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Esperance Morris Book
I just had to enter a book manually into Library Thing, because nobody else had a copy!
But you can all read it, becasue a kind soul in the past has scanned the entire book (which is out of copyright) for other morris historians to read. It's the Esperance Morris Book part 1.
The morris revival came about partly due to the existence of a London dress-making co-operative for poor girls. Mary Neal was the person who followed up on Cecil Sharp's recording of old dances. It was the girls of the Esperance club who invited the last of the old dancers to come and teach them dances and then went out all over the country and taught the dancers to the modern revival sides that we know today.
Sharp and Neal were to fall out in later years and Neal's contribution would be largely overlooked (even to the extent of Sharp ignoring cases of historical female dancers so that he could claim morris had never been intended for women)
The book is a fascinating read, partly for insights into the attitudes of the period - there was a real longing for 'Merrie England' and partly becasue it's clear how much the dances meant to the girls who first learnt and then taught the dances. There's also good descriptions of several Cotswold morris dances - and there are surprisingly few books available that give the steps of dances.
The Singing Games are of some interest, not least because it's clear that children were as much in love with the gruesome back then, as they are now.
The book reminds me a little of fanzines - there's lots of letter of comment in the back.
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