No-one knows where it came from – there are probably as many theories as dancers! If anyone tells you that they know its origins, then you can safely say "Pull the other leg, its got bells on".  All that can be said is that it is ancient and has had many influences. The origins of the Morris are the subject of much speculation and little actual knowledge. There are English records mentioning the morris dance dating back to 1448 and written documentation dating from the sixteenth century, including references in the plays of Shakespeare, indicating that the Dances were considered ancient at that time and that they were a popular form of spectacle. 

 

The Dances would seem to have moved away somewhat from their pagan significance by Shakespeare's time, although these roots would be familiar to his audience which had been Christianised but barely severed from superstition and the influence of ancient myth.

 

It can also safely be said that the Morris you see these days would not have looked like the Morris done before 1850, During the 19th Century, all traditional folklore, folksong and associated customs were highly pasteurised and sterilised by the Victorians to fit in with their version of a pastoral and romantic England. The abundance of folksong with the chorus lines of "Hey Nonny No" and other such  nonsense was a result of the Victorian gentility censoring the more earthy and crude traditional words.

 

Even the name Morris is a mystery. Some claim that it is a corruption of Moorish, indicating that the Dances may have had their origins somewhere in Africa or Spain. Or it may simply refer to the Dancers’ practice of blackening their faces with burnt cork or soot as a simple disguise (as in much ritual dance, the dancers were considered to be someone other than their usual selves while they were dancing). Or it may be derived from the Latin ‘mores’, meaning customs or traditions. Or maybe it has something to do with a bloke named Maurice. But then again the name may have been added to an already existing activity that was previously called something completely different. We really have no idea as nothing was ever written down.

What we do know is that the Puritans dissapproved of us (They dissapproved of most things) and tried to stamp out the Morris, and that agricultural change and the drift to the cities during the Industrial Revolution led to a decline in Morris Dancingin rural areas and it almost became extinct. By the end of the 19th century only a few village teams or "sides" (the words are interchangeable and despite the connotations associated with these words, Morris is hardly ever competitive)survived with an unbroken dancing history. Much of our knowledge is attributable to the Victorian’s interest in folklore (even if they did try to sanitise it to fit their own ideals). This encouraged a number of folklore, folk music and folk dance academics and collectors to seek out and try to record and revive the remaining dances. This was the situation when Cecil Sharp chanced upon the Headington Quarry Morris dancers on Boxing Day 1899. The result was a revival of Cotswold Morris Dancing in England at the turn of the century, only to be savagely interrupted by the 1914/18 war. Many of the traditional and revival dancers lost their lives in this war, but enthusiasm and interest was not quenched and interest spread again through society in the late 1920's. A number of “Revival” Morris clubs thus came into being to support the few “Traditional” teams still dancing.