hosted by the National Library of Australia, I discovered that English Morris dancing kept getting referenced in Australia not long after the turn-of-the-century. All the mentions followed a familiar pattern, starting somewhere about 1910, female teachers of Morris began popping up in most of the Australian States. Often, they were associated with schools, and schoolkids, but not universally so. Often the women would put on demonstrations, and sometimes they were just instructing upon the Morris generally. The question in my mind was why did they pop up so regularly and so suddenly across all the colonies of Australia in the first place? Another question, was why was it primarily women and not men? The date period was extremely significant to me. This was the sweet spot surrounding Cecil Sharp's folk collecting activities. How did all these women become experts in the Morris, and why the fuck were they operating 17,000 km away from England.

These questions led me on a voyage of discovery concerning some of the most notable figures of Edwardian England and their involvement in the Morris dance movement. What was a surprise to me was probably not very surprising to hundreds of people around the world, of this I have no doubt. Since I started dancing the Morris my understanding of the Morris revival was exceedingly limited. I knew the basic story: A bloke called Cecil Sharp, stumbled across a Morris team Christmastime in 1899. He found the dance and the music intriguing and he started to collect other dances from around the Cotswolds. In time, he would collect dances and music across all of England, including sword dances and eventually he would travel to the United States picking up their folk traditions there. I even bought his collected Morris books over 30 years ago and understood this to be the foundation of the modern Morris revival. In short, Cecil Sharp was the alpha and omega of all things Morris, hallowed to be his name. What I did not know, was that this wasn't even beginning of the real story, and the real story is about 1000 times more fascinating. That is, it's fascinating if you are a Morris dancer. If you ain't, it's about as interesting as getting a haircut whilst hungover. Perhaps slightly less so?

First to the facts as you probably already know them. Cecil Sharp was a real human born in 1859, the same year that Charles Darwin published the On the Origin of Species. He was born to upper middle-class parents; his father was a slate merchant and his mum was super interested in music. At his father's suggestion, he travelled to Australia in 1882, and in a fit of lunacy settled in Adelaide. Whilst in Australia he learned the music trade, teaching here and there, director of this and that, teacher of some regard in the local music biz. After 10 years he returned to England and continued with his music career. Starting around 1895, Sharp entered into a long-running dispute with his employers over taking on extra students for private tuition. He was in a bit of a hole and needed a new job, but more than that, he was in search of a life's mission. Even before his employment trouble, in 1893, Cecil Sharp began collecting music. He used his collection, and his undoubted teaching abilities, in giving lectures about music that he picked up along the way. At the time, there was a great movement towards self-improvement, particularly for the lower classes. Mechanics halls started popping up all over England and the Commonwealth. It was believed that a basic education and encouragement in learning would improve the lot of the working man and inspire him in pursuits that didn't involve drinking, gambling and the like. But it wasn't just the working man who went along to public lectures. General interest in science, the arts and the world around them was taking off the amongst all classes. Cecil Sharp's lectures were popular because, not only did they introduce the new subject of folk music instruction, they also had an academic rigour to them. Sharp could see a nice juicy niche just waiting to be filled by the right sort of gentleman. He had the skills and desire and now he had the opportunity. His fame was such, that he was already instructing the children of the royal family in music. This was not enough.

At this point I'm going to rely on the excellent scholarship of an Englishman, Morris dancer, academic and folk expert, named Roy Judge.

Cecil Sharpe famously bumped into the Headington Quarry Morris Men on Boxing Day 1899. He was visiting his in-laws for Christmas and heard intriguing music nearby. Sharp met with the dancers and arranged to speak with a fellow named William Kimber the next day. At the appointed time, the following day he had Kimber play several tunes which he noted down. The intriguing thing is that Sharp never bothered to follow-up with Kimber and the Morris until several years after this notable first meeting. It was as if the great collector had lost complete interest in the Morris, or perhaps had had acted as if he had forgotten it even existed?

Clara Sophia Neal (Mary Neal) enters the scene at this point. Mary Neal was born to a well-to-do family in 1860. How to describe Mary Neal? For more than 20 years before her meeting with Cecil Sharp she had been developing a critical social conscience regarding the less well off. She was a suffragette, and a formidable political campaigner. Her real interest was in assisting young females in achieving a better life. In 1895, Mary Neal started the Esperance Girls Club, an institution which is difficult to describe as it was very multi-functional. The aim was to improve the life of working girls, but also to introduce to them culture and the arts as a way of escaping the drudgery and the dangers of lower class employment at the time. In 1901, Herbert Macllwaine, joined Neal and the Esperance club as musical director. Macllwaine would later form a partnership with Sharp on the five Morris books. But that was later in the story.

In the summer of 1905, Mary Neal met with Cecil Sharp at Macllwaine's suggestion. She was looking for material for her Esperance club activities and Cecil Sharp was already quite famous and possibly in position to assist. By 1905, Sharp was in the final throes of his dispute with his employer. He and Neal became great friends and he was delighted to help her with songs and music for the girls to sing and perform. The performances were a great success, and Neal asked Sharp if there were any dances that could be performed by the girls to accompany the beautiful English music. It was at this point, almost 6 years after witnessing the Boxing Day performance of the Headington Quarry Morris Men, that Cecil Sharp mentioned the name William Kimber to Mary Neal. In all the intervening years Cecil Sharp displayed no evident interest in Morris as a cultural thing or in the dance itself. At that point in time there is no evidence that Cecil Sharpe cared a single jot about Morris dancing.

Mary Neal jumped on a train and headed out to Headington Village with the name William Kimber and little else besides. She located him and arranged for him and his cousin to visit the Esperance Club and teach her girls Cotswold Morris dancing. This is a very interesting thing to me - that Kimber joyfully agreed to teach females Cotswold Morris. At this earliest point in the great folk revival that one of the most well-known and prime functionaries representing the Cotswold Morris tradition, had absolutely no problem teaching the chicks to dance the Morris. If anyone should have an objection in the names of holy tradition it should be William Kimber. Apparently, not so much.

For the first couple of years the collaboration between Cecil Sharp and Mary Neal went along in the gangbusters style. Mary Neal continued to collect dances and talk to different authority figures in the Morris and Sharp was an already recognised expert in folk song and music. He would continue to give lectures at public performances of the Esperance club and act in the interests of Neal and her girls. In the first edition of the Morris book published in 1907, by Sharpe and Macllwaine, he dedicated the book to the Esperance club and in particular to Mary Neal.

By the end of that year things between the two strong personalities, Sharp and Neal, began to go awry. The general interest in England for the burgeoning folk revival was starting to explode. Sharp could see that this was an area that he could really dominate. He was desperate to transpose his expertise into something more tangible. He wanted to be a name in the field, and perhaps a paid profession as an expert in traditional song and dance. Unfortunately for Sharpe, he was getting constant examples of how Mary Neal and her girls were making names for themselves during this particular early part of the revival. In 1908, Neal was very adamant that she was not going to interfere with the excellent work of collecting by experts such as Sharp. It was also just as evident that by 1908, Sharp was intent in moving into the Morris dance area that had been previously dominated by Mary Neal and her girls. What is more, he also began, very privately at first, disparaging the Esperance girls Morris performances as being too flamboyant and decorative. I suppose what he meant was that female Morris was too girly. He said that he believed that the Morris should be more dignified and reticent.

By 1909, Sharp attacked Neal personally, accusing her of stealing his scholarship and converting his work into her own ends. This was done through private correspondence and the world was not to learn of the break until later on. You can see that Sharp believed his authority was under attack primarily because Neal and her girls were becoming increasingly popular. The great folk revival had taken off and the horses were bolting. Mary Neal came from a class of women that did not back down nor did they walk away from a fight. In fact, as a suffragette, she invited combat with people who believed that women had a defined station in life and that they should stick to it.

Cecil Sharp upped the ante. He began to give public lectures about the Morris by having William Kimber dance jigs whilst he lectured. He also increased the rhetoric about the purity of English Morris, and that some people were departing from the tradition in the form of the dance. I can see this argument being still played out all the way to the 1980s. As the relationship between Sharp and Neal broke down completely during the next five years, this idea of Morris dance purity was ridiculed by Neal. She pointed out the self-evident fact that Morris dances performed by the same people on the same day sometimes have incredible variance within itself. The very idea of traditional purity is ridiculous, she said.

The two former friends continued their spat with increasing ferocity. Cecil Sharp began teaching his version of the Morris to school teachers, and he began to form a demonstration side because Kimber demonstrating jigs was not good nor exciting enough. Mary Neal, on her part, had hundreds of girls dancing out in the world, teaching the Morris as part of the revival. Eventually the English board of education was becoming increasingly interested in having Morris dancing as part of a fitness syllabus in schools. Both Sharp and Neal were now in open competition to have their version included as the official form of dance. You can see that Sharp was at his wits end, because for all his brilliance as a musician and collector, he had no real organisational skills. Mary Neal on the other hand, was an organiser par excellence. In her own right, she began travelling to the rural regions of England and, like Cecil Sharp, began collecting Morris dances first-hand from many of the surviving old-timers. That was a direct challenge to Sharp that two can play his game. It was astonishing that two brilliant personalities could act in this way, but the prize that they both pursued was to be considered the established Morris authority.

Today hardly anyone gives a toss for Morris dancing other than the practitioners themselves, so to see this sort of sneaky manoeuvring and engagement between such excellent prize fighters is a bit of a head scratcher. The decision to select the Morris for inclusion in the syllabus by the board of education was a long, drawn-out affair. Mary Neal had been invited to teach and give demonstrations by some of her girls in Canada. She was given an explicit guarantee that no decision from the school board would be made during the time that she was overseas. With that guarantee, Neal travelled to North America with some of the Esperance girls. During the time that she was away Cecil Sharp was given the nod by the board of education. It may have not been the set-up that it looks like today, but the fact it happened at all that way makes the decision exceedingly suspicious.

That is only a fraction of the story, and not even the most fascinating bits of the on-going war between the two Morris dance authorities. Some skirmishes Neal won and others, Sharp. In the midst of all this Neal was chaining herself to 10 Downing Street as a public nuisance, by way of her part in the suffragette cause or promoting socialism for the sake of the poor. It's difficult to believe in those far-off days that there were a large, fulsome and terrific debates played out on the front pages of the London Times about Morris dancing? Those were the days, my friends. This also explains the sudden appearance of female Morris dances in Australia and all the different capitals around 1910. Mary Neal was producing Morris dancers like weeds. They were everywhere, and not just in Australia. It does my heart glad to consider that Morris dancing in Australia was not all that far behind that of England during the great revival. We can lay claim to a great body of experience in the Morris and all thanks to Mary Neal.

By 1914, in the beginning of the great War Ms Neal, begins to fade out of the Morris story. She becomes engaged in war work and eventually becomes a magistrate. Cecil Sharp, ends up winning the great battle and he became the figurehead of not only the revival but also the folk movement itself. In 1911 Sharp founded the English Folk Dance Society, which later became the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). The attitudes Cecil Sharp promoted back then continues to this day in that members of the English Morris Ring must be male, or at least the dancers must be male. Legislation prevents the Ring from being all-male - to be considered English Ring members, females in the side are allowed to be either musicians or office bearers, not dancers. Also, some Sharparyan attitudes continued to dictate how the Morris must be danced/taught for it to be considered the authentic or traditional art form. For myself I am in the same boat with Mary Neal who stated, "I recognise no authority for Morris dancing." And neither do I.

Seeing Cecil Sharp in this new light makes him a more rewarding character in my eyes. He was sometimes petty, he was often jealous, and he had a real capacity for vindictiveness. Does this is make him a bad person? No, I don't think so. What it does make him, in my view, is a human being. He is no longer the sainted godlike figure that I tended to view him. He is pretty much like me, and if you're honest with yourself, Cecil Sharp is a little bit like you too. We actually owe him a debt that can never be repaid. What's more, Mary Neal has been raised to the level of a demigod from the obscurity of hundred years in the shade. In many respects, she was the revival. If there was no Mary Neal I can't see how there could be a Cecil Sharp. I believe that Neal created Cecil Sharp. She made him who he was to become. Along the way learning about the great battles between Mary Neal and Cecil Sharp has destroyed the imposed belief rendered upon later generations. William Kimber saw no harm in not only teaching Cotswold Morris to women, but he actually performed with them. For every argument that Cecil Sharp raised about purity in Morris, there is an equal argument by Mary Neal that such "purity" was nonsensical, unachievable and unwarranted.

Poor old Cecil Sharp, himself, has come under attack by Marxist historians starting in the 1970s. The argument has been made, since discredited, that the great folk revival was little more than an invention. The claim has been made that music hall was the people's real cultural interest, not arty-farty folk songs nor Morris dances. Unfortunately for this line of thought, there is too much recorded history identifying the role of Morris and folk throughout the ages. Morris might not look the way it did back in previously epochs, but there can be no denying that Morris was present several hundred years ago. Sharp has also come under fire, this time justified, for his bowdlerisation of lyrics, songs and even dances. Sharp did take down filthy or vulgar songs in his written notation, but as he was publishing for the public appetite, and for schoolchildren, it is unlikely that he would be promoting the true versions when they indicated how penises might enjoy the company of vaginas (or so as not to be prescriptive: penises with penises and vajayjays with vajayjays). It was the post Victorian period after all. In my view, we should get back to the original disgusting versions every chance we can. We are Morris dances, not ballet dancers, and this is how we do things.

What is the take home lesson from this chapter? Morris dancing does not exist in the same metaphysical dimension as doctrine. If anyone tells you that you are doing something "incorrect" in the dance, or that your style, figure, movement, position or music is not "traditional", feel secure in the knowledge that Mary Neal has given you permission to tell them to go fuck themselves.
Chapter 13

Quaestio est pugnans Traditionis

To complicate matters further, after the previous chapter railed against the automatic and slavish embracing of tradition, this chapter will promote tradition as a stabilising and healthy force for the greater good. If my arguments appear contradictory and schizophrenic, you are right. They are also sophisticated, so try and keep up.

What is tradition anyway? The dictionary defines it thusly:

Tradition. Noun: the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way.

Actually, that is one definition, and I've looked at a host of others and none fit very well to the Morris example. For instance, the Adderbury dance, "Beaux of London City" informs the audience about a bunch of city toffs engaging in a weekend shooting party, who in their ignorance, murders everything in sight. Cows, dogs, cats, crows... everything. It is a story of simple country folk laughing at their betters. But the dance involves firearms, and the Morris is really, really old. To suggest that this dance originated in Elizabethan times is plainly silly, which is why nobody is suggesting that it did. The dance was probably invented in late Victorian times when such shooting parties was a regular menace to English rural life and society in general. But today, in the age of missile launchers and strict gun control laws (in the UK and Australia, mind you) we still perform dance about upper-class idiots accidentally killing livestock. Shooting parties have largely evaporated in modern times. They are not a thing anymore. Yet, the Morris performs the dance as if it were still a thing, and the reason we do this is tradition. Tradition can be both bullshit and a beautiful article simultaneously. It doesn't hurt that it is also a very enjoyable dance.

That tradition is largely bullshit is a little-known fact. My favourite Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, wrote about the phenomenon with Terence Ranger. Many things that we take for granted as being horribly hoary and old are relatively new. Things like Scottish tartan, and most of the weird traditions concerning the English Royal family. Too many of them are recent inventions that have been passed off as ancient traditions.

The military all over the world keep and hold sacred many old traditions, and they usually have a distinct purpose, even if most of them don't make much sense on the face of it or are incredibly obscure. In an infantry battalion, the only man allowed to wear a beard is the pioneer sergeant. On important military parades, he carries a broad axe over his shoulder, he wears large white leather gauntlets on his hands, and sports a white leather apron. This stems back to one of the traditional roles of the pioneers was to clear the way for a following army. Nowadays we have things called chainsaws, dynamite and bulldozers that perform the same function. Yet the tradition is important and it is a reminder of times past. In the Royal Navy, officers are permitted to toast the monarch whilst sitting down. In the days of sail there was so little headroom in the wardroom that standing to give a royal toast was clearly impossible with any degree of dignity. To this day naval officers enjoy the same privilege, even when not aboard ship. The British cavalry regiment, which captured the King Joseph Bonaparte's _baggage train_ after the Battle of Vittoria, to this day, drink a toast out of the Spanish King's captured piss-pot during regimental dinners. Why do they still do this? The answer is tradition. Tradition can be a bonding influence.

That Morris dancing, as part of the English springtime festivities going back several centuries is beyond dispute. However, one dominating Morris May Day tradition still has its store-bought wrappers on. The first recorded May Day of the Morris dancing up the sun only happened in 1923. Slightly less than 100 years ago the Oxford Morris Men joined the Magdalen College Choir for a morning of dance starting a brand-new tradition. Each May Day at 6:00am the Magdalen College Choir performs the Hymnus Eucharisticus, from the top of Magdalen Tower in Oxford. This wholly religious May Day tradition goes back to 1509 and now the Morris, world-wide, have firmly tacked themselves onto it. It is unthinkable that the Morris wouldn't observe the dawn on May Day – it has a crusty ancient feel to it. But, it really isn't that particularly old. There are vintage motorcycles still on the road that are older than this "deep-rooted" Morris tradition.

I am now about to wade into the snake pit representing the true age of Morris Dancing. Many, many fools before me have oozed into these dangerous waters and, no doubt, many more will follow. How old is the Morris? Fucked if any of us knows? The true age is unattainable. When I was originally brought into this cult I was told that the Morris was "pre-Christian", and perhaps there are faint echoes of that actually being true?

As for it actually being true... yeah, nah.

The first written mention of the Morris was in 1448 as a booking fee of seven shillings by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. One would assume that the Morris didn't suddenly pop into existence mere days before the Goldsmith's foot-up. Morris dancing in the form of a group of dancers would have existed at least to the early 1400s, if not before. At least three Shakespeare plays make a direct mention of Morris dancing which date the Morris as an easily understood cultural reference point to about 1600. Perhaps the most famous Morris Dancer of any time in history was an actor in Shakespeare's company, William Kempe. In February and March, 1600, Kempe danced a "Morisco Jig" over a hundred miles from London to Norwich and wrote a book to prove it. He actually danced the distance in nine days of actual dancing, but the whole thing was completed over several weeks. It should be noted that Kempe's jigs were not the same thing as Morris jigs today. In the plays of Shakespeare's day there was always a clown segment to break-up the heavier acts, or to distract the audience from the scene or prop changes. Kempe specialised in jigging and was apparently quite talented. He would wear the typical getup which included bell pads and ribbons. In a real sense, he was not a Morris dancer; he was an actor who clowned around and danced on stage. The people who viewed his performances would have seen it as dancing a Morisco, or a Morris Dance, but that's where the similarities between his dancing and the modern Morris separates. One could legitimately say that the modern Morris "Fool" performs a direct line-of-sight function as a "Will Kempe" figure, because the Fool keeps the audience occupied whilst the dancers get themselves organised. But, it doesn't quite work the other way in that Kempe probably had no particular affiliation to the notion of Morris dancing and nor would he have had anything to do with a team of other dancers. Dancing the Morisco was his day job and probably little else. Still, I class Will Kempe as a fully-fledged Morris dancer because he had the Morris attitude (even if posterity was to thrust it upon him in that light) as well as the skill and desire to perform for the public. When you boil it all down, that is quite enough.

So, I'm happy to declare Morris to be about 500-600 years old, and perhaps with forerunners going back another century or so. All that tosh about Moorish or African influences is extremely unlikely, however I do accept possible word-play derivations. Something that has always bothered me was that a long time ago I saw a film containing some traditional dancing from the Basque region between Spain and France. Upon researching the Basque folk traditions, I was somewhat surprised to see dancing containing jigs, stepping a la clogging, bell pads, North West style formations (including garlands) and stick clashing/hanky dances. For all intents and purposes the Basque and Morris traditions are so similar to the point that it is all rather fishy in my mind. Something happened back in the day, methinks?

What about the other great Morris traditions, I hear you ask? What about 'em? I've been painfully prodded by some acquaintances in the past suggesting that Border dancing is the oldest and most authentic form of Morris. Is that so? I very much doubt it. The claims that Border dancing is genuinely and authentically ancient appear to lie on two assumptions: 1. That border dancing can be traced back to ancient Celtic past; and 2. That border dancing is a more primitive rhythmic form of folk dance that predates the Cotswold traditions. Let us deal with both claims.

The suggestion that border dancing, namely, the Morris dance traditions of Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Worcestershire, is an older form of dance and based on direct Celtic origins has no basis in recorded fact. The first showings of Border Dancing as a "separate tradition" on the record appear about the 17th century however it likely that Border dances are still closer to the original Cotswold variants because they are simpler and, yes, less stylised. Does this make them more authentic because they may have changed the least? If you insist, well...ok? The previous chapter dealt with the question of Morris purity. Don't forget that Cotswold-type Morris was also around well before the 17th century. The two are contemporaries in fact and share a common ancestor which is unrelated to the pagan or Celtic Welsh. Wishing it were so doesn't make it so. I expect a lot of voluble disagreement on this point but the record indicates otherwise. Still the ancients could look up in the night sky and see complex dioramas within constellations and the stars where I can only see pinpricks of light. Maybe I am the one who is blind?

In the last 20 years there have also been claims that Morris Dancing, particularly border, is infused with a pagan spirit and originally involved magic and rituals. There is no independent evidence for this, but people are free to believe anything they choose. As an atheist, I naturally don't have a position on claims like this, however I do have an opinion on some of the pagan-influenced Morris sides. Most of those Morris sides are glorious, and if being pagan inspires them to greatness then who am I to try and tear them down? More power to them, I say.

The Cotswold tradition of Morris, as we dance it, is largely a 19th/20th century invention anyway. The common form of six dances in two rows, performing "verse and chorus", in a structured formation, all evolving haphazardly yet in an identical fashion across several hundred square miles is too difficult to believe. My personal opinion is that Cotswold Morris borrowed heavily from the country dance traditions going back to Playford. Anyone who has danced Playford would easily recognise aspects of the Morris. All that is missing is the bells and costume, and perhaps the additional props such as sticks and hankies. This is all but confirmed in the near identical nature of the dance concerning a dozen different villages spread throughout the Midlands of England.

Anyone suggesting that there has not been deliberate collusion or copying at some point in the nineteenth century is kidding themselves. The separate but identical evolution of Morris heys, sidesteps, foot-ups, half-gyps and the like between all these little villages is extremely unlikely. The dancers and music follow form and function that doesn't allow accidental evolution (if you excuse the tautology). To my mind there was deliberate selection in the dance choreography that permitted wholesale adoption probably by copying or borrowing styles here and there. This does not make it is any less Morris, rather it has collectively become what we see as quintessentially Morris dancing.

The slight variations between has become the traditional difference separating the village styles. The variations themselves are evolutionary factors, whether it was the deliberate distinction from all the other teams in the wider locale, or perhaps completely erroneous copying. So, if the team in the village of Blumkin dances the hay this way, then the team in the neighbouring village of Lower Scroat shall dance it the opposite just to show a difference. And 100 years later people may wonder about the Blumkin difference without being aware that there was once a deliberate decision not to follow Blumpkin's example. I actually have a real-life example to draw upon.

When I became the first foreman of Belswagger in 1990, I taught the side a sightly incorrect sequence in Bucknall's Queen's Delight due to a memory malfunction. When the side danced out with other Morris teams, our Queen's Delight, became known as the "Toowoomba Variation". It wasn't a deliberate distinction, I just stuffed-up the teaching. Imagine that happening in a hundred different villages over the course of a couple of hundred years and what you end up with is the classic folk process.

Tradition in Morris is both ridiculous and vital. The trick is knowing which attribute to apply and the circumstances in which you apply it. I think that is important for a side to develop traditions as a sense of self. Cherish those traditions and make them part of the essence of your side. However, if a certain something interferes with the development of the team, and that something happens to be a traditional aspect have no fear in disposing of it immediately. The traditional aspects of your team make you stand out and it makes you different. But these differences will continue to evolve over time. If you stick around in your side for long enough you may live to see some cherished traditions be abandoned for new ones. My advice is to not fight against this progression, for it is the Morris way.
Chapter 14

Dulce et placebit strepitus

I learnt to read music as part of my army basic Highland Piper's Course. I was never really good at it, and still avoid written music unless forced by circumstances. In particular, I cannot sight read music at all unless I already know the piece. If I already know the piece, what's the point of even having the knowhow? I read music the way other people do cryptic crosswords; often a pencil and paper is involved and a lot of hard graft. Ninety-nine percent of all tunes in my menu of work were picked-up by ear, a method at which I am uncommonly good at. Of course, I would be in a real pickle if I wasn't good at learning tunes by ear given that reading music is such an inconvenience.

On those rare occasions where I have to learn a new tune from paper I sit down with a tin whistle and nut the thing out note by note and bar by bar. Then I play the piece a couple of dozen times until I have really, in fact, learnt it by ear even though it's on the flipping paper in front of me. Once I have learnt it by ear on the tin whistle, I get my squeeze-box out and relearn it all over again until I really know it. This is the primary reason why I avoid the entire process. I am gobsmacked when I witness people grab a piece of written music and just sight read the damn thing on the go. To me, it is like handing a book written in Swahili to somebody and have them immediately becoming absorbed in the story. This is witchcraft at its finest.

While my lack of technical knowledge is definitely a drawback in so many ways, coupled with my complete lack of music theory (screw you and your circle of fifths) I think that my type of musical ignorance has put me more in tune with our Morris forbears way better than my more educated compatriots. You see, I believe that the musicians at the time of the great Morris revival were strangers to the weird craft of reading dots. It stands to reason that they received music from each other, string, bow and button directly to the ear. Farm labourers or brickies at the turn of the century had few opportunities for formal music training. They would have learnt tunes from one to the other over a pint, just as music teaching has been handed down since, well, forever.

Throw away technical music knowledge and what do you get? In an agricultural or rural environment you still have music, but it will be natural and it will follow form, not law. The primary form for Morris - as one would expect - is the dance. You may think that I am labouring the point - and I am - but the dance this the thing, not the musician nor even the music. It is the dance that is absolutely in charge and I say this because so many times it is NOT. I have had too many arguments with a fellow knucklehead that ends up with them whipping out a piece of paper in order to "prove" that the speed is a certain tempo. That the music notation, somehow, overrides the very dance? This idea kicks me in the feels.

It is also an old problem. I remember reading many years ago about an old English dancer complaining about the introduction of the fiddle to his Morris side. He whinged that the pipe and tabor, now gone, used to set up the correct speed for the dance. He kept on banging on about how dancers had no "height" nowadays and upon reading that I understood what he meant immediately. Slower music allows for greater leaps and bounds than faster music. You just can't get high with fast music no matter how much time you spend with Snoop Dogg.

List of things that can make the music go too fast.

· An obstinate musician.

· Stick dances

· Musicians not watching the dancer's feet

· Me anywhere near a melodeon

Kim Brown influenced his side, Hedge Monkey Morris to dance very slowly and deliberately as a direct result of the modern tendency to race through the dance. Ironically, this same Kim Brown was involved in a side called Morrice Rampant in the mid-1990s which was famously noted for the Benny Hill speed of its dances. As usual, Kim has been observed to be on both sides of the tempo fence, but he now claims to have landed very firmly on the slower paced side nowadays. Watch a You Tube vid of Hedge Monkey to see the value of a slower paced Morris set. It is all about height and the flourish.

But not only that, it also about the foot work.  Par exemple, the second part of, say, a Bledington Hookleg comprises of falling away slightly into the hook. You briefly become top-heavy. That is, the centre of gravity changes slightly and you literally have a brief momentary topple into the turn. You recover as you turn and complete the movement. It is an exquisite manoeuvre and one that I never fail to get a frisson of joy when executing. However, the whole movement as detailed is quite impossible to complete if the pace is too fast. When rushed it becomes a screw turn in two parts. Not ugly, but not joyful either. I appreciate that if you are only a musician and not a dancer then none of this makes any sense.

I fear that when my good friend, Cecil Sharpe, toured the Cotswolds, notebook in hand in the 1910s, he bought his classically trained musicianship into the equation. Whatever his pen inscribed became LAW, in very black letters, and immediately an old scientific principal came into effect.

In physics, the Observer Effect is the theory that simply observing a situation or phenomenon necessarily changes that phenomenon. This is often the result of instruments that, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some manner.

This statement will no doubt earn me many a kick in the shins, but I believe that the best and most consistent Morris musos are, or have been, dancers. Not a universal law by any means, and with many exceptions, but I have had a gutful of people who have never shaken a bellpad tell me that my tempo is incorrect. As always with Morris, there are a few dances that must be played fast and with high energy, such as XXX, because it absolutely suits. In the end, the dance must always dictate speed, not the musio, nor the published notation.

If in doubt, ask the foreman – or, don't bother asking – they'll tell you quick enough.

Chapter 15

Quidam Admonitio (nam quid suus 'dignitas)

While we don't know exactly how old Morris is, we are even less certain when Morris will end.

Judging by Facebook, I doubt that Morris dancing is in any particular danger of disappearing just yet. Morris is booming worldwide and many new teams are barely out of their teens. I'm particularly happy with the resurgence of the border traditions, for when I was younger they tended to be outrigger sides and now their energy and vibrancy is an example to us all. While we shouldn't fear Morris dancing as a phenomenon fading anytime soon, the same can't be said for individual sides. The absolute truth is that Morris sides are in no way unique in one aspect, they suffer from small group politics. They are sometimes prone to cliques, but not over much. If serious cliques start forming you might as well hand in your bells because a rupture is imminent. The antidote to clique formation is simple inclusion. If the entire side is a clique then you are on the money. Don't disregard any of your folk and there is no reason for internal tribalism. This is easier said than done, of course.

There will always be creative differences in any Morris team. You care enough about stuff then stuff become meaningful to you. It follows that not everybody's preference will align perfectly with every other person's all the damn time. No biggie. Morris is a long game, and eventually your favourite tradition (for instance) will roll around, particularly if you lobby for it enough and in a fashion that is painful enough. If the Morris leadership must tap-dance around their finicky membership (and successful ones really do) then the membership also has an obligation to cut the leaders a freakin break. When I was a squire/foreman I would say to myself that the team isn't getting paid for showing up and taking an interest in this stupid project. They are choosing to spend time at Morris and could easily spend the same time killing kittens, or whatever. But so too are the Squire/Foreman not getting paid and they do a lot more work. The membership must step up to the plate to support them. I've been at many bags when side members put complaints to the group that were in effect, their own personal issues, and making them the squire's responsibility to fix them. An example, "I can't find a hat for next week's gig". That sort of thing. Or, they don't like wearing a particular piece of kit, so they surreptitiously stop wearing it. Stop it, you are being a dick and forcing somebody who actually likes you to make a bit of a deal out of it.

Or there is my struggle. As an old timer, a former (and self-identified) big whoop and dancer of many years standing, I have difficulty just shutting the fuck up and letting the Squire and Foreman get on with it. Even when asked a question on style by another member, I should just refer it on to the foreman, but sometimes I don't consider the damage I am doing. Not to mention often being wrong. There can only be one leadership team, not that us old farts don't have anything to offer, of course we do. We should be the depository of lore, or occasional extra resource when the foreman needs advice. We should not a constant drain of their authority. This is also an object lesson to the current leadership of any Morris side any given era. If you are doing your job right, you are constantly growing a whole bunch of people in the skill of the dance and an enthusiasm for your project. At some point in the future, some of those dancers are going to want to get involved in the leadership themselves. They will want to push the same boundaries that you did. They will want to stretch whatever creativity they can out of the Morris. In short, they will want their time in the folklore sun. At that point, it will be your turn to glide back into the shadows and see the next stage of the great Morris experiment simply as a participant. I can tell you straight out that this will take some mental adjustment on your part. However, there is also a reward for stepping back from the limelight. In my case, I rediscovered my love of Morris. The dance itself has more than enough reward in it than having an encompassing vision of how things should be. The dance is intricate enough to challenge anyone's perceptions or skill levels. The day you think you have Morris mastered is the day that you have lost the plot.

The Morris side is a fragile thing. The side includes small group politics, it has within it rough-nuts, visionaries, intellectuals, no-hopers and individuals with extraordinary talents. I have thought many times that if certain people were not Morris dancers, if they were involved in another sphere of creativity they would be lauded celebrities. Not even slightly kidding, if they could transfer their skill or talents in a more mainstream direction they have what it takes to go big. The joy for us is that they have never considered an alternate direction, and it is our windfall that we have these people all to ourselves.

I am proud to have helped start Belswagger Morris, but my part, at least the intensive part, was momentary. I was the side's first foreman and stayed in that position for about 2.5 years. I had another crack at it in 2010 under different and difficult circumstances and essentially trod water for about nine months until the next generation took over the reins under that magnificent bastard, Dan Townley. I would like to acknowledge everybody in the side who has done the really hard yards over the years. Firstly, Kim Brown, who took over the foreman's role after I left the Darling Downs at the beginning of 1993. Brown could, and perhaps should, have been foreman from the start. Also, Debbie Wilson, who was Belswagger's first female foreman and ran her team whilst pregnant. Ken Walsh was the first Squire of Belswagger even though he had no idea what was going on around him as he started Morris dancing and Morris Squiring simultaneously. The real hero of Belswagger remains Gerry Amos who in the beginning was also clueless as a Morris man but was an organisational mastermind. The fact that Belswagger is still in existence is due to Gerry's persistence. Jill, his adoring wife propped him up and allowed him to take the side in weird and wonderful directions. Amos even raised the side from the dead at least once. Belswagger should have long been a footnote in Queensland folk history – Amos prevented that from happening. I would also thank Greg Hall, an expert dancer in several traditions and a very long-term foreman of Belswagger (I think ten years?). Gerry and Greg were a killer team and both have a lot more to contribute now that they are in their rambunctious pensioner years, as I am. It would be remiss of me to not mention Lisa Kennedy who took over from Gerry. Lisa had a different style (let's face it, she had to have after Amos). She was gentle and conciliatory, and I thought at first that the Morris dogs would devour her. They didn't and once again I learned a new fact. It is possible not to bully Morris dancers and still make progress. Not that I would try it myself, I am a man of the lash, as is our current Squire, Kevan Jones. Lisa had the natural wit and personally to drive the team without fisticuffs. Lorelei Misha took over from Lisa as squire and she stayed in that position for about a year before she moved to Tassie with Rachel and the new bub. Lorelei is one of those naturally graceful dancers who was able to pick the entire team up by example. It was a shame to see her and Rachel depart and Rachel was a dancer of skill as well. Lost two gooduns in one go.

Our current leadership team is another wild combo of Dan Townley and Kevan Walter Jones.33 Dan has the knowledge, skill and vision to take us into the future wherever that might be. Kevan is a ball of energy and preposterous ideas and runs the side in the old style with demands and dictates like a Roman Emperor with a bad headache. Yes, things are going well.

If I was to jump 200 years into the future I would like to see every town, every city and every village in Australia developing its own Morris style and tradition. This is long been a dream of mine, and I know that I will probably never see it. However, I know it's coming one day. There is no reason that there should not be a Brisbane tradition of Morris dancing. A few weeks ago, I was speaking to Kevan Jones about this and he had an idea along the same lines, I'm very happy to say. In fact, he had thought things through a lot further than I have. I mentioned my Brisbane tradition idea to Kevan and without even a heartbeat he revealed another one that sounded brilliant to me. I did say that Kevan Jones is an ideas' person. He suggested that we should name Australian Morris traditions after the local flora. What a fantastic suggestion! There wouldn't be 2 km² in this country that didn't have unique native vegetation that we couldn't adopt. You can even break down Brisbane into suburbs that had particular plants for that area. We could angelize the scientific names for the regional plants for the tradition. I rather like it if Belswagger, one day, danced a tradition called _Grevillea._ _Or something along those lines, as long as we developed our own tradition I don't really care what we call. I'd imagine that we would have to invent the entire tradition bit by bit, but at least we would be breaking away from the nineteenth century shackles of received English handouts. No matter how good they are they are still unnecessarily foreign to this land. All Morris needs is a bit of tweaking to make it more Antipodean. And, what is more, Morris choreography would be an enhanced skill. I have no doubt that in the distant past it used to be one in the mother country._

So, where do I see my current side, Belswagger, in say, 10 years' time? That is impossible to know. Belswagger started in 1990, but Gerry Amos, the side's true father, told me that for a period it did fold-up. Gone. Kaput! How and why I don't really know? There is so much that I don't know about Belswagger in those in-between days. Somehow, he breathed life back into it and it is rolling still. This is what I mean by no guarantees. Every squire, every foreman and every member must do their bit and play their part. If any side is going to see 50 years or more, everybody has to put in the hard work. After all, we only had the great Morris revival of the 1910s because we first had the great Morris death a generation before.

For myself, I hope that Belswagger is still annoying the population of Brisbane when the sun eventually winks out. I'm not sure if this will be the case but that is my hope. In my time, I have seen many of the strongest and dedicated Morris teams in Australia fade away like old soldiers from an Anzac Day parade. I have faith in the new and succeeding generations to keep the Morris flame burning. Right now, at this exact point in time, I can't see the Morris generally having any problem with the future. As always, it is up to a bunch of idiots, donning weird and absurd costumes, going out in public to dance arcane performance art at people who don't know, or even care, what they are watching.

But the Morris was never about the audience, that is our secret. The Morris is always about the dance.

Finis

Photos

Belswagger

Dancus Drinkard Till Fallum

Belswagger in Hong Kong 2018

Belswagger Men 1990

Belswagger Ladies 1990

Kim Brown - Belswagger Foreman & Grandfather

Ladies Pleasure Morris

MBM Men Expo 88

MBM Original Costume c1983

MBM Ladies c1986

MBM Men May Day, Mt Cootha

Belswagger Squire, Gerry Amos

Rapscallion Leader, Peter Auty

Belswagger Foreperson, Dan Townley

Belswagger Foreperson, Holstein Wong

Ragged Band Squire, Ian Redpath

Rapscallion Morris

Belswagger Squire, Kevan Jones

Belswagger Foreman, Greg Hall

MBM Ale

Belswagger Squire Lisa Kennedy

Belswagger Squire, Lorelie Voisey

Belswagger Squire Amy Richardson

Belswagger Practice

Foot-up

MBM Double Jig with Matt Selligmann

Sean and Annie (National Bagperson)

The collective noun for a Morris Team is called a "side" or, with alcohol, a "grope".

 _And those two personalities, as essential as they were to the modern Morris story, were not even the most significant contributors._

 _Casuarina Equisetifolia_

 _Or wool classer or something else to do with sheep. Possibly shagging?_

 _Not completely true, as Matt Seligmann recorded everything. Everything, but not really in a completely social sense or form. He could tell you, however, who showed up at a random practice night on the third Tuesday in June. Matt has these folders full of so much Morris detritus that it would give a boner to a dead archivist._

 _It is a big deal. It's sort of like when a politician gets their first corrupt payment, but in that case the decoration is a BMW._

 _At least this was the case of yesteryear. Nowadays the internet is the font of all Morris knowledge._

 _Actually, Sharp didn't devise Morris dance notation, his co-author did, the Irishman Herbert C. Macilwaine._

 _A notion that is a_ _ctually completely disputed on most decisions pretty much all of the time as any office bearer can attest._

 _Because of shift work,_ _I missed out on dancing before HRH Queen Elisabeth during Expo 88. I was squire of MBM at the time too and was rostered to work the electric trains. I actually pulled into South Brisbane station hearing "Queen's Delight" faintly in the background which was a real punch in the cock, let me tell you._

 _Come on – most boring name for a Morris side_ _ever_ _!_

 O _verwhelming majority_ _, as it was described to me in 1985, still sounds like loose and defensive description_

 _In Australia, when some of the single sexed male side members danced in a mixed set informally, such as ales, they made sure to turn their baldrics inside out to hide their colours. I'm being serious._

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8469817/Morris-men-must-allow-in-Morris-women-but-not-to-dance.html

 N _o doubt following Mussolini's example in general as well as in the particular._

 _For reasons I can no longer recall, a long-distance phone call was called an "STD call". Possibly because the expense of the long-distance phone call itself was a similar feeling to what an actual STD is nowadays._

 _"Hansen disease colony" has absolutely no cachet._

 _It was a family and non-family clique only – not political at all. Those without kids, as always, have difficulty relating to those who do._

 _I'm not being elitist. I now happily count myself as being goldfish minded._

 _As I am editing these scribbles Eric is no longer with us after succumbing to cancer in early 2018. A lovely and funny man with the simple joy of life and a very experienced Morris dancer to boot. For those who know him, try and remember Eric not smiling. Betcha can't._

 _Life makes fools of us all. Months after completing this story I discover that Ragged Band is as healthy as it ever was or ever will be. Don't ever count out any Morris side._

 _If this is tissue of lies is being read a 100 year hence, and the vernacular is uncertain, "Being a Dick" means - more or less - being a penis. Don't read that as a good thing._

 _Memo to Greg Hall and Saskia – get you arses back to Belswagger._

 _Even though I did make comment about the earlier Morris attitudes towards the disgusting folkies._

 Primarily, possessing a vagina.

 See <http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/>

 _Folk Music Journal; 1989, Volume 5, Number Five. Roy Judge. ISSN 0531-9684_

 _As already mentioned, this rule changed in 2018._

 _The Invention of Tradition, Hobsbawm and Ranger, University Printing House, Cambridge, 2016_.

 The " _pot de voiture"_ , captured by Wellington's 14th Light Dragoons. Napoleon Bonaparte made a habit of forcing his relatives upon the thrones of conquered European countries.

 **1**. _Henry VI,_ _2_ _. All's Well that Ends Well and_ _3_ _. Henry V._

 _Current Belswagger members will have no difficulty believing that I stuffed-up a dance._

33 _As of 2018, Belswagger rejoices in a new foreperson, one Holstein Wong. I expect grand things from this talented young lady. Her primary job is to try and keep the Squire in check. (2_ nd _edition note: yes, Holstein was a talented and brilliant Morris foreman as it turned out. And a kick-arse dancer to boot)_
