Hi Les,

Earlier on, I said:

"We have only fragmentary records of the dances our ancestors used to perform. Some have been preserved more or less intact, but there is good evidence for the existence of others whose details went unrecorded, and it seems reasonable to infer that many more have been entirely forgotten."

And you replied: "This is what people say when they want to believe something for which they have no evidence."

Well yes … sometimes … but in this case, I think not.

See for example, Russell Wortley & Michael Dawney, "George Butterworth's Diary of Morris Dance Hunting", Folk Music Journal, Volume 3 Number 3 (1977). GB's diary reveals his frustration at visiting quite a few villages where there had certainly been a thriving Morris side twenty years ago, but finding that no survivors of the team remained to give him details of the dances. (Though in a number of cases, he did get some tunes.) Sharp also collected a considerable number of tunes for dances which had been forgotten – some of them can be heard on the CD "Lost Morris" (Lark Rise Music, LACR8).

So, it seems clear that a lot of material was lost. How much was lost, and whether what survived was typical or exceptional, we cannot know for sure. But it would be rash to assume that what we have tells the whole story.   

Under these circumstances, I think we should be very grateful to people who have attempt to reconstruct lost dances from the remaining fragments (for example, John Kirkpatrick and the Shropshire Bedlams). And I don't think we should be sniffy about the teams who have created new dances in what they sincerely believe to be the spirit of the tradition (like Ouse Washes Molly, and many others).   

If these dances feel good, then dancers will keep on doing them. And if they look good, then punters will keep on enjoying them. If not, then they will soon fade away. Natural selection and all that - happy 200th birthday Charles Darwin!

Wassail!