Hay! Do The Morris

Hay! Do The Morris appears on Sid’s album Boiled In The Bag

“Every new dance craze have a song what go with it and that was as true in the old days as it is tomorrow. There’s were lots of them, like ‘Let’s Gavotte Again, Like We Did Last Autumn’, and ‘When You Finish The Finnish’. But with the dances having died out, you don’t hear the songs no more.

“This song is the one what started the morris dancing craze. It does tend to upset some morris dancers, mainly due to the first line. Some of them can turn quite ugly. Some can’t, of course. Mind you, I don’t see why – I mean, it look easy enough to me – even if some of them do manage to make it look difficult!”

Sid Kipper

Here’s a dance that’s easy to do,
And it’ll make you fertile too.
With breeches white, and a hat from the florist,
Now get ready to do the morris

Hay! do the morris dance;
Hay! let’s process and prance;
Up and down and round and round,
Until you fall down on the ground.

Pick your bells and sticks up quick,
‘Cos now we’re going to get rustic
Get some drunks to play a tune,
And you’ll be morris dancing soon.

Tuck your trousers in your socks,
Grow a beard and wear a smock;
Drink till you can hardly stand,
And now you are a morris man.

Now a fool we will need too –
Any one of you will do.
Let him be nimble, let him be quick,
Let him wave his bladder on a stick.

First you take your handky out,
Put it in, then shake it about.
Hit each other with your sticks,
And that is all there is to it.

While you take part in this frolic
Remember that it’s all symbolic.
You’ll bless the crops and speed the plough,
And all by jumping up and down.

The above was lifted from the Sid Kipper archive see note