Christmas Hornpipe

After my last experience with hornpipes, it's nice to have a contra recommended for tunes called hornpipes without having to hunt down or worry unduly about the music!  

"Christmas Hornpipe" is the name of the tune in the image below, taken from Elias Howe's Improved Edition of the Musician's Omnibus (Boston, 1861).  Click to enlarge.

Whether to call the figures "Christmas Hornpipe" is a more ambiguous question, since they appear with other tunes as well (more on this below), reused in the same way figures were in the extended Regency era, from at least 1858 through the mid-1890s.

For those who don't want to squint -- the font is pretty small even on the original -- here's the original language of the figures:

First lady balance to 1st and 2d gentleman at same time, swing 3 hands round, 1st gent. balance to 1st and 2d ladies, swing 3, 1st couple down the centre, back, and cast off, right and left four.

This a very straightforward contra dance to reconstruct.  The setup is a proper line of couples, gentlemen on one side and ladies on the other.  Technically, it was probably danced triple minor, with the third couple in each minor set having nothing to do, but, that being the case, I'd go ahead and dance it duple minor.  

The "snowball" start, where only the first couple in the set begins and the dance spreads down the set until everyone is moving (see discussion here) was still typical in this era, but Elias Howe recommended having the entire set begin at once, so that's also a valid performance option.

Reconstruction - thirty-two bar proper contra
4b    Active lady balance to the two gentlemen
4b    Those three circle to the left once round
4b    Active gentleman balance to the two ladies
4b    Those three circle to the left once round
4b    Active couple take two hands and four-slide galop down the center and back
4b    Active couple cast off one place
8b    Active couple right and left with the couple above (original second couple)

A few performance notes:

• For the balancing, I lean toward having just the active lady or gentleman move, while the two "target" dancers stay put.  Otherwise this tends to mutate into "first couple balances second gentleman/lady", which is a different figure.  Four small steps (three and a close) forward and the same back is a fine method of balancing (and works well if all three dancers move, too), but the active dancer could also balance right and left twice with simple sideways steps and closes.
  
  
• The four-slide galop (1&2&3&4 each way) down the center is one of the ways of performing this figure in the nineteenth century and prevents dancers from taking more than four bars on this move, as tends to happen when it is walked, and thereby shorting the casting off.
  
  
• My best guess is that the right and left is done with hands, as discussed here.

For those not wanting the Christmasy title, or looking for a different tune or a change tune, the same figures appear attached at least four other pieces: "Vinton's Hornpipe", "Thunder Hornpipe", "Shunster's Hornpipe", and "Speed the Plow" (also spelled "Plough").  "Vinton's" actually seems to be the most common tune, though my sample size isn't large enough to determine that definitively.  

I haven't been able to find "Shunster's", but here are the other two hornpipes, again taken from Howe's Improved Edition of the Musician's Omnibus.  I've left the figures on so readers can see that they are, in fact, the same.  Click to enlarge the images.

Notice that "Vinton's" is in 4/4 rather than 2/4.  Both ways of writing a hornpipe were found in the nineteenth century.  The bars-per-minute tempo should be about the same, regardless.

"Speed the Plow" is found with other figures as well, and are rarely paired with these, so I have not included it here.

Some sources for these figures, with the tunes with which they are paired

Elias Howe. Complete Ball-Room Handbook.  (Boston, 1858)
    Vinton's

Elias Howe. Improved Edition of the Musician's Omnibus (Boston, 1861)
    Christmas, Thunder, Vinton's

Elias Howe. American Dancing Master, and Ball-Room prompter (Boston, 1862)
    Christmas, Vinton's

H. G. O. Washburn. The Ball Room Manual of Contra Dances and Social Cotillons (Belfast, Maine, and Boston, 1863)
   Speed the Plough

Manuscript commonplace book of country dances and cotillions held in Essex, Massachusetts.  (unknown origin, c1854-1865)
    Speed the Plough

John M. Schell.  Prompting, How To Do It.  (New York/Boston/Chicago, 1890)   
    Christmas, Shunster's, Thunder, Vinton's

Elias Howe.  New American Dancing Master (later editon)  Boston, 1892.
    Christmas, Vinton's

Anonymous.  Gems of the Ball Room Call Book (Chicago, 1896)
    Speed the Plough (with the casting off erroneously moved to the end of the dance)

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate this week!

 

Comments

[Valery]

Why it should be triple minor? In mid-19century there are lots of duple minor dances, e.g. Spanish Dances and Circassion Cirle.

[Susan de Guardiola]

The mid-century Spanish Dance and Circassian Circle were both danced in "couple facing couple" formation. With standard-formation contras, dance writers often suggest waiting for to start until the active couple has gone down three couples. That makes them triple minor in practice even if there are no figures for the third couple in each minor set. Howe, for example, suggests that in simultaneous starts every fourth couple start, which means three-couple minor sets:

It is usual for those at the foot of the set to wait until the first couple has passed down, and they have arrived at the head of the set; but there is no good reason why they should so wait, as every fourth couple commence at the same time as the first couple.

But he also gives some reasoning for when one might want to dance a dance with no figures for the third couple as a duple minor, which is why I feel it's reasonable to do so:

Country dances most always require two couples to go through the figure; where all are perfectly acquainted with the dance, they can continue the figure without leaving a neutral couple, otherwise it would be more convenient for the couples who follow, to let the head couple pass down three couples before commencing.