Peter Ross - Fighting more prejudices than you can shake a stick at

I AM standing in the middle of an old village hall in the woods near the Aberdeenshire village of Crathes.

The walls are trout-flesh pink. A cask-shaped 59-year-old man called Don French, his left eye screwed shut with exertion, is bearing down upon me with a three-foot stick. He has this cudgel raised above his head, a head which bears a close likeness to that of Karl Marx, and is about to smash it against a similar stick held in my trembling grasp.

If you chanced upon this scene you might perceive it as an allegorical tableau – the father of communism smashing the soft-palmed forces of capitalism – but the jaunty fiddle tune and lusty singing about courting blind maidens would put you right. This, in fact, is morris dancing, and as a first-timer I'm finding it weird, frightening fun. There is a chance of getting your skull split open by a hefty length of wood, but so what? As Marx himself might have put it: morris dancers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your brains.

The Banchory Ternan Morris Men are Scotland's only morris dancing group – or 'side' to use the correct terminology. They formed in 1974 when Don French, a morris man from Lancaster, moved to work as an ecologist at the Brathens Research Station. They now have a repertoire of around 100 dances, including Old Woman Toss'd Up, Shave The Donkey and Lads A Bunchum, the routine they tried to teach me.

There are 15 active members, mostly expat Englishmen, and they practise in Crathes Public Hall every Tuesday evening, putting in a couple of hard hours with the sticks and bells. One of the newest recruits is Douglas Leighton, 57, a biology teacher. Doug looks a bit like Kenny Dalglish, though the resemblance is less obvious when he is playing the saxophone and wearing a grey top hat decorated, crown and brim, with faded fake roses.

Doug and his 21-year-old son Alex are the only Scots here. There are around 1,400 morris sides in England, and though it is thought to have been practised in Scotland until Calvinism did away with it for being too much of a laugh, Scots now regard it with suspicion as being a purely English pursuit. "There's a lot of prejudice," says Doug. "I don't like it known that I do this."

Everyone laughs. "Denial is the first stage of morris dancing," quips Gareth Brown, 49, who is wearing a straw hat covered in bright flowers, a look that makes me think Miss Marple has seen better days.

"Life wouldn't be worth living if the kids at school knew about this," Doug continues. "Most of them would perceive it as English and ludicrous. There was one girl noticed me performing somewhere, and she came into class and said: 'I saw you! You were morris dancing!' And I said: 'No, I wasn't! You've got mixed up. It couldn't have been me.' I completely lied to her, and got her to believe that there was an identical man out there, morris dancing."

Most of the men are in regular clothes, though a couple have dressed up for my benefit. Neil Bayfield, a 65-year-old ecologist and founder member, is wearing a maroon waistcoat trimmed in gold, and a baldrick in the same colours across his chest. He has on black britches and white knee-socks. He is the 'bagman' and his duties seem to include looking after the costumes. "Does anybody want more socks for the Holland tour?" he asks.

After a while, an extraordinary-looking man shows up. Stuart Ashton, 61, has been doing this since 1977. He is the 'fool' of the side, the man who goes round with the hat collecting money during performances, and capering between the men while they dance more formally. He is wearing a see-you-Jimmy hat, its ginger hair over his grey; a tartan jacket; two bright ties; one yellow sock, one red; bells on his knees; and a green alligator toy on beads round his neck. He is a retired university lecturer.

I get a strong sense that morris dancing is an activity which allows men to be themselves, in other words awfy daft, without having to worry what their wives think. I mention that I'd like to ask them about women, a request which is met with a chorus of hooting and harrumphing. Someone mentions the washing-up. "Lovely beasts," says Don, through his beard.

Neil explains that their side is affiliated to the Morris Ring, an organisation that insists on men-only morris. This, he says, is a long-standing tradition. After the First World War, women's sides sprang up, compensating for so many men having been killed. That's okay, but what he can't stand is mixed sides – men and women dancing together. "It's a complete abomination. It alters the character of the dance a lot if you have women. It just doesn't look right, and also it introduces a strange sort of sexual element." Neil has, embroidered on the back of his waistcoat, a picture of Eve transformed into a serpent slithering up the tree of knowledge, intent on apples.

Though women cannot dance with the side, they are welcome to accompany the dancing with musical instruments. They should take care, though. A few years ago, the wife of one member was playing the accordion when a piece of stick broke, flew through the air at speed, bounced off the top of her squeezebox and knocked her teeth out. "She wasn't happy," someone says. "She was gappy."

It's a revealing incident. One reason morris dancing is disliked is that it is seen as effete, but it actually seems a fairly aggressive hobby. Okay, it's hardly bullfighting, and Hemingway probably wouldn't like it much, but it does have an odd sort of machismo. It certainly requires a great deal of energy and agility, and you've got to be quite confident in your masculinity to wear blossom in your bunnet and waft hankies around.

As the Banchory Men say goodbye and head, pubwards, into the night, a thought occurs: could Strictly Come Morris Dancing be a hit for the Beeb? Someone get Bruce Forsyth on the phone, and tell him he can leave his tap shoes at home.