Anyone wanting to check the research on blackface morris should read Teresa Buckland's article "Black faces, garlands, and coconuts" (Dance Research Journal, Vol. 22, No. 2, Autumn, 1990) or the section on morris dance in Roy Palmer's "The folklore of Shropshire". There can be little doubt that the Lancashire coconut dancing and the border morris traditions were influenced by blackface minstrelsy. Alternative explanations (disguise, warding off evil spirits, miners) tend to be assertions made in more modern times, of the "it may be the case that" variety, with no evidence from contemporary accounts of dancers to back them up.