Dances in The Country Dance Book (Part 1) (Cecil Sharp, 1909)
Table of Contents
B
| Bonnets So Blue |  | English Traditional ~1909 Cecil Sharp 1909 |  | Duple Minor |
| Brighton Camp | | English Traditional ~1909 Cecil Sharp 1909 | | Longways as many as will |
| The Butterfly | | English Traditional ~1909 Cecil Sharp 1909 | | Duple Minor |
F
| The Flowers of Edinburgh ~ Sharp | | English Traditional ~1909 Cecil Sharp 1909 | | Duple Minor |
G
| Galopede | | English Traditional ~1909 Cecil Sharp 1909 | | Longways as many as will permutation: 23451 |
H
Haste to the Wedding
| ||||||||||||||
| Hunt the Squirrel ~ 1909 | | English Traditional ~1909 Cecil Sharp 1909 | A Playford Ball Bare Necessities | Triple Minor | ||||||||||
N
| Nancy's Fancy | | English Traditional ~1909 Cecil Sharp 1909 | | Duple Minor |
P
Pop Goes The Weasel
| ||||||||||||||
R
| Ribbon Dance | | English Traditional ~1909 Cecil Sharp 1909 | | Longways as many as will permutation: 23451 |
S
| Speed the Plough | | English Traditional ~1909 Cecil Sharp 1909 | | Duple Minor |
| Step and Fetch Her | | English Traditional ~1909 Cecil Sharp 1909 | | Triple Minor |
T
| Three Meet or The Pleasures of the Town | | English Traditional ~1909 Cecil Sharp 1909 | | Triple Minor |
| Tink-A-Tink | | English Traditional ~1909 Cecil Sharp 1909 | | Triple Minor |
W
| We Won't Go Home Until Morning | | English Traditional ~1909 Cecil Sharp 1909 | | Duple Minor |
| Number of dances | Number of interpretations | Number with music |
|---|---|---|
| 15 | 17 | 3 |
Cecil Sharp published the first part of The Country Dance Book in 1909. This part is different from most of the others because Sharp collected country dances that were then still danced rather than adapting old Playford dances. He observed village dances in Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Devonshire, Sommerset and Surrey (Warwick and Derby are counties in north central England, Devon and Sommerset are in the west just south of the Bristol Channel, and Surrey is southwest of London).
Some of these dances have clear ancestors in earlier times. The Triumph and Pop goes the Weasel retain the signature figures from their predecessors of 1809 and 1852 respectively. Step and Fetch Her also seems to have evolved out of The Triumph. Three Meet (or the Pleasures of the Town) has definite similarities to Pleasures of the Town, 1777. On the other hand, Hunt the Squirrel seems to have no connection to the Playford dance of that name (1709). For most of these dances I cannot even guess at antecedents.
In some ways, these dances are quite different from the English Country Dances that I am familiar with. After being under the influence of the Waltz for a hundred years every dance has a partner swing, indeed one dance, Brighton Camp, consists of 16 bars of swinging in a 24 bar dance. Sharp also says the men should turn the lady under when they turn. As someone who grew up square dancing and later contra dancing these seem perfectly familiar and I find it interesting that these changes seem to have happened on both sides of the Atlantic. However none of these dances has a neighbor swing.
The dances all seem simple, with a rather limited set of figures, none complex: no heys, not even rights and lefts. Sharp found only longways dances (no circles, nor squares, nor any of the other odd starting positions found in Playford, but since those had mostly died out in the 1700s I guess that isn't suprising).
It is clear from his comments that Sharp does not think highly of these dances, nor the dancers who danced them:
A critical examination of these successive editions (of Playford) shows that the dance degenerated very rapidly during the period covered by them, and the large number of dance-manuals subsequently issued by Walsh, Thompson, Waylett, and others furthermore proves that this decline continued during the two following centuries...—Cecil Sharp, The Country Dance Book part 5, 1918, p. 9
There are those, for instance, who point out that the primitive race which evolved the folk-dance is now in a state of decadence. Starting from this premiss, which is quite unassailable...—Cecil Sharp, The Country Dance Book part 1, 1909, p. 13
Perhaps this is why after only one volume of extant dances he devotes 4 of the remaining 5 parts to adapting Playford. And similarly why the tradition which led to the partner swing in the English Country Dance seems to have completely died out.
After Sharp's death, Maud Karpeles published two additional dances they collected:
In this first part of The Country Dance Book Sharp describes how a dance should start, with only the top two couples active at first rather that starting with all minorsets at once (as is almost always done now).
The top minor-set, headed by the leading couple, opens the dance by performing the complete figure, the rest of the couples being neutral. This results in the exchange of positions between the leading and second couple.
The second round is now danced by the minor-set composed of the second and third couples, of which the second one is the leading couple. The rest of the dancers, including the top one, remain neutral. This brings the leading couple down to third place from the top of the General Set.
In the third round two minor-sets will now participate, namely those consisting, respectively, of the two couples at the top (the second and third of the original set), and of the the third and fourth couples (originally the first and fourth).
However, at the end of the section Sharp adds the comment:
Expert dancers will sometimes constitute themselves into minor-sets for the performance of the first round, and thus avoid the gradual and somewhat tedious opening as above described; that is to say, they will omit the first six rounds in our first illustration and begin with the seventh round.
As far as I can tell, later parts of the The Country Dance Book omit this entirely. So perhaps Sharp changed his mind. And that may mark where this style of starting a dance was lost.
The various parts of the Country Dance Book are:
- The Country Dance Book (Part1)
- The Country Dance Book (Part 2), 1911
- The Country Dance Book (Part 3), 1912
- The Country Dance Book (Part 4), 1916
- The Country Dance Book (Part 5), 1918 — This is devoted to "The Running Set", an early form of Square Dance, and I have no animations of it.
- The Country Dance Book (Part 6), 1922
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My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.