In earliest days of the Morris, music was made by a simple pipe, by pipe
and tabour, or the bagpipe. Of these the bagpipe was apparently the
original. An old madrigal, printed in 1660, runs thus:
Harke, harke, I hear the dancing
And a nimble morris prancing;
The bagpipe and the morris bells
That they are not farre hence us tells;
Come let us goe thither,
And dance like friends together.
Since the disappearance of the bagpipe, pipe and tabour (called whittle
and dub) have been, even within the memory of living men, the accepted
instruments wherewith to make music and beat time for the Morris. They
are now fallen into disuse. The pipe or whittle was of wood, really an
early form of the flageolet, over a foot long; sometimes it had a metal
tongue in the mouthpiece; two finger-holes and a thumb-hole to vary the
note, and was played with the left hand. From the left thumb the tabour,
or dub, was suspended by a loop: the dub was a miniature drum,
elaborately made, and was beaten by a stick held in the right hand. Pipe
and tabour were sometimes played by separate men.
At the present time the music is generally played on a fiddle; though
here, again, having no complete knowledge of all the traditional dancers
still left among us, we offer no precise statement as to the instruments
still in use. One Morris-man we knew made music on a concertina. _See_
plate opp. p. 22.