Evidence status: WELL SUPPORTED — exact original purpose unknown
Before a morris dancer waves a handkerchief, clashes a stick or reaches the village green, you can often hear what is coming.
Dozens of small bells are strapped below the knees, turning every step into part of the music. They are unmistakably traditional. The reason they were first worn is rather less certain.
The Short Answer
Morris dancers wear small bells—usually fixed to pads tied around the lower legs—because the bells emphasise the rhythm and movement of the dance.
Every stamp, hop and raised leg produces sound. Skilled dancers can use that sound almost like an additional percussion instrument.
Bells have been associated with morris dancing for centuries, and surviving historical records show that they are not a modern decorative addition.
What the evidence does not establish is one original symbolic purpose. The familiar claim that the bells were intended to frighten away evil spirits is possible as a later interpretation, but it is not a securely documented explanation for their adoption by morris dancers.
What We Know
Morris dancing has a long and complicated history.
Written references to performances called morris appear in England by the fifteenth century. These earliest examples belong largely to courtly, civic and theatrical entertainment rather than to the timeless village ritual often imagined today.
Bells entered that performance world early.
European images of dances described as morris or “Moorish” show performers wearing bells on their legs during the late fifteenth century. English records and images from the early-modern period also associate decorated dancers with bells.
By 1641, the connection was recognisable enough for an official account from Wiltshire to describe a man involved in a garland disturbance as wearing “bells on his legs”. The same record connected him with a hobby horse, another figure long associated with morris customs.
Later evidence becomes more detailed.
The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford holds nineteenth-century morris bell pads from Finstock and Ramsden in Oxfordshire. The Finstock examples originally carried twenty small pellet bells arranged on strips of cloth and decorated with handmade rosettes.
The museum traces them to a community where morris dancing was active during the first half of the nineteenth century.
These were not a few bells added casually to a costume.
They were carefully constructed pieces of performance equipment.
How It Became a Habit
A morris bell is usually a small enclosed pellet bell, sometimes called a crotal.
Groups of these bells are attached to leather or fabric pads and tied around the dancer’s legs, normally just below the knees. Some traditions use different arrangements, bell sizes or local names. At Bampton in Oxfordshire, for example, bell pads have been called ruggles.
Their practical effect is immediate.
The bells make the footwork audible.
A firm landing produces a strong collective jingle. A lighter movement produces a softer sound. Steps involving a lifted or circling leg can shake the bells between footfalls.
The Pitt Rivers Museum records a story collected in 1903 about a blind fiddler who detected that a dancer had started on the wrong foot simply by listening to his bells.
That makes the bells more than decoration.
They reinforce timing, reveal mistakes and bind the sound of the dance to the movement of the dancers.
As regional morris traditions declined during the nineteenth century and were revived during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, bells remained one of the form’s most recognisable features.
Together with sticks, handkerchiefs, ribbons and decorated clothing, they helped make morris instantly identifiable to an audience.
The Story Everyone Tells
The most familiar explanation says morris dancers wore bells to scare away evil spirits.
It sounds convincing.
Bells have been credited with protective powers in many cultures. Their noise has been used in religious ceremonies, seasonal customs, processions and folk beliefs. Morris dancing is also strongly associated in the modern imagination with spring, fertility and a mysterious pre-Christian countryside.
Put those ingredients together and a neat story appears:
morris was an ancient pagan ritual,
the dancers awakened the earth,
and the bells drove away hostile spirits.
The difficulty is that each part of that story carries more certainty than the historical evidence permits.
Early morris was not recorded simply as a rural spring ceremony. It appeared at courts, in civic entertainment, in church accounts, on public streets and in theatrical performance.
Nor do the surviving records explain the bells by saying that dancers wore them as supernatural protection.
The evil-spirit explanation may draw upon genuine beliefs about bells found elsewhere.
That does not prove it was the reason morris dancers adopted them.
What the Evidence Actually Says
The evidence status is WELL SUPPORTED — exact original purpose unknown.
DOCUMENTED: Performances called morris existed in England by the fifteenth century.
DOCUMENTED: Bells were associated with morris-style dancers in early European imagery and with English morris customs during the early-modern period.
DOCUMENTED: Bells strapped to the legs were a recognised feature of regional English morris traditions long before the twentieth-century revival.
WELL SUPPORTED: Bells accentuate footwork, rhythm and particular leg movements.
WELL SUPPORTED: Their sound can help dancers and musicians hear the timing of the steps.
PLAUSIBLE: Bells also increased the visual and acoustic spectacle of a public performance, helping dancers attract and hold an audience.
UNPROVEN: Morris dancers originally wore bells specifically to repel evil spirits.
UNKNOWN: The precise moment, place and reason that bells first became attached to the dance.
There may never have been only one reason.
Bells make dancers louder.
They make movement clearer.
They make costumes more spectacular.
They announce that something unusual is approaching.
Any one of those advantages could help a performance custom survive.
Why It Stuck
Because morris is meant to be seen—and heard.
The bells transform several people stepping together into one moving instrument.
They reward precision, expose uncertain footwork and announce the dancers before the audience has found them.
They also solve a useful problem for any travelling performance:
how do you make people stop what they are doing and look?
You arrive with bells on.
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Why Do People Chase a Cheese Down a Hill?
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Sources & Further Reading
Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford
“Morris Dancers’ Bells” — historic Finstock, Ramsden and Headington bell pads, their construction and rhythmic use
https://web.prm.ox.ac.uk/england/englishness-morris-dancers-bells.html
English Folk Dance and Song Society and Historical Dance Society
John Forrest, “How to Read The History of Morris Dancing”, in The Histories of the Morris in Britain — examination of the evidence and later speculation surrounding morris history
https://media.efdss.org/docs/HOM/HOM%20Forrest%20How%20to%20Read.pdf
Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre
“Very disorderly, danced the Morris Dance” — archival evidence concerning seventeenth-century morris, garlands, hobby horses and bells worn on the legs
https://wshc.org.uk/the-morris-dance/
Oxford Reference
“Morris dance” — concise historical overview of the dance and its association with bells worn on the arms or legs
https://www.oxfordreference.com/viewbydoi/10.1093/acref/9780192806871.013.5231
Project Gutenberg
Cecil Sharp and A. P. Oppé, English Folk-Song and Dance — historical descriptions of morris music, costume and bells
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/64536/pg64536-images.html
Last checked: 26 September 2026