Re: [Callers] Callers Digest, Vol 84, Issue 15

Tom wrote: Pedantically: At the more-or-less-1800 time when these dances originated, the match of figure to tune was not fixed the way we've fixed it for these chestnuts and the way it's generally fixed for English dances now. New 32-bar tunes were published in collections; people fit figures to them (Thomas Wilson's "Complete System of Country Dancing" in various editions through the 1810s has tables of figures, whether they're progressive or not, how many bars they take, etc) and danced them, and might dance the same figures to a different tune or different figures to this tune tomorrow night. (Not so much unlike modern contra.) If you look at published suggested figures for dances, or figures people wrote in their diaries as matches for tunes, etc, you'll see a bazillion dances that are very much like: A1: right hand star, left hands back A2: 1s down the middle and back and cast off B1: with the couple below (third couple in your triple-minor set) circle left and right B2: with the couple above, four changes of rights and lefts The 'distinctive' Chorus Jig down the outside and back, down the middle and back and cast off shows up in "Fisher's Hornpipe", "Trip to Tunbridge", a setting of "The White Cockade", etc. All of *that* is a long-winded way of saying that they weren't remotely concerned with the novelty of the figure or whether they were dancing a "new" dance. They got novelty from tunes. Which is utterly irrelevant to the original question. -- Alan -- =============================================================================== Alan Winston --- WINSTON(a)SSRL.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU Disclaimer: I speak only for myself, not SLAC or SSRL Phone: 650/926-3056 Paper mail to: SSRL -- SLAC BIN 99, 2575 Sand Hill Rd, Menlo Park CA 94025 ===============================================================================