dance was popular, it may almost be said that every village sporting a
troupe had its own peculiar variation in dress or character or other
particular of its programme and _personnel_, by which it was known; and
by these singularities each set of Morris-men and their backers held
resolutely. There was competition, once, amongst the Morris-folk as there
is to-day amongst football teams and their adherents. Many a bout, begun
in friendly rivalry, ended in a scrimmage, in which the staves brought
for use and ornament in the dance were used to break heads with. We are
grown vastly more delicate and refined since then, it is supposed.

Before we go on to note some leading features in the dress and
paraphernalia of the Morris-men, one more memory of the days that are
gone--maybe in some fashion to return, maybe not--tempts to quotation.
It is from the church-wardens' accounts of the parish of
Kingston-upon-Thames, and in our prejudiced eyes has a dignity, and
somehow a promise, all its own. It is from Lysons' "Environs of London,"
vol. i., 1792, p. 226, and runs:--

For paynting of the mores garments and £ s. d.
for sarten gret leveres 0 2 4

For 4 plyts and ½ of lawn for the mores
garments 0 2 11

For orseden for the same 0 0 10

For bellys for the dawnsars 0 0 12

For silver paper for the mores dawnsars 0 0 7