But what is the source of the information, Villain? It isn't attributed. Because it says so on a morris website doesn't make it true. There are Bacup dancers who will tell you their dance came from Cornwall - that doesn't make it true. There's an awful lot of fakelore about.

Richard, the problem is that lots of things get conflated. Does the fact that blacking up might have been used in some parts of the country as a form of disguise in certain plays and rituals have a bearing on how its use was, and is, interpreted in border morris? Does the distinct evidence which links border morris with minstrelsy consequently taint the blacking up within that particular custom?

I feel quite convinced from what I've read and the conversations I've had with people who have done a lot of research into morris history that there is a connection. If you remain to be convinced, that's fine. But getting back to the original point of this thread, I'm still very uncomfortable with the fact that people armed with little more than fakelore, half-truths and a whole lot of defensiveness and righteous indignation saw fit to approach this school directly and take them to task over the decision they made.