More Sport Morris

At practice on Thursday night my Goddaughter (the Squire’s daughter) said “I read your blog about morris and sport – gerrin!� – which I took as approval. This lead to conversation on morris as sport and competitions.

The Squire pointed out that there are Northumberland & Durham Clog competitions at Morpeth Gathering and the like. However this isn’t morris dancing. An English traditional dance yes – morris dancing no.

Morris dancing is done in teams (ok down South you get the odd solo jig – but odd is the word). Everyone does the same set of fairly simple steps throughout most of the dance. It’s the movement around in foot-ups, heys, turns, stars etc that make the dances different.

In Northumberland & Durham and other clog traditions the name of the game is fancy footwork. It’s mainly for solo clog dancers, or sometimes groups of two and three. If you do get a chorus line at clog displays individuals will come out to do their party pieces.

In Clog competitions competitors take it in turns to do a set of steps to the same tune, played at the same speed by the same musician. At the top end, and for the cognoscenti, this can be interesting and entertaining. In fact a very good solo clog dancer is something everyone should see once in their life. To heck with Riverdance – Northern England has stuff just as good.

(At the bottom end it’s a different story. Tiny children can be sweet. But to watch more than three or four step-shuffle-hop-shuffle to Soldier’s Joy scraped out by an increasingly bored fiddler takes a certain type of forbearance. Which I’m afraid only some teachers and mothers of those taking part possess. The judges deserve medals.)

Rapper Sword Dancing also has a competitive element. According to my partner teams would go around the pubs of the town on New Year’s Day, dance and collect money. The team with the most money were the winners. There still is competition in the form of the annual Dancing England Rapper Competition (Liverpool next year). However there is a strong argument that Rapper is not Morris. The history and the shape of the dance is entirely different.

Irish step dancing has competitive fleadhs* and festivals both local, national and international.

However does having competitions make an activity a sport?

In Wales there are local, national and international Eisteddfods for individual, group and choral singing.

I doubt we’ll ever see Penillion** Singing as an Olympic event.

* My apologies if this is misspelled
**A strange form of singing where the accompanist plays one tune, the singer starts a few bars in with a different tune and they both try to end together. I was brought up in Wales and I've never understood it.

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