Emily, I am glad you like the Morris, sometimes, it gets overlooked in England, which is disappointing. Its one of our real traditions and very ancient.

There is nothing like it in the  summertime when you go somewhere and there is Morris dancing on, it always makes people smile, which I love, the dancers themselves love a pint as well, they all carry their own tankards with them  there is a tradition at Easter time when they go pace egging from pub to pub.

The sides themselves take it very seriously, their headquarters are not far from the Royal college of music in london, where I have been many times.

I also think it's great that there is a side in the states, dance and music should be for everyone.

As for the sticks  one of the ideas of the history of the Morris is that it comes from the word Moorish, in other words the moors who dominated during the crusades  the moors used dance moves with sticks to train their fighters, the Knight templars copied the idea to train their  own soldiers here and in Europe, how much truth there is in that I don't know, but when I learned Escrima which is stick fighting we had drills very similar to Morris ones, so who knows.

I do know its very ancient, and very entertaining, and the people who perform are the nicest you could ever meet.

Morris dancing, and mummers, is part of the same thing, inasmuch as they usually appear together religious times like Easter even though the plays (if they can be called that) generally go back to pagan times and the old religions. There always used to be a play performed with st George and the dragon. Too be honest though the type of thing isn't really seen hardly at all anymore, it's fairly rare to even see Morris dancers.

At one time in the area I come from and others in Yorkshire, especially the mining towns, clog dancing was very popular, everyone wore wooden clogs, the mill workers and factory workers and such, they even  had fighting clogs which were steel tipped for kicking the shins. Clog dances had their own music, unfortunately though I don't have any of it.

This is the type of thing that you are talking about I think,

There are mummers type things and morris as well as other music at these sort of events, rush bearing is a very, very old tradition, unfortunately, the type of village we're these things go on is fast disappearing, most of England is covered in sprawling Council estates and is very overcrowded, summerset and Devon are relatively unspoiled, but most areas of the North have vanished under factories and concrete.