Help: swords and country dancing

Subject: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 12:31 AM

First of all, by country dancing I'm referring to dancing done in the 16th or 17th century to music such as the Playford tunes. Now, I've read that the woman is always on the left in these dances because gents had their swords on the right, and they didn't want the women getting tangled up with them. However, my husband says that a sword is hung on the left and is withdrawn from the sheath with a sweeping motion of the right arm.

I've been thinking about this because I attended an early-music gathering (the Texas Toot) where we played a fantasia by the Elizabethan composer William Byrd. This piece, which is presumably based on a song or dance tune of the time, is mostly in 4/4 with an occasional 3/2 passage. However, from time to time it includes a 6/8 measure in the old troubadour style, the kind of jagged 6/8 measure where you have to stop and count the eighth-notes because it looks like something is missing. I figure that the Elizabethans danced with their swords on so that they could whip them out when the musicians tried playing measures like that during a dance.

So, who knows anything authoritative about the wearing of swords (or other weapons) by dancers?

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST,ozmacca
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 01:05 AM

In the days - say 16th to 18th century in Britain at any rate - when every gentleman wore a sword, and many who were not gentlemen also wore them, the sword itself changed drastically. From the fairly heavy general-purpose hack yer head off broadsword type it developed into a number of forms. Perhaps the most common of the variants for civilian use became the rapier - designed mostly for the thrust through yer body - which in turn became the light hangar for dress wear.

These were generally light and ornamented, although still a nasty piece of work if you were on the wrong end. This was the time when many arguments and quarrels were sorted out in a duel, and there being not a lot in the way of a police force around, and crime being a normal everday occupational risk, it paid to have a weapon handy. Many hangars were jewelled or had glass hilts, and gilt or silvered mounts and were carried in a dainty sheath or scabbard. This was usually worn on a cross belt from the right shoulder to left hip. Sometimes in the later period, it was thrust through loops under the flap of the coat pocket so that it stuck out behind the gent on the left side. The sword was usually worn with the hilt forward so that it could be grasped and drawn straight out from the sheath by the right hand, then the right hand would be brought back to the right side. Usually it was not swept out as this could cause "problems" to other occupants of a small space.

The right hand as the sword hand may be the reason for traffic in Britain today, and the rest of europe in pre-French Revolution days, passing each other right side to right side - so you could whip out a sword to defend yourself. Not easy trying to wield a sword across a horse's neck.

As no gentleman in his right mind would go anywhere unarmed, the sword was worn at all times in company, except possibly at court if the monarch decided that no weapons would be worn. In dancing, I suppose you just kept it out the way as best you could, and trusted to practice that everybody else would do the same.

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: Zorro
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 04:50 AM

You will probably get your answer before this happens, but in October of this year there is a South Texas Celtic Festival in Corpus Christi (Tx.) where I lived for a lot of years. Some friends there have a Scottish Country Dancing group. I can and will, if you like, print out your inquiry and see if anyone knows. I enjoy the dances but can't recall if any wore swords... Not much help I'm afraid. My e mail is [e-mail] Zorro

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: Noreen
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 06:11 AM

...danced with their swords on so that they could whip them out when the musicians tried playing measures like that during a dance.

Huh? To attack the musicians? That would seem rather unlikely; I imagine the change of tempo would be to fit in with the different steps of a formal dance. What was the Byrd piece?

Noreen

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 06:26 AM

Noreen, I think you missed the point. Leeneia was trying to be amusing; a skill sadly lacking in many threads.

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: Ringer
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 07:25 AM

I'm afraid you're misinformed, leeneia. In Playford dances, the woman is (almost) always on the man's right. She may (in Playford's time) always have been on the right, but modern preferences (eg in the dance Childegrove) have sometimes modified this (gentlemen, in general, don't like holding hands with other gentlemen). Whenever Andrew Shaw calls Childegrove, it's danced traditionally, all ladies on the right. (Whenever I call it, I use the modern format, but then, as I've said before, I go for most fun, not most traditional.)

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 10:41 AM

I'm back. Thank you, Ringer, for pointing out the basic error in my thread. If the lady is on the right and the sword is on the left, as Ozmacca informs us, then everything is back to rights -- the lady is on the side opposite the sword.

And yes, it was a jest about the aristo's pulling out their swords at the sound of the 6/8 measures. I'm sure that no musician of the time would even had ventured such a measure, given the risks involved. We class members were tempted to take action ourselves, but the only knives around were the dull butter knives from the cafeteria.

Noreen, the music was Fantazia Number 2 a 6 by William Byrd, supposedly copyright 1969 by Faber Music Ltd, 24 Russell Square, London WC1. It is a delightful, if challenging piece with, I believe, five lines in treble clef and one bass. (All I saw was my tenor-recorder part.)

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 11:09 AM

The lady was escorted on your left arm, so your right hand and arm were not hampered if accosted.

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 11:10 AM

Swords on the left, daggers on the right BTW

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 11:21 AM

In Winchester Cathedral in SE England rests the Round Table. One can read the legends, one can follow the code of chivalry, one can practice skill at arms. But one cannot sit at that table ever again. Unfortunately, but then any lady is still "safe" with me, I never go anywhere unarmed.

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: Les from Hull
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 12:10 PM

That would be 'a round table' rather than 'the Round Table' if you're referring to Arthurian legend, Guest.

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: Don Firth
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 12:27 PM

Sword worn on the left also accounts for a man's coat buttoning left over right. Since the sword (usually the light, elegant, and deadly "smallsword") was worn on the left, if suddenly attacked in the street, a gentleman could pull his coat open with the left hand (don't worry about popping buttons if someone's trying to kill you) and draw his sword with his right.

Much furniture from the period (eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries), such as tables, had a thin, right angled metal strip, usually brass, overlaid on the outer corners of the legs. This was to keep the wood from being nicked and chipped when a gentleman walked past or turned and his sword blade whacked the table leg. True, the sword was in it's scabbard, but the scabbard itself was slender and often made of metal.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 05:41 PM

Surely the greater risk would be from falling over the sword yourself? I don't believe they were worn for dancing, I can't recall seeing them in any painting or engraving I've seen of the Playford or any other country dances.

LTS

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST,ozmacca
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 06:26 PM

Isn't "country" dancing as practiced (and occasionally perfected) today actually a corruption of "contra" dancing and an adaptation by ordinary folks of the more courtly manouevres indulged in by the gentry (aharr yer honner - quick tug o' the forelock)? If this is the case - as I've always been given to understand, then it is the slower, more elegant dances which would be performed by gentlemen wearing swords, which is a whole lot more feasible than trying it with a strip-the -willow.

The livelier versions of the "contra' dances which were done by commoners could have developed their more exaggerated movements simply because they DIDN'T have to worry about three foot long steel bars sticking out behind the men. And the livelier dances are the ones normally performed today by "country" dancers.... certain of whom jump about over swords, if not actually with them.

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 07:50 PM

Some source I read about dancing said that "contra" is a corruption that developed when the French tried to say "country." Others think that "contra" developed from having two long lines of dances opposite each other.

So there's controversy here and too much contemplation is contraindicated.

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST,ozmacca
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 08:35 PM

Rather than be contrite, I think I'd go with "contra" as the origin, with images of lines of ladies and gentlemen in courtly 17th century dress performing intricate formal dances weaving in and out of the patterns and changing partners, flirting outrageously the while, and with French the courtly language over most of europe. Meanwhile, outside in the rain, the sturdy british peasants, in aping or lampooning their social betters, would strut about and put on exaggerated airs and graces to impress their rude fellows with their wit. They'd be more likely to corrupt the word "contra" into "country"....... well, they corrupted every thing else. Possibly, instead of carrying swords, which they couldn't have afforded anyway, they'd brandish sticks...... Oh no, I think I've just re-invented morris....

Thinking back about dancing with other weapons. many "primitive" native dances of course feature weapons, but I'd think these would be more likely to be intended to show the courage of the dancer - usually male - or celebrate the success of the battle or hunt etc. Hence hairy highlanders jumping about in wild abandon over the swords of the fallen enemy... or something.

And aren't there some old european dances which depict horses prancing and so on. And wasn't training your horse to prance about in certain ways actually training a weapon of war? So are these dances with (or at any rate about) weapons? Or is this getting too far off the track?

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: Yorkshire Tony
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 08:55 PM

Don't forget the sword dances of Northern England - the Rapper and Long Sword - where the swords are carried in the hands.

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST,ozmacca
Date: 13 Jun 02 - 09:09 PM

But isn't that just the locals itching for a punch-up with the people over the Wall.... or morris, which is much the same thing anyway?

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: IanC
Date: 14 Jun 02 - 05:04 AM

Ozmacca

Country Dancing isn't derived from Contra. The phrase is older.

:-)
Ian

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: ozmacca
Date: 14 Jun 02 - 05:25 AM

I shall stand (or sit, or kneel... anything but actually dance...) corrected. But if that's the case, when does the term "country dance" appear, other than as applied to the "folked up" - note the spelling - versions of court dancing?

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: IanC
Date: 14 Jun 02 - 05:53 AM

Oz

T'other way round ...

In a nutshell:

In Henry VIII and Eliz I's time, it became popular in court to dance the peasant dances of the countryside ... Eliz. I (and probably H) referred to these as Country Dances. Playford wrote them down (the earliy Playford dances are just that) with their tunes. Later, more were composed.

As far as I can remember, people from the French court saw the English dances and, Louis XIV being much enamoured with everything English, introduced them to the French court. The French apparently called them "Contra Danses".

To confuse things further, these were reintroduced into the English court in ?C18th

That's how I have it (don't have time now to find the supporting information as I'm preparing a visit to the BL).

Cheers!
Ian

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Jun 02 - 07:38 AM

Did not Morris dancers formerly carry swords, not sticks? Possibly only changed to sticks when the carrying of swords was banned (was it?)

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 14 Jun 02 - 08:29 AM

Ian: The BL - brother-in-law, brutal lawyer's, bucolic landscape?

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: IanC
Date: 14 Jun 02 - 09:12 AM

Sorry - British Library.

;-)
Ian

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: Don Firth
Date: 14 Jun 02 - 12:29 PM

Despite Hollywood, the idea of the peasantry carrying swords is pretty dubious. A peasant would be doing pretty well to own a good knife, which he would use for practically everything (sometimes his only eating utensil other than his hands). Swords were expensive. Back in medieval times and later, acquiring a halfway decent broadsword would be about as expensive as buying an automobile these days. Rapiers weren't cheap either, nor were the French and English smallswords (a lighter, more elegant descendant of the rapier) and were very much the gentleman's accessory (fencing lessons were de rigueur for gentlemen). So the peasantry storming the castle with swords in their hands--or dancing with swords in the town square--strikes me as strictly Hollywood history.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: Pied Piper
Date: 15 Jun 02 - 06:39 AM

Fascinating stuff. Are there any sources of 16/17 century peasant dances and tunes, not rearranged for posh people? I've got "John of the Greeny Cheshire Way" and a lot of the tunes sound to me like they've bean poshed up. PP

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 15 Jun 02 - 08:32 AM

Dance tunes from that period survive mainly in what you would call "posh" settings; I expect there are contemporary descriptions of peasant dances to be found, but it's not a subject I know much about. MS collections of tunes made by fiddlers turn up all the time, but most are 19th century.

Not an answer to your question, but relevant to it; there are two papers by Paul Roberts examining pre-Victorian English fiddle styles at The Village Music Project which you may find helpful:

English fiddle styles 1650-1850: reconstructing pre-Victorian technique

Subject: RE: Help: swords and country dancing
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 15 Jun 02 - 10:36 AM

Thanks, Ian. I'll remember that BL is British Library. ---------- Everyone seems to be assuming that "country dancing" necessarily involves the poor and the rustic, while there were well-off and important people who had impressive country homes. Country dancing probably sprang from them.

In the Eliz. era, many (most?) of the country homes of the gentry were built in the shape of an E seen from above, and the spine of the E on the top floor was one long room, now called the long gallery. The author (architect-type) of the book where I read about this was baffled by these galleries, but I knew what they were for -- for doing long dances.

Remember that in this era, ballet was being born in the French court. It was natural for people to distinguish between the simpler, more "democratic" country dancing and the fancy dancing developing in France which required professionals and formal training.

Liz the Squeak is right, however. So far nobody has mentioned an authoritative source which answers the question of whether swords, etc, were worn while dancing. I'm thinking in terms of a book, letter or law from the period which addresses this matter.