just
time to get out of the way. The scowling motorists vanished. Dancers
and dysard, presently visible through the subsiding dust, looked rather
foolish and crestfallen. And all the branches of the conservative old
elm above them seemed to be quivering with indignation.

In a sense this elm was a mere parvenu as compared with its beloved
dancers. True, it had been no mere sapling in the reign of the seventh
Henry, and so could remember distinctly the first Morris danced here.
But the first Morris danced on English soil was not, by a long chalk,
the first Morris. Scarves such as these were waved, and bells such as
these were jangled, and some such measure as this was trodden, in the
mists of a very remote antiquity. Spanish buccaneers, long before the
dawn of the fifteenth century, had seen the Moors dancing somewhat thus
to the glory of Allah. Home-coming, they had imitated that strange and
savage dance, expressive, for them, of the joy of being on firm native
land again. The 'Morisco' they called it; and it was much admired; and
the fashion of it spread throughout Spain--scaled the very Pyrenees,
and invaded France. To the 'Maurisce' succumbed 'tout Paris' as quickly
as in recent years it succumbed to the cake-walk. A troupe of French
dancers braved the terrors of the sea, and, with their scarves and
their bells, danced for the delectation of the English court. 'The
Kynge,' it seems, 'was pleased by the bels and sweet dauncing.' Certain
of his courtiers 'did presentlie daunce so in open playces.' No one
with any knowledge of the English nature will be surprised to hear that
the cits soon copied the courtiers. But 'the Morrice was not for longe
practysed in the cittie. It went to countrie playces.' London,
apparently, even in those days, did not breed joy in life. The Morris
sought and found its proper home in the fields and by the wayside.
Happy carles danced it to the glory of God, even as it had erst been
danced to the glory of Allah.

It was no longer, of course, an explicitly religious dance. But neither
can its origin have been explicitly religious. Every dance, however
formal it become later, begins as a mere ebullition of high spirits.
The Dionysiac dances began in the same way as 'the Chesterton.' Some
Thessalian vintner, say, suddenly danced for sheer joy that the earth
was so bounteous; and his fellow vintners, sharing his joy, danced with
him; and ere their breath was spent they remembered who it was that