Morris Songs
Morris teams customarily sing songs in association with their dancing although not usually as part of their performances, per se, although a few traditions incorporate a song into the dance itself. Singing, for the most part, occurs during the breaks between dancing, often in the friendly environment of a pub or, after the day of dancing is over, around a campfire. Beer, for some reason, is a favorite theme. Other significant times for sing are the seasonal celebrations of May Day and Christmas. In any case, songs of English descent or derivation are most common, although humorous American songs have lately been entering the morris song genre.
I continue to procrastinate on this page. I've done a few of the winter carols that I like to sing. I plan to add in some of the May Day songs next and will then move on to some of the common pub and campfire songs.
Sources for songs include:
- John Lippincott's list culled from Peter Hoover, the Morris Dancing Discussion List and other morris sources
http://www.mrm.trunkles.net/morrissongs.html - The English family singing group, The Watersons, gave many songs to morris dancers.
http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~zierke/watersons/ - John Roberts and Tony Barrand, two stalwarts of the morris community have also been a great source of morris songs.
http://www.sover.net/~barrand/rgh.html - The Digital Tradition database of folk songs has many member contributed folk songs.
http://www.mudcat.org/threads.cfm
Morris Songs
Only one so far, but it's a good 'un. It has traditional words set to a recently composed tune.
Christmas and Winter Carols
Members of the Hounds have a winter tradition of going caroling with members of the other Syracuse morris teams. Typically ten or so of us gather at someone's house where we fortify ourselves against the cold with beer and wassail. Then we set out to visit neighbors houses and sing carols. We try to avoid the usual Christmas songs and concentrate on the older carols. A lot of our songs come from John Robert's and Tony Barrand's Nowell Sing We Clear recordings. Here's a few of the songs we've worked up. [abc source file]