[Callers] Historical derivation of term "Gypsy"

Jeff Kaufman via Callers callers at lists.sharedweight.net
Mon Oct 26 17:24:41 PDT 2015


Sharp uses the term "whole-gip" in part II of the country dance book. I
have scans here: http://www.jefftk.com/p/history-of-the-term-gypsy

He doesn't use the figure in the first part at all.
On Oct 26, 2015 8:13 PM, "Jacob or Nancy Bloom via Callers" <
callers at lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

> 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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