Richard, I love you dearly but you have just expended a lot of effort to prove something that is not relevant to the offence people might feel and the concerns held by the chantry school.

The fect, if it is so, that morris-men blacked up for disguise before minstrelsy existed does not alter the fact that, now, blackface as we see it, carries heavy racial baggage.

You asked for references on the "Clee Hill...Niggering" quote. All that matters is that the morris dancers at the website www.bordermorris.co.uk chose to publish that description, including the 'N' word to assist the public's understanding of border morris as those practitioners understand it.

Now ask why, if blackface disguise was a marginal practice by a few border-dwellers, and one that had died out until resurrected by Kirkpatrick in a new interpretation about 40 years ago, do we see at any morris festival, a sea of blackened faces - total coverage, not coal/cork streaks of disguise?

If it is NOT traditional, NOT an ubiquitous custom, NOT important, IS tainted by modern racist overtones and DOES risk offence then we DON'T need it, do we?

Plenty of morris sides get on quite well - and better - without blackface. Some go black with decoration, some go in dirty streaks which must be the most authentic version and some go in rainbow colours. Those people are the standard-bearers for our tradition.

I started this debate with a belief that blackface was all about coal dust and miners.

Then I learned it was about disguise ans was just one of many coloured disguises in Morris tradition.

Then I read more and found a lot of evidence for racist connotations (whether or not those connotations were at the genesis of the practice) and then I found present-day morris men gleefully talking about Niggering on the 'definitive' border morris website.

Then I saw my friends slamming, against all the evidence of unpleasantness around the blackface issue, the hapless headteacher for her decision without even stopping to consider the situation poperly.

I saw my friends, claiming to support our traditions, effectively 'fighting for the right' to upset fellow citizens for no good reason and, by refusing to offer authentic disguised-morris in another medium of make-up, lose a chance to get into a multi-racial school and show off our traditions - and you call yourselves upholders of folk tradition?

Then finally we got RickH of Motley Morris itself showing the true blackface and bemoaning the fact he "unfortunately" lived alongside Afro-Caribbean people.

Shame, shame, shame.