A few points:

On disguise, having seen many shades of face paint used by far the most effective is black (on white skin). If you really want diguise then the colour should be as different as possible from your skin.

So there was black face prior to the minstrel craze in the 19thC? So, whilst minstrelsey undoubtedly has influenced morris (as has classical music, music hall, rock and roll and for all I know punch and judy) it is not THE source of black face. So how much the black face was (or was not) about demeaning black people earlier than minstrelsey is not known.

It seems to me that many people's statements in this thread are based on guess work, their own (possibly biased) opinions*, possibly dodgy oral histories, and historical documents that may be truthful and accurate, or may not, but all leave huge gaps in our knowledge of what went on and the motivations behind it.




!!!Trollish Alert!!! As the lead musician for a border team (using silver, various blues and black face paint me) I can't help but think: if morris is descended from morrisco, that is ultimately from the Moors of northern Africa and southern Spain. Is not morris in its entirity a piss take on North Africans?





*yes, myself included