[Callers] Historical derivation of term "Gypsy"

[Jacob or Nancy Bloom via Callers]

I've changed the name on the thread, to reflect the change of subject to
historical background.

I acknowledge Alan's point, that, unless a pre-Cecil Sharp source shows up
for the use of the term 'gypsy' as a country dance figure, the bulk of my
hypothesis falls apart.

As for the use of the terms 'gyp' and 'gypsy' in Morris dance, *The Morris
Book* by Cecil Sharp and Herbert Macilwaine defines the figure "Half-Hands
or Half-Gip" in part I, page 65, and defines the figure "Whole-Gip or
Gipsies" on page 32 of Part III.

No explanation for the derivation of the terms is given in either volume.

I do not have a copy of Sharp's Country Dance Book at hand.  Did someone
say that Sharp did not use the term gypsy in it?

Jacob

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 4:40 AM, Alan Winston <winston at slac.stanford.edu>
wrote:

>
>
> On 10/24/15 10:32 PM, Jacob Nancy Bloom via Callers wrote:
>
> See the link below for more information on the dance The Spanish Gypsy (or
> Jeepsie), the song from which the tune for the dance came, and the 1623
> play from which the song came, which had the title "The Spanish Gypsy".
>
> http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/lod/vol4/spanish_gipsy.html
>
> I'll go out on a limb and make some historical pronouncements which cannot
> be proven, but which seem most probable to me:
>
> The dance title The Spanish Gypsy came from the dance being done to a tune
> associated with the play The Spanish Gypsy.
>
> Sure, extremely plausible.
>
> The dance figure Gypsy got its name from the prevalence of the figure in
> the dance The Spanish Gypsy.
>
>
> If true, only true in the modern revival.  (Basically, Cecil Sharp made up
> *and named* the Gypsy figure.  In Spanish Jeepsie - reconstructed at the
> link you have above- the figure isn't a gypsy, and it isn't called a
> gypsy.  It's a back to back.)
>
> Point me toward dance notation published before 1900  that uses the term
> "gypsy" as the name of a figure, and then we can talk.  Until there's some
> evidence that Elizabethan dancers used the figure name, your argument dies
> here.
>
> The Morris dance figures whole-gyp and half-gyp were originally called
> whole-gypsy and half-gypsy.  (Although parts of England had and ancient
> tradition of seasonal dancing under the name Morris Dance, it seems likely,
> from the nature of the dances, that the form of the Cotswold dance
> traditions collected by Cecil Sharp only went back to the Elizabethan
> period.)
>
> I think you're saying that Cotswold dances as collected by Sharp and
> others reflected Elizabethan country dances as shown in Playford, and that
> whole-gyp and half-gyp were therefore originally named after the (notional)
> country dance figure and were thus properly named whole-gypsy and
> half-gypsy.  Please correct me if I've misunderstood this.
>
> This is irrelevant unless you can show that Elizabethan country dance
> actually had a figure called gypsy, which you haven't.  (And it's actually
> irrelevant even if you can, since once you draw a line from the play to the
> tune to the dance you've said what you can about it not being an ethnic
> stereotype.)
>
> But if it *were* relevant, I'd ask you to explain why these
> Playford-following Elizabethan morris dancers used "half-gypsy" for what
> Playford called "sides all".
>
> -- Alan
>
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