Abstract
Nudity in English Folk-Dancing. A photograph of a carved wooden panel, about 14 in. long, formerly in Lancaster Castle, representing figures apparently engaged in a morris dance, is published in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, vol. 1, pt. 2, by Miss A. G. Gilehrist. The panel is of uncertain date, but is probably contemporary with Henry VII. There are seven figures represented, of which one wearing a cloak and feathered cap carries pipe and tabor, while another, wearing a high cap and distended skirt and bearing a ladle for contributions, is evidently the ‘Maid Marian’. The fool wears cap and bells and carries a bauble or bladder. The third figure in the processional is either a nude woman or a boy with artificial female characteristics personating a woman. Sir Edmund Chambers, to whom the photograph has been submitted, suggests a connexion with whatever it may be that lies at the bottom of the Lady Godiva legend and procession. There is evidence for the appearance of nude figures in English dances in the Puritan denunciation of “light, lewde and lascivious dancing” in which the “greatest abuse” of all was “dancing naked in nets”, the morris dancers, it was said, coming to dance about church during divine service. It is to be noted that nude figures on misericords, dating from the fourteenth to early sixteenth centuries at Beverley St. Mary, Worcester, Norwich, and elsewhere, wear nets while riding on goats, stags or geese. It has been suggested that these nets may have served the purpose of ‘fleshings’. The subjects of medieval misericords seem frequently to have been derived by the artist from what he had seen in plays and pageants.
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Research Items. Nature 133, 296–297 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133296a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133296a0