Kit

Our kit

The style of our kit with rosettes is based on a black and white illustration of the dancers from Dilwyn in The Roots of Welsh Border Morris by Dave Jones (1988). We thought that this kit would be suitable for dancing both Border and Cotswold morris. The significance of the purple and green colours is lost in the mists of time. The dancers wear white shirts and black breeches, skirts or culottes at their own preference, but if you look closely you could see the odd pair of trousers tucked into the even odder pair of socks. We used to dance in burgundy socks, but we fancied something a bit more showy, and now wear a burgundy sock on the right leg and a green one on the left (just to confuse the sailors on the starboard bow). We later discovered that this was exactly the same as Crook Morris‘s socks. We also wear some sort of straw hat (or not), and have tatter jackets for Border dances on those cold days when we ought to be inside in front of the fire (or at least inside the pub). We devised our bell pads with just 12 bells per leg so that everyone could have the same bells whether they wore breeches or skirts.

Sewing evenings

Way back in 1989, Leslie designed all our accessories and wrote down how to make them. Amazingly, the originals still survive and are reproduced below. It is rumoured that the Dilwyn side did not have the benefit of velcro. We have discovered that velcro eventually wears out, so safety pins are now mandatory. We appreciate that some people enjoy dancing and some sewing, so we sometimes get together in a futile attempt to harmonise the kit.