Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/130

122 folk-lore, the Hare is believed by children to lay the Easter-eggs. I venture now to offer a probable answer to it. Originally the hare seems to have been a bird which the ancient Teutonic goddess Ostara (the Anglo-Saxon Eàstre or Eostre, as Bede calls her) transformed into a quadruped. For this reason the Hare, in grateful recollection of its former quality as bird and swift messenger of the Spring-Goddess, is able to lay eggs on her festival at Easter-time (r. Oberle's Ueberreste germanischen Heidentums im Christentum, 8vo, Baden-Baden, 1883, p. 104.)

Oxford.

Morris Dance (ante, p. 32.)—I believe that the derivation of Morris from Moorish may now be safely accepted as correct. Mr. Skeat (Ety. Dic.) suggests that the Morris Dance was so called because it was performed to the accompaniment of the tabor; but from what I have read it occurs to me that bells, rather than tabors, gave ths sound specially indicative of the Morris; pipers and tabors lending themselves to the promotion of sundry other forms of Terpsichorean exercises. One or more of the figures in the notable painted window at Betley in Staffordshire is represented with a garnishment of bells; and two of the grotesque designs in the glass of York Minster are Morris dancers " in the dress of the time of Edward IV., whereof one plays on a pipe and tabor, and has a belt of bells round his waist." In Kemp's Nine Daies Wonder they are mentioned as though they were strictly essential to a Morris Dancer's gear. "At Chelmsford a mayde not passing fourteen years of age . . . made a request to her master and dame, that she might daunce the Morrice with me in a great large roome. They being intreated I was soone wonne to fit her with bels; besides she would have the olde fashion with napking on her armes, and to our jumps we fell." "Nay," said another country lass, "if the dauncer will lend me a leash of his belles, I'll venter to treade one myle with him myselfe." I quote this from an article in Chambers's Book of Days (Vol. i. p. 630-3) which your correspondent would do well to consult. Within the last few weeks I have seen a very clear engraving of the glass at Betley to which I would fain refer him; but my memory proves traitor.

I was once much affrighted as a child by the apparition of some "Morrish" dancers at our kitchen door. I suspected then that they took their name from some people called Morris who lived hard by.