Abingdon Morris

Abingdon morris is not just a set of dances – it is part of a unique group of interrelated customs involving the Ock Street Horns, the Election of the Mayor of Ock Street, and the Mayor’s regalia. On the Saturday nearest the nineteenth of June, people who live or work in Ock Street exercise their right to elect their own mock mayor, who is also the leader of the morris dancers. The new mayor is carried in the ceremonial chair up and down Ock Street and there is morris dancing round the town all day.

The first reference to morris dancing in Abingdon is a 1560 entry in the accounts of Abingdon’s parish church describing the purchase of “two dossin of Morres belles”. The Ock Street Horns are said to date from 1700 when there was an ox roast on the Market Place followed by a street fight to see who should keep the horns. The Ock Street men won them. The horns are always present when the traditional Abingdon dances are performed, and they also lead our processions from place to place. An apple wood drinking cup (the Mace or Mazer) is said to have been made from a wooden club used in the fight of 1700, and this is carried by the Mayor of Ock Street as one of his symbols of office, along with a sword.

Morris dancing is traditional English folk dancing that goes back at least some hundreds of years, possibly longer. In the distant past, each village or town had its own team performing their own distinctive dances, though by the end of the nineteenth century many of these had already died out. Fortunately, folk collectors managed to record many of these old dances before they were totally forgotten and the majority of morris dancing teams today perform dances collected from many different places. In Abingdon, we only dance our own Abingdon dances. Different parts of England had different dancing styles. Abingdon morris is in the ‘Cotswold style’ with white clothing and handkerchiefs, though we do not use sticks like many Cotswold teams.