History of Ha'penny Morris

Jan Elliott, 1990

Ha'penny Morris was born in the unforgettable blizzard of February, 1978. At that time there were a dozen or so men's teams in the United States, of which three -- Pinewoods, The Black Jokers, and Newtowne -- were currently active in Boston. However, although several women's teams were in the works, the only established sides were Ring O'Bells (NY), the Marlboro (VT) women, part of a joint team, and the Muddy River in Boston. Naturally enough, any woman in Boston who had been bitten by the morris bug wanted to dance with Muddy River, and by 1978 their waiting list had grown quite long. When my friend Barbara Benn and I attempted to join, with very little experience but a great deal of enthusiasm, we were handed a copy of the waiting list. "Please," they said, "Help us out and start your own team."

The blizzard provided a convenient time to call everyone, since the city was virtually shut down. We met on Feb. 12, which was the first day public transportation resumed. At this momentous meeting, at "BB"'s apartment in Cambridge, were:

	Connection
Barbara Benn	CDS classes
Jan Elliott	CDS
Diana Lawry	Northampton Morris
Jackie Chew	Hearts of Oak Morris
Martha Roberts	Burgundy Belles Morris
Ariane Dworsky	CDS
Barbara Canon	Lived in the house! (later joined Ha'penny)

(N.B. The above teams were not "established women's sides"; Hearts of Oak is mixed, and the others were short-lived.)

No notes were taken. What we remember best was the lengthy and lively discussion about what to call ourselves. Having rejected the traditional but bland possibilities of "Boston Morris" or "Cambridge Morris," we started looking through books of morris and country dance tunes for inspiration. [Thoughts on morris tunes & music from Ishmael Stefanov-Wagner of The Black Jokers. Other resources of morris music from Seabright Morris and Sword.] Hilarious arguments ensued over the relative merits of "Ladies of Pleasure" or "Bonny Green Garters," but when we found the Rapper Sword dance tune "The Tenpenny Bit" something clicked. Or clinked -- someone said, "Hmmm...sounds like money in the bag." It was also unmistakably English.

"Tenpenny Morris?" Were we worth it? We hadn't even started yet.

"How about 'Ha'penny Morris'?" (England still had "ha'pney's" back then.) Well, there is nothing more humble than a halfpenny, and we liked the way it rolled off the tongue. So our first vote was unanimous, and Ha'penny Morris (we actually spelled it "Ha'Penny") was officially born. We even decided to make Monday our practice night.

All that remained were a few details, like finding a hall and a teacher.

Both issues were solved quite quickly, and we held our first practice on Feb. 27 at Harvard University's Strauss Hall, under the tutelage of J. M. "Shag" Graetz of the Pinewoods Morris Men. We were a motley bunch, with our varying degrees of experience, and Shag's biggest task was to unify our style. (Breaking old habits, as we all know, is much harder than learning from scratch.) Our first dance was Ilmington "Old Woman Tossed Up," soon to be followed by three more dances each from Ilmington and Headington. We are greatly indebted to Shag for giving us this wonderful repertoire to start with, and making us actually look and feel like a team while thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

I left Ha'penny for college that fall, not to return for good until 1984, so I missed our "growing years." But grow we did -- taking on nine new members by September, conducting a tour through Harvard Square in November (where our first dance brought out the sun!) and finally being "introduced" to the morris world at the annual Black Jokers Non-tour in March of '79. We performed a rarely seen dance, Ilmington "Black Joke," for the special occasion. Our notes simply say: "Shag proud."

Since those days, our history has been fairly typical -- performing at the New England Folk Festival every year, attending various ales including Marlboro, the Quail Ale in D.C., and the London and Toronto, Ontario, Ales, as well as hosting and being hosted by teams from near and far. (And, of course, touring by ourselves!) Of special note is the fact that in 1982, Ha'penny created an ale especially for women's morris teams. Called the "Ph'ome," it was our answer to a similar event for men's teams known as the "Sudze." Until 1986, it was held in rural western Massachusetts and involved camping out together; now it is an entirely urban event, with guests billeted in our apartments. Each Ph'ome has been a delight, well worth the work of putting together a weekend event for 60 - 100 people. The Saturday night "Ph'east" has always been a highlight, with gourmet cuisine, entertainment, and all (including any male musicians) encouraged to wear fancy dress. Until 1987, we prepared the meal ourselves; the decision to make it a catered affair was undoubtedly one of the smartest things we've ever done.

Every team's fantasy must include a trip to England, and Ha'penny celebrated its tenth anniversary with just such a journey in the summer of 1988. The ten-day tour included performances with Windsor Morris, Mr. Jorrock's Morris, and Seven Champions molly dancers from Kent, as well as Taeppa's Tump, a women's clog and garland team from Maidenhead. We also stopped in Oddington, the Cotswold village where our current style originated. The tour ended spectacularly, with a visit to the Sidmouth International Folk Festival in Devon. There we entered a ritual dance competition but somehow were left out of the lineup -- whereupon the judges apologetically requested an unofficial "exhibition" dance. A fitting conclusion to any dancer's dream tour, we danced well and brought down the house. The emcee then asked us to perform that evening on the main stage, and we gallantly obliged -- the first foreign morris team so honored.

Our dancing, in reflection of our ever-widening performance scope, has definitely matured over time. In the initial years, when nearly everything we saw was something we wanted to learn, our repertoire included over 30 dances from five traditions. An example of three spring practices in 1980 indicates the difficulty of keeping up with such a variety of styles:

3/31	Fieldtown ("Glorisheers"); Adderbury review (3 dances)
4/7	Bampton ("Bonny Green"); Headington review (7-8 dances)
4/14	Bampton; Adderbury review (4 dances); Fieldtown review (4 dances)

Footnotes indicate that "leftover time" (!) was to be used for Ilmington review and new or "questionable" dances.

As current foreman [ed. this was 1990], I am flabbergasted that we ever tried to do this. If I pulled such a stunt now, the team would undoubtedly walk right out the door.

Here's an approximation of how a typical run of practices would go nowadays:

3/31	Oddington (hard work on 2-3 dances, including perhaps one newly choreographed)
4/7	Oddington (review 1 and do 1 or 2 more, & maybe a jig)
4/14	Oddington; (just run 4 or 5 dances for fun)

Add: Ascot or Upton-on-Severn at some point. Oh yes, I believe we have three tours and an ale coming up. Show sets?

Needless to say, we want our Oddington to look darn good and we don't do much else. We have adapted the style as described in Bacon's handbook, and as we've grown more comfortable with it, we've begun composing some new dances as well as "transposing" a few from other traditions. Lately, we've been clogging for the first 1/2 hour of practice, or trying out a border dance, or doing something else utterly different to relieve the monotony (yes) of focusing on one tradition. But we pretty much agree that we wouldn't have it any other way. Here's hoping the next twelve years will be as interesting as the first!

This web page was last revised on May 11, 2003.