Joe said
> And in some ways, it does not matter whether or not blacking up has an innocent pedigree. Nowadays, it sends a message that is highly racist to a number of people, so it should be abandoned.

Unfortunately some people perceive supposed racist implications in the most unlikely places. A glaring example a few years ago was when someone was (allegedly) forced to apologise for using the word "niggardly" because of its slight resemblance to another word. Another is extreme sensitivity to the word "black" in contexts where it has nothing at all to do with anyone's skin.

I do not dispute the continuing prevalance of racism, but imagining it where it does not actually exist can be counter-productive.

Turning to "Minstrel lyrics"; Robin may not have met them in asociation with morris dancing, but one ditty sung to accompany morris dancing in fairly recent times probably had come from blackface minstreslsy, as its first line includes the infamous N-word.