I have to say Howard that is the best and most compelling post I have read on this thread.

On issues like this their is often a tendency, which I believe has a name, to push the other argument to some kind of extreme to show its consequences. I don't think you have done that in this case but perhaps my age is catching up with me and I am actually arguing that more is worse. That doesn't have to be true but it can be.

I am all for the "Living Tradition" and have argued at some length against "Blacking up" because it is offensive and almost certainly owes more to, and I use the phrase carefully, the "Nigger Minstrel" tradition that much else, but the living tradition of Border Morris by and large wont even go green with the collection of dances and clobber that they have evolved from somewhere.

But I digress. I guess the world can never be as "old and strange" as it was and neither will the Morris.

Cheers

Les