Songs of the Carolina Charter Colonists, 1663-1763

[67]

CHAPTER VI

Notes On Dancing, Music, And The Musical Instruments

By JOAN MOSER

[From “Instrumental Folk Music of the Southern Appalachians: Traditional Fiddle Tunes,” Master of Arts Thesis in the Department of Music, The University of North Carolina, 1962.]

Blending with the rich cultural traditions of folk singing and balladry brought to America by the early colonists was an equally bountiful and beautiful tradition of folk dancing, and the accompanying dance melodies, sometimes sung when no instruments were available, often played on the fiddle, more rarely on the dulcimer.

Much less of this tradition has been collected than is the case with the folksongs and ballads; however, recent research indicates that the dances and their music may perhaps be the most tenaciously preserved and most persistently neglected of the folk arts still surviving in the country generally.

Certain it is that among the prime social functions in which the colonists as a group might participate—church-going, weddings, house-raisings, bean shellings, and corn huskings—the latter four undoubtedly climaxed their evenings with dancing that featured the figures, steps, and melodies retained from ancient old-world tradition.

In England, the earliest published collection of popular dance tunes and the dance patterns to which they were fitted was The English Dancing Master, published in 1650 by John Playford. This modest little book, containing the description of 104 dances, won so great a popularity that, under the modified title of The Dancing Master, it ran [68] through eighteen editions, the last of which, dated 1728, contained upwards of seven hundred dances.

Generally, these were not composed dances, although when they reached the dignity of the king’s court they might take on stylistic traits of dances from the continent. These dances were known as English Country Dances, and had been danced by English peasants long before they were introduced at the king’s court. By the time Playford recorded them, they had evolved into a highly developed art form complete with courtesy movement and precise melodic phrasing which joined its beauty to the dance movements.

The titles for the dances were synonymous with the tune titles and included names with Highland connotations, such as Bonnets So Blue, Piper’s Fancy, and The Flowers of Edinburgh. Others bore such fanciful titles that there is hardly any way to place them geographically—The Butterfly, Haste to the Wedding, Nancy’s Fancy, and Gathering Peascods.

Many of them hark back to ancient times when dance was an integral part of religious rituals, and the melodies and figures reflect this inheritance, surviving also in children’s singing games.

Another country dance form, older than many of these dances popularized by The Dancing Master, is the square dance, also brought to America by the early colonists. Cecil Sharp describes this in the fifth volume of his dance collection called The Country Dance Book. Mr. Sharp states that “apart from its innate beauty and its many artistic qualities,” this dance is “especially interesting in that it represents one particular phase in the development of the Country-dance of which, hitherto, nothing has been known.” He then goes on to suggest that this American square dance, no longer to be found in England, is an example of an earlier and almost extinct type containing indubitably ancient figures which [69] had their beginnings in sacrificial pagan worship ceremonies. These figures, still danced today, such as the Figure-eight, Birdie in the Cage, Wind Up the Ball of Yarn, and The Wild Goose Chase, are typical of such ancient lineage.

The dance tunes for the square dance have originated both in America and in England. Some of the earlier British tunes now have American titles which reflect their adaptation to a homespun environment. The tune Bile Them Cabbage Down is really a British tune, The Keel Row; Soldier’s Joy is an ancient Morris dance tune which has been collected also on the continent, as were Fire on the Mountain and Bonaparte’s Retreat. Surviving as well are such fine old horn-pipe tunes as Fisher’s Hornpipe, Sailor’s Hornpipe, and the Devil’s Dream.

Among the early colonists of America, musical instruments were rarely numbered among the functional items essential to pioneer and frontier living, and few European instruments made their way into the country at that time. Nevertheless, skilled craftsmen in wood-working and inventive people with musical inclinations soon began to produce home-made varieties of stringed instruments in imitation of those they remembered from the past. These were not always of superior workmanship, but they served the purpose of entertainment after strenuous hours of work, and this was all that was asked of them, after all.

One of their most original inventions was the gourd fiddle. The gourd members of the melon family, introduced to the colonists by the American Indians, were planted at the edge of pioneer gardens along a split-rail fence. The gourds as they grew were hung on the rails in various positions so that the handle would develop according to the use for which it was “trained”—water dipper, storage utensil, home-made [70] fiddle. Upon maturation, the total lengths varied from eighteen to twenty-four inches. After harvesting, the gourds were hollowed out and dried, and strings were stretched across to reach the curved neck, where home-made tuning pegs were attached. In spite of the crude construction, the better-made gourd fiddles emitted a certain resonance.