MORRIS DANCE 



554O 



MORRISON 



stained-glass windows and furni- 

 ture to the cups and saucers, dishes 

 and dog-irons. 



Illness soon compelled Morris to 

 move to town : and, selling the Red 

 House, he settled in an old house in 

 Queen Street, Bloomsbury, in 1865. 

 Morris was now able to devote his 

 time to poetry again, and com- 

 posed his epic, The Life and Death 

 of Jason, 1867, The Earthly Para- 

 dise, a series of tales from Greek 

 and medieval sources, 186870, 

 and Love is Enough, 1872, and was 

 soon in the front rank of the great 

 poets of his generation. In 1871 

 Morris, with Rossetti, took the 

 beautiful old house in the Thames 

 valley called Kelmscott Manor 

 House. The very charm of the 

 place made him fret over the sordid 

 lives of the workpeople. He wrote 

 a translation of Virgil's Aeneid in 

 1875, the year of the break-up of 

 the Morris firm and also of his 

 friendship with Rossetti. 



In 1871 he went to Iceland ; 

 in 1873 to Italy ; and, bored by the 

 Renaissance, back to Iceland again. 

 In 1878 Morris went to live in his 

 picturesque house at Hammer- 

 smith Mall on the river's edge. 

 He had translated the Volsunga 

 saga with Magnusson in 1870 ; in 

 1876 appeared his Sigurd the Vol- 

 sung. About 1877 Morris stepped 



Wood Beyond the World, The Well 

 at the World's End, The Water 

 of the Wondrous Isles, and The 



Some of the tunes are named after 

 their places of origin or usage, such 

 as the Staines Morris, beginning : 



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Sundering Flood. He died Oct. 3, 

 1896. See Art; Kelmscott Press; 

 Pre-Raphaelites. Haidane McFaii 

 Bibliography. Works, 24 vols., 

 1 910-15 ; The Books of W. M., H. B. 

 Forman, 1897 ; A Study in Clough, 

 Arnold, Rossetti and Morris, A. 

 Stopford Brooke, 1908 ; Lives, A. 

 Vallance, 1897 ; J. W. Mackail, 2 

 vols., 1899 ; A. Noyes, 1909 ; A. 

 Clutton-Brock, 1914. 



Morris Dance (Span, morisco, 

 Moorish). Popular dance, said to 

 have been acquired from the Moors 

 perhaps on the return of John 

 Gaunt from Spain in the reign of 

 Edward III. In Tudor times it was 

 well established in England as a 

 festival dance, especially on May 

 day, and refer- - - - - 

 ences to it abound 

 in English litera- 

 ture. Stock 

 characters figur- 

 ing in the dance 

 around the may- 

 pole were Maid 

 Marian (q.v.), fre- 

 quently imper- 

 sonated by a man, 



Morrison. Mt. of Formosa, the 

 highest point in the Japanese Em- 

 pire. The peak, whose alt. is vari- 

 ously given as 13,075, 13,800, and 

 14,272 ft., is the culminating point 

 of the Niitaka range, the S. portion 

 of the mountainous backbone of 

 the island. The Japanese name is 

 Niitaka -yama. 



Morrison, ARTHUR (b. 1863). 

 British novelist. Born Nov. 1, 1863, 

 he became a clerk in the civil ser- 

 vice, devotinsc time also to writing. 

 In 1890 he left the service to 

 write for The National Observer 

 and do other journalistic work. 

 His reputation was made with his 

 vivid stories of life in the east end 



Morris Dance. A figure in the old English dance, performed by the Polesworth 

 (Warwickshire) Dancers. Above, sword dance, and boy riding a hobby horse 



into the arena of politics to pre- 

 vent England from interfering 

 over the Bulgarian atrocities. He 

 was soon in the van of the Socialist 

 movement a movement which, as 

 he maintained, by revolution alone 

 could rid the privileged classes of 

 economic power ; in 1883 he pub- 

 licly declared this position. 



Of Morris's prose romances, the 

 best-known are the Dream of 

 John Ball, 1888, and News from 

 Nowhere, 1891. Having mastered 

 tapestries. Morris turned to print- 

 ing. In 1888 he decided to print his 

 prose romance The House of the 

 Wolfings, and in 1889 The Roots 

 of the Mountains in his Kelmscott 

 Press Then followed other prose 

 romances, The Glittering Plain, The 



her paramour, her jester, Friar 

 Tuck, a gentleman, clown, Bavian 

 or fool, hobby-horse, and foreigners, 

 perhaps Moriscos or Moors. 



The music used for Morris danc- 

 ing differs in various parts of Eng- 

 land, .and there seems to be a good 

 deal of freedom in using old popu- 

 lar song tunes as well as the few un- 

 doubtedly genuine Morris tunes. 

 The majority of the tunes are in 

 2-4 or 4-4 time, but 6-8 and 3-4 

 are not unknown. The oldest re- 

 corded Morris tune is found in 

 Arbeau's, or Tabourot's Orcheso- 

 graphie, 1589, and runs as follows : 



of London, Tales of Mean Streets, 



1894, and A Child of the Jago. 



1896. Later novels include the de 



tective stories, 



Adventures of 



Martin Hewitt, 



1896; Cunning 



Murrell, 1900; 



The Red Tri- 

 angle, 1903 ; 



and Green 



Ginger, 1909. 



An authority 



on Oriental 



art, Morrison 



also wrote xmteii 



The Painters of Japan, 1911. 



Morrison, 

 GEORGE ERNEST 

 (1862-1920). 

 British journal- 

 ist. Born at Gee- 

 long, Victoria, 

 the son of Dr. 

 G. Morrison, 

 principal of Gee - 

 H long College, he 

 was educated at 



Arthur Morrison, 

 British author 



G. E. Morrison, 

 British journalist 



Melbourne Uni- 

 versity. In 1882 



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