Having read some of the comments above, I'm amazed! The 'minstral' is something completely different, and I totally agree that it has no place in today's society, but are those that object to black faced morris dancers really too dim to see the bigger picture, or can you not see the tatter jackets, the decorated top hats, the bells, the sticks, black is just a colour, and how any intelligent person could interpret someone in morris kit as some kind of racist display is completely beyond me!

We are also talking here about traditions that pre-date our multi cultural society, and we should be as fiercly proud of our traditions as those others from different roots that make up that multi cultural society.

Whilst I'm at it, there is no evidence to link morris with paganism, that is indeed a modern phenomena, there are however, records of parish churches giving the village side allowances to buy bells, there is a stained glass window (not a new one) in a church not far from me, and even the horns at Abbotts Bromley have historically been kept in the parish church between dances!

John