COUNTRY DANCES.
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Clisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, says Herodotus, had a beautiful daughter
whom he resolved to marry to the most accomplished of the Greeks.
Accordingly all the eligible young men of Greece resorted to the court
of Sicyon to offer for the hand of the lovely Agarista. Among these,
the most distinguished was Hippoclides, and the king decided to take
him as his son-in-law.
[Illustration: Hippoclides before Clisthenes.]
Clisthenes had already invited the guests to the nuptial feast, and had
slaughtered one hundred oxen to the gods to obtain a blessing on the
union, when Hippoclides offered to exhibit the crown and climax of his
many accomplishments.
He ordered a flute-player to play a dance tune, and when the musician
obeyed, he (Hippoclides) began to dance before the king and court and
guests, and danced to his own supreme satisfaction.
After the first bout, and he had rested awhile and recovered breath,
he ordered a table to be introduced, and he danced figures on it, and
finally set his head on the table and gesticulated with his legs.
When the applause had ceased, Clisthenes said--as the young man had
reverted to his feet and stood expectantly before him--"You have danced
very well, but I don't want a dancing son-in-law."
How greatly we should like to know what Herodotus does not tell us,
whether the tyrant of Sicyon was of a sour and puritanical mind,
objecting to dancing on principle, or whether he objected to the
peculiar kind of dance performed by Hippoclides, notably that with his
head on the table and his legs kicking in the air.
I do not think that such a thing existed at that period as puritanical
objection to dancing, but I imagine that it was the sort of dance
which offended Clisthenes. Lucian in one of his Dialogues introduces
a philosopher who reproaches a friend for being addicted to dancing,
whereupon the other replies that dancing was of Divine invention, for
the goddess Rhæa first composed set dances about the infant Jupiter to
hide him from the eyes of his father Saturn, who wanted to eat him.
Moreover, Homer speaks with high respect of dancing, and declares that
the grace and nimbleness of Merion in the dance distinguished him
above the rest of the heroes in the contending hosts of Greeks and
Trojans. He adds that in Greece statues were erected to the honour of
the best dancers, so highly was the art held in repute, and that Hesiod
places on one footing valour and dancing, when he says that "The gods
have bestowed fortitude on some men, and on others a disposition for
dancing!" Lastly, he puts the philosopher in mind that Socrates not
only admired the saltatory exercise in others, but learned it himself
when he was an old man.
On hearing this defence of dancing, the morose philosopher in Lucian's
Dialogue professes himself a convert, and requests his friend to take
him to the next subscription ball.
Steele, in the _Spectator_, declared that "no one ever was a good
dancer that had not a good understanding," and that it is an art
whereby mechanically, so to speak, "a sense of good-breeding and virtue
are insensibly implanted in minds not capable of receiving it so well
in any other rules."
I cannot help thinking that the dancing commended by the _Spectator_,
learned in old age by Socrates, and that in which the Greeks won the
honour of statues, was something far removed from that which incurred
the displeasure of Clisthenes, and lost Hippoclides the hand of his
beautiful mistress.
Here is a letter in the _Spectator_, given in Steele's article. It
purports to be from a father, Philipater: "I am a widower, with one
daughter; she was by nature much inclined to be a romp, and I had no
way of educating her, but commanding a young woman, whom I entertained
to take care of her, to be very watchful in her care and attendance
about her. I am a man of business and obliged to be much abroad. The
neighbours have told me, that in my absence our maid has let in the
spruce servants in the neighbourhood to junketings, while my girl
play'd and romped even in the street. To tell you the plain truth, I
catched her once, at eleven years old, at chuck-farthing, among the
boys. This put me upon new thoughts about my child, and I determined
to place her at a boarding-school. I took little notice of my girl
from time to time, but saw her now and then in good health, out of
harm's way, and was satisfied. But by much importunity, I was lately
prevailed with to go to one of their balls. I cannot express to you
the anxiety my silly heart was in, when I saw my romp, now fifteen,
taken out. I could not have suffered more, had my whole fortune been
at stake. My girl came on with the most becoming modesty I had ever
seen, and casting a respectful eye, as if she feared me more than all
the audiency, I gave a nod, which, I think, gave her all the spirit
she assumed upon it, but she rose properly to that dignity of aspect.
My romp, now the most graceful person of her sex, assumed a majesty
which commanded the highest respect. You, Mr. Spectator, will, better
than I can tell you, imagine all the different beauties and changes of
aspect in an accomplished young woman, setting forth all her beauties
with a design to please no one so much as her father. My girl's lover
can never know half the satisfaction that I did in her that day. I
could not possibly have imagined that so great improvement could have
been wrought by an art that I always held in itself ridiculous and
contemptible. There is, I am convinced, no method like this, to give
young women a sense of their own value and dignity; and I am sure there
can be none so expeditious to communicate that value to others. For my
part, my child has danced herself into my esteem, and I have as great
an honour of her as ever I had for her mother, from whom she derived
those latent good qualities which appeared in her countenance when she
was dancing; for my girl showed in one quarter of an hour the innate
principles of a modest virgin, a tender wife, and generous friend, a
kind mother, and an indulgent mistress."
It is a curious fact that the beautiful and graceful dance, the dance
as a fine art, is extinct among us. It has been expelled by the
intrusive waltz. And if in the waltz any of that charm of modesty,
grace of action, and dignity of posture can be found, which delighted
our forefathers and made them esteem dancing, then let it be shown. It
was not waltzing which made Merion to be esteemed among the heroes of
the Trojan war; it was not waltzing certainly that Socrates acquired
in his old age; and it most assuredly was not whilst she was waltzing
that the correspondent of the _Spectator_ admired in his daughter the
modest virgin. It is possible that it was a sort of topsy-turvy waltz
Hippoclides performed, and which lost him the daughter of Clisthenes.
The dance is not properly the spinning around of two persons of
opposite sex hugging each other, and imitating the motion of a
teetotum. The dance is an assemblage of graceful movements and figures
performed by a set number of persons. There is singular beauty in the
dance proper. The eye is pleased by a display of graceful and changing
outline, by bringing into play the muscles of well-moulded limbs. But
where many performers take part the enchantment is increased, just as
part-singing is more lovely than solo-singing; for to the satisfaction
derived from the graceful attitude of one performer is added that of
beautiful grouping. A single well-proportioned figure is a goodly
sight; several well-proportioned figures in shifting groups, now in
clusters, now swinging loose in wreaths, now falling into line or
circles; whilst an individual, or a pair, focus the interest, is very
beautiful. It is the change in a concert from chorus to solo; and
when, whilst the single dance, projected into prominence, attracts the
delighted eye, the rest of the dancers keep rhythmic motion, subdued,
in simple change, the effect is exquisite. It is the accompaniment on a
living instrument to a solo.
A correspondent of the _Times_ recently gave us an account of the
Japanese ballet, which illustrates what I insist on. He tells us
that the Maikos or Japanese ballet-dancers are girls of from sixteen
to eighteen years of age; they wear long fine silk dresses, natural
flowers in their hair, and hold fans in their hands. Their dance is
perfectly decorous, exquisitely graceful, and of marvellous artistic
beauty. It partakes of the nature of the minuet and the gavotte; it
makes no violent demands on lungs and muscles; its object is to give
pleasure to the spectators through the exhibition of harmony of lines,
elegance of posture, beauty of dress, grace with which the folds of
the long drapery fall, the play of light, and change of arrangement
of colour. It is a dance full of noble and stately beauty, and has
nothing in common with our European ballet, with its extravagance and
indelicacy, and--it must be added--inelegance. It is a play without
words, and a feast of pure delight to the artistic eye.
Æsthetically, the dance is, or may be, one of the most beautiful
creations of man, an art, and an art of no mean order. In it each
man and woman has to sustain a part, is one of many, a member of a
company, enchained to it by laws which all must obey. And yet each has
in his part a certain scope for individual expansion, for the exercise
of liberty. It is a figure of the world of men, in which each has a
part to perform in relation to all the rest. If the performer uses
his freedom to excess, the dancers in the social ball are thrown into
disorder, and the beauty and unity of the performance is lost.
Now all this beauty is taken from us. The waltz has invaded our
ball-rooms, and drives all other dances out of it. Next to the polka,
the waltz is the rudest and most elementary of step and figure-dances;
it has extirpated before it the lovely and intricate dances, highly
artistic, and of elaborate organization, which were performed a century
ago. How is it now in a ball? Even the quadrille and lancers, the sole
remnants of an art beautiful to lookers-on, are sat out, or, after
having been entered on the list, are omitted, and a waltz substituted
for it. "_Valse, valse, toujours valse!_" A book on dances, published
in 1821, speaks of the introduction of the waltz as a new thing, and of
the rarity of finding persons at a ball who could dance it.
"The company at balls having no partners who are acquainted with
waltzing or quadrilles, generally become spectators of each other
in a promenade round the rooms, so that the waltz or quadrille ball
ends in country dances, sometimes not one of these dances being
performed during the evening." That was a little over sixty years
ago. Waltz and quadrille came in hand-in-hand, and displaced the old
artistic and picturesque country dances, and then waltz prevailed,
and kicked quadrille out at the door. The country dance is the old
English dance--the dance of our forefathers--the dance which worked
such wonders in the heart of the old father in Steele's paper in the
_Spectator_.
The English have always been a dancing people, only during the
Commonwealth did they kick their heels, dancing being unallowed;
and at the beginning of this century dancing was discountenanced
among the upper classes by the Evangelicals, and among villagers
almost completely put down, or driven into low public-houses, by the
Dissenters. In 1598 Hentzner describes the English as "excelling in
dancing, and in the art of music;" and says that whilst a man might
hope to become Lord Chancellor through dancing, without being bred to
the law, like Sir Christopher Hatton, it was certainly worth while to
endeavour to excel. According to Barnaby Rich, in 1581 the dances in
vogue were measures--a grave and stately performance, like the minuet,
galliards, jigs, braules, rounds, and hornpipes. In 1602 the Earl of
Worcester writes to the Earl of Shrewsbury, "We are frolic here in
Court, much dancing in the privy chamber of _country dances_ before the
Queen's Majesty, who is exceedingly pleased therewith." In the reign
of James I., Waldon, sneering at Buckingham's kindred, observes that
it is easier to put fine clothes on the back than to learn the French
dances, and therefore that "none but country dances" must be used at
Court. At Christmas, 1622-3, the Prince Charles "did lead the measures
with the French ambassador's wife. The measures--braules, corrantoes,
and galliards--being ended, the masquers with the ladies did dance two
country dances."
In Pepys' _Diary_ we read how he went to see the King dance in
Whitehall. "By and by comes the King and Queen, the Duke (of York) and
the Duchess, and all the great ones; and after seating themselves,
the King takes out the Duchess of York; and the Duke, the Duchess of
Buckingham; the Duke of Monmouth, my Lady Castlemaine; and so other
lords other ladies; and they danced the Brantle. After that the King
led a lady a single coranto; and then the rest of the lords, one after
another, other ladies; very noble it was, and great pleasure to see.
Then to country dances, the King leading the first, which he called
for, which was, says he, '_Cuckolds all awry_,' the old dance of
England. Of the ladies that danced, the Duke of Monmouth's mistress,
and my Lady Castlemaine, and a daughter of Sir Harry de Vicke's, were
the best. The manner was, when the King dances, all the ladies in the
room, and the Queen herself, stand up; and indeed, he dances rarely,
and much better than the Duke of York. Having staid here as long as I
thought fit, to my infinite content, it being the greatest pleasure I
could wish now to see at Court, I went home, leaving them dancing."
All old ballads are set to dance tunes, and derive their name from
_ballet_. Where no instruments were to be had, the dancers sang the
ballad, and so gave the time to their feet. The fact of ballad tunes
being dance tunes has been the occasion of their preservation; for
in _The Compleate Dancing Master_, a collection of dance tunes, the
first edition of which was published in 1650, and which went through
eighteen editions to 1728, a great number have been preserved as dance
tunes, with the titles of the ballads sung to them. In the old country
dances the number of performers was unlimited, but could not consist of
less than six.
What is the origin of our title for certain dances--"Country Dances"?
I venture to think it has nothing to do with the country, though
I have Chappell's weighty opinion against me. The designation was
properly given to all those counter-dances, _contre-dances_, which were
performed by the gentlemen standing on one side, and the ladies on the
other, in lines, in contra-distinction to all round and square dances.
As a general rule, foreign dances are circular or square. In Brittany
is La Boulangère, and among the Basques, La Tapageuse, which are set
in lines; but with a few exceptions, most continental dances were
differentiated from the general type of English dances by being square
or round. There were, no doubt, among our peasantry dances in a ring
about the May-pole, but this was exceptional. A writer at the beginning
of this century says,--"An English country dance differs from any other
known dance in form and construction, except _Ecossaise_ and quadrille
country dances, as most others composed of a number of persons are
either round, octagon, circular, or angular. The pastoral dances on the
stage approximate the nearest to English country dances, being formed
longways."
The song and the dance were closely associated; indeed, as already
said, the word _ballet_ is derived from "ballad," or _vice-versâ_; and
all our old dance tunes had appropriate words set to them.
Dargason, a country dance older than the Reformation, found its way
into Wales, where it was set to Welsh words; the English ballad to
which it was usually sung was--
"It was a maid of my country,
As she came by a hawthorn tree,
As full of flowers as might be seen,
She marvelled to see the tree so green.
At last she asked of this tree
How came this freshness unto thee?
And every branch so fair and clean?
I marvel that you grow so green."
Doubtless half the charm of a country dance consisted in the dancers
singing the words of the familiar ballad as they went through the
movements of the dance, the burden often occurring at a general joining
of hands and united movement.
An English country dance was composed of the putting together of
several figures, and it allowed of almost infinite variation, according
to the number and arrangement of the figures introduced. Sir Roger de
Coverley, which is not quite driven out, consists of seven figures.
Some figures are quite elementary, as turning the partner, setting,
leading down the middle. Others are more elaborate, as Turn Corners,
and Swing Corners; some are called Short Figures, as requiring in their
performance a whole strain of short measure, or half a strain of long
measure. Long Figures, on the other hand, occupy a strain of eight bars
in long measure--a strain being that part of an air which is terminated
by a double bar, and usually consists in country dances of four, eight,
or sixteen single bars. Country dance tunes usually consist of two
strains, though they sometimes extend to three, four, or five, and of
eight bars each.
The names and character of the old country dances are quite forgotten.
The following is a list of some of the dances given in _The Complete
Country Dancing Master_, published near the beginning of last century--
Whitehall.
Ackroyd's Pad.
The Whirligig.
Amarillis.
Buttered Pease.
Bravo and Florimel.
Pope Joan.
Have at thy coat, old woman.
The Battle of the Boyne.
The Gossip's Frolic.
The Intrigue.
Prince and Princess.
A Health to Betty.
Bobbing Joan.
Sweet Kate.
Granny's Delight.
Essex Buildings.
Lord Byron's Maggot.
Ballamera.
The Dumps.
Rub her down with straw.
Moll Peatley.
Cheerily and Merrily.
In Waylet's _Collection of Country Dances_, published in 1749, we have
these--
The Lass of Livingstone.
Highland Laddie.
Down the Burn, Davy.
Eltham Assembly.
Cephalus and Procris.
Joy go with her.
Duke of Monmouth's Jig.
Bonny Lass.
The Grasshopper.
The Pallet.
Jack Lattin.
Fiarnelle's Maggot.
Buttered Pease.
The Star.
Some of these dances were simplicity itself, consisting of only a very
few elementary figures. This is the description of _Sweet Kate_.
"Lead up all a double and back. That again. Set your right foot to
your woman's, then your left, clasp your woman on her right hand, then
on the left, wind your hands and hold up your finger, wind your hands
again and hold up another finger of the other hand, then single; and
all this again."
_Bobbing Joan_ is no more than this. First couple dance between the
second, who then take their places, dance down, hands and all round,
first two men snap fingers and change places, first women do the same,
these two changes to the last, and the rest follow.
The tune of _The Triumph_ is still found in collections of dance
music, but it is only here and there in country places that it can be
performed. I saw some old villagers of sixty and seventy years of age
dance it last Christmas, but no young people knew anything about it. It
is a slight, easy, but graceful dance--graceful when not danced by old
gaffers and grannies.
Our English country dances were carried abroad, and became popular
there. "The Italians," writes Horace Walpole from Florence in 1740,
"are fond to a degree of our country dances: _Cold and raw_ they only
know by the tune; _Blouzy-bella_ is almost Italian, and _Buttered
Peas_ is _Pizzelli al buro_." Indeed, as early as 1669, when the Grand
Duke of Tuscany visited England, he was highly taken with the English
dances, and probably on his return to Florence introduced them there.
Count Lorenzo Magalotti, who attended him on his visit, says that he
and the duke attended dancing-schools, "frequented by unmarried and
married ladies, who are instructed by the master, and practise with
much gracefulness and agility various dances after the English fashion.
Dancing is a very common and favourite amusement of the ladies in this
country; every evening there are entertainments at different places in
the city, at which many ladies and citizens' wives are present, they
going to them alone, as they do to the rooms of the dancing-masters,
at which there are frequently upwards of forty or fifty ladies. His
Highness had an opportunity of seeing several dances in the English
style, exceedingly well regulated, and executed in the smartest and
genteelest manner by very young ladies, whose beauty and gracefulness
were shown off to perfection in this exercise." And again, "he went out
to Highgate to see a children's ball, which, being conducted according
to the English custom, afforded great pleasure to his Highness, both
from the numbers, the manner, and the gracefulness of the dancers."
When our English country dances were carried abroad,--notably to
Germany and France,--the tunes to which they were danced were carried
with them, were there appropriated, and as these dances died out in
their native home, and with them their proper melodies, the tunes have
in several instances come back to us from the continent, as German or
French airs.
Very probably one reason of the disapproval which country dancing has
encountered arises from the fact that it allows no opportunities of
conversation, and consequently of flirtation, as the partners stand
opposite each other, and in the figures take part with other performers
quite as much as with their own proper _vis-à-vis_. But then is a dance
arranged simply to enable a young pair to clasp each other and whisper
into each others ears? Are art, beauty, pleasure to the spectators
to be left out of count altogether? The wall-fruit are deserving of
commiseration, for they now see nothing that can gratify the eye in a
ball-room; the waltz has been like the Norwegian rat--it has driven the
native out altogether, and the native dance and the native rat were the
more beautiful of the two.
It is not often we get a graceful dance on the stage either. Country
dancing is banished thence also; distorted antics that are without
grace, and of scanty decency, have supplanted it.
It seems incredible that what was regarded as a necessary acquisition
of every lady and gentleman sixty or seventy years ago should have
gone, and gone utterly--so utterly that probably dancing-masters of
the present day would not know how to teach the old country dances. In
_The Complete System of Country Dancing_, by Thomas Wilson, published
about 1821 (there is no date on the title-page), the author insists
on this being the national dance of the English, of its being in
constant practice, of its being a general favourite "in every city and
town throughout the United Kingdom;" as constituting "the principal
amusement with the greater part of the inhabitants of this country."
Not only so, but the English country dance was carried to all the
foreign European Courts, where it "was very popular, and became the
most favourite species of dancing;" and yet it is gone--gone utterly.
The minuet was, no doubt, a tedious and over-formal dance; it was only
tolerable when those engaged wore hoops and powder and knee-breeches;
but the English country dance is not stiff at all, and only so far
formal as all complications of figures must be formal. It is at the
same time infinitely elastic, for it allows of expansion or contraction
by the addition or subtraction of figures. There are about a hundred
figures in all, and these can be changed in place like the pieces of
glass in a kaleidoscope.
[Illustration: Minuet being Danced.]
Why, in this age of revivals, when we fill our rooms with Chippendale
furniture and rococo mirrors and inlaid Florentine cabinets, and use
the subdued colours of our grandmothers, when our books are printed
in old type with head and tail pieces of two centuries ago, when the
edges are left in the rough--why should we allow the waltz, the foreign
waltz, to monopolize our ball-rooms to the exclusion of all beautiful
figure-dancing, and let an old English art disappear completely without
an attempt to recover it? It will be in these delightful, graceful, old
national dances that our girls will, like the daughter of Philipater in
the _Spectator_, dance themselves into our esteem, as it is pretty sure
that in the approved fashion of waltzing they will dance themselves out
of it.
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