Historical derivation of term "Gypsy" - Contra Callers

27 Oct 2015

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 &lt;winston(a)slac.stanford.edu&gt;
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