I'm having a night here's another thread of morris thoughts.

The origin story of morris dancing as "Moorish" is bad. "Moors" as a term is useless and at the time it's suggested to be used for this dance (also unclear but 15thc or before) it could be either "Muslim" (huge swath) or just not western...

Western as understood but 15thc (or prior) English people. If it was specifically North African as some people say I haven't been able to connect it to any understanding of specific dance traditions.

There is a video that goes around occasionally of Sufi practitioners with sticks but this is a religious act, not a dance and I doubt it would have been performed publicly (I'm not sure if other Sufi practices were done publicly before Ataturk)

FURTHER sticks in morris dancing seem to be a very late element, they don't appear in the Betley Window, which seems to include all possible elements of the dance. So that specific video I saw ages ago doesn't make sense to me.

If the dance itself doesn't come directly from a Muslim country then "Moorish" was applied because it seemed alien. Certainly that's the origin of colonial racism and a lot of our problems. It also seems like an odd thing to do.

The best story I've heard is that "Morris" branched off from "Mores". In Latin sng. "Mos" (in a fun way genitive "Moris") is a big word ranges from will, to custom to disposition. It was used to describe cultural practices.

The problem with that of course is that it reinforces the idea of morris as existing before our modern understanding. I don't know if this idea stands up to the way people in 15thc understood culture.

The bigger issue is that search for a specific origin of morris denies the creative additions of the people who came after and it was collected from. They way it presents itself in Sharp doesn't seem to have a lot in common in the way it's described by the Tudors.

It seems like the best method is to accept the fact that what morris dancers do now can only exist after 1965. That it is most importantly a modern practice. Searches for a deeper origin have mostly been used as away of reinforcing the parts of its origin we don't want.

The saying is "There is tradition and there is convention. You must respect tradition, you may ignore convention–but only when you know which is which" I suggest that tradition isn't found in historical reenactment. Convention is that it has to be old to meaningful.

Not sure if this thread made it clear that the anti-nationalism defense of "at least 500 years ago it was Muslim" is weak.