#738 What is Morris Dancing

Morris Dancing and other news from the UK. As I mentioned, St. George’s Day can be a little bit controversial because the day is often heavily politicized. English and British people generally are reclaiming their right to proclaim themselves as Scottish or English rather than simply saying they are British. Today in our media there's some pictures of some of the celebrations which took place yesterday. There's Morris dancers... now Morris dancers are very specifically English traditional dancers who sometimes appear when there's English... very specifically English celebrations. It's like an English folk dance. Now, many people don't know this, but in the same way as you have Scotland with bagpipes and you have Irish people doing river dancing and talking in Irish. In England they have Morris dancers. Now, this is often overlooked because it's not so well known. In a country, which is full of diversity... English traditional things often get overlooked. Of course there's the traditional English pubs. That's one thing which English people recognise as being something which belongs to them but they do also have some dancing. Morris dancers are usually men who wear white suits with some red sashes across their body. They're often wielding white flags and have bells tied to their legs to make noises as they move. We use the word “wield” when someone is handling a flag or a weapon or generally holding something. You might recognise that word from the headlines in the newspaper.