Morris Dancing & Mild Bewilderment: Explaining English May Day to Friends Abroad

In which I attempt to explain to a Dane and an American why English adults voluntarily jingle, hop and whack sticks for fun

In a village deep in the English countryside, there’s bunting, several ice-cream smeared toddlers and a dozen or so grown men and women waving handkerchiefs. My daughter and I had just popped out by buy milk when the gentle clatter of bells and the sound of a squeezebox lured us to the site of a vast horse chestnut tree. Underneath which, we found this: