Dancing to "The Bishop"

I recently attended a modern English country dance evening and happened to dance what in modern tradition is known "The Bishop", done to the tune "Miss Dolland's Delight".  As can be deduced from the title of this post, I would phrase that differently, but I'll get to that later on.

I play a little private game at modern dance events of trying to guess the decade of those dances that are based on historical sources and then figure out what (if anything) has been done to modernize them beyond removing the historical steps in favor of walking.  "The Bishop" was easy to guess as 1770s (it turns out to be from 1778).  It was also very easy for me to spot the three biggest modifications to it. 

Ready to play?

Here are the directions for the modern dance:

A1    1st Man cast to middle place, set to & turn 3rd Woman with 2 hands, finishing in middle place
A2    1st Woman the same with 3rd Man
B1    1st Couple gate up through 2nd Couple as 3rd Couple gypsy clockwise, then circle hands 6 L half way round
B2    1st Couple gate up through 3rd Couple as 2nd Couple gypsy clockwise, then circle hands 6 L half way round

It may be easier to visualize these figures with the help of a video.  Here's one that's well-made and shows the modern figures clearly.  The music is "Miss Dolland's Delight".

Can you pick out the three big modernizations aside from everyone just walking through it?

It's easy, right?

1. There's a "meanwhile" figure, meaning a couple not involved with the active couple's figure independently dances an unrelated figure
2. And that figure is a gypsy.
3. There are "gates", where the couple at top helps the active couple lead through and cast around them by turning them

Bzzt!

Taking them one at a time:

1. "Meanwhile" figures.  There are "meanwhile" figures where different couples or dancers are doing different things in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  But they tend to be along the lines of one couple or dancer moving down the set while the other moves up, followed by the two couples or dancers reversing roles.  Having a completely isolated and unrelated "meanwhile" figure for the bottom couple is at best extraordinarily rare.  At worst...well, I can't actually recall ever seeing one in this period, and I've looked at thousands of dance figures.  This is a very typical modernization; it gives some action to a couple who doesn't have much to do.  Not having a lot to do while not the active was not such a big problem in the eighteenth century, but modern dancers seem to have very low boredom thresholds.

2. Gypsy, the dance figure.  This is a term which is rapidly falling out of use because it's considered an offensive ethnic slur, but there seems to be no consensus about a replacement word for circling each other without taking hands while staring at each other.  I'm relieved that I can avoid ever using it at historical events, because I've never seen convincing evidence that it predates Cecil Sharp's revival/reinterpretation of country dance in the early twentieth century.  So it's a big red flag for modernization, or at least very dubious reconstruction.  (Edited 6/13/23 to add: I've since come across historical evidence for the use of the term gypsy in country dancing in the 18th and early 19th centuries, but it didn't mean the modern figure, and there's still no need for me to use it.)

3. "Gates."  The name alone makes me suspicious, and while the figure may or may not have existed earlier in the eighteenth century, the early decades of which I haven't studied as intensively as the later ones, I have never, ever seen it anytime after 1770.  And it's weird, by period standards.  There were lots of "lead through" figures going every which way, but they were figures for the active couple.  Involving another couple is simply unnecessary. Another big red flag.

Another minor issue for me is the breaking of the circling so that all the dancers are briefly improper.  That's not a definite problem, but it does feel a bit odd.

The one thing that is not a problem for me, as any long-term Kickery reader or knowledgeable dancer/dance historian knows, is using a different tune.  I don't know why the original modernizer chose that particular tune, which is a bit older (1765) and, in my opinion, less appealing than the original (I'm very partial to jigs).  Here's another video where the dancers are actually dancing to "The Bishop", so you can judge for yourself. 

Swapping around tunes and figures was a legitimate historical practice, and both "Miss Dolland's Delight" and "The Bishop" were later reprinted in the same 1780 collection: Thompson's Compleat Collection of 200 Fashionable Country Dances. Vol. 4, so this particular substitution is not even as unlikely as the thirteen-year gap between original publication dates at first makes it seem.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now, about those figures. 

As can be seen in the videos, the modern dance gets trotted out for Jane Austen/Regency events; I pulled the instructions above from the program for a Jane Austen ball.  I'm delighted that they were making a good-faith effort to use material from the correct era, which (alas!) is more than many events do.  But that faith was a bit misplaced with this particular modern interpretation, which is an excellent example of how even starting from a historical source one can end up with ahistorical results. 

As an exercise, and just in case any such events are interested in a more historical reconstruction, let's take a look and see what was done to the dance to modernize it and how it can be undone.

First off, the modern version is attributed to W. S. Porter, and was published in The Apted Book of Country Dances (1931) and later reprinted in The Playford Ball (1990), which is easily available.  I don't have a copy of Apted, but I do have The Playford Ball, and the instructions there are essentially what I gave above, with a bit more detail here and there (the first man starts with his right foot when casting) and the "gates" figure described without the term "gates", which once more makes me suspect that the term is twentieth-century.  

Now let's look at the original.  Here's a facsimile from Thompson's Compleat Collection of 200 Fashionable Country Dances. Vol. 4., which is exactly the same as its earlier publication in [Thompson's] Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1778.

Here are the figures sorted out into eight-bar units.  The little symbols representing the strain repeats are ASCII approximations because for some reason modern fonts do not include eighteenth century symbols.

The 1st. Gent cast off and turn the 3d. Lady .|. 
1st. Lady cast off and turn the 3d. Gent. :|.
lead thro' the top and cast off .|:
hands 6 quite round :|:

The first thing to notice is what figures are missing: gates and gypsies.  Fancy that! 

There's also no setting, which allows a more time for the casting off.  And the circling ("hands 6") is not split; there's one "lead through" figure and then a full circle ("quite round"), not two leads-through and two half-circles.  I can see why they made some of the changes they did in modernizing it; it seems like a lot of music to fill.

So how would I reconstruct the dance?  Here's my version, using the same "AABB" breakdown to indicate the first eight-bar strain played twice followed by the second:

Figures for "The Bishop"
A1    4b   Active gentleman cast off (2b) and slide sideways down the set (2b) to second place (second gentleman moves up as usual in progression)
         4b   Active gentleman turn third lady by two hands
A2    8b   Active lady does all of the above, turning the third gentleman (second lady moves up as usual)
B1    8b   Active couple (progressed) lead through the couple above them and cast back down to progressed places again
B2   8b   All six join hands and circle completely around to the left

Notes
1. The third couple doesn't have much to do, and the second couple has even less.  This is typical of dance figures of this era.  The focus was primarily on the active couple.  But the dance would run long enough for every couple to get to be active all the way down the set.

2. I talked years ago about some different ways to cast off.  If there were less music for it, I'd prefer the "modern" version described in Dukes (1752), a simple slide down the set, as I described here.  But four bars is just too much music for that, so I'm going with the older version which at some point between 1752 and the Regency era came back into style.  Two bars to cast off, turning completely round and ending slightly behind the line of dancers.  Two bars of sliding sideways down the set to second place.  

3. The lead through.  There are actually some fun possibilities for this as far as hand-holds and direction of travel.  One could even make time for some setting, since once again there is a generous amount of music available.  To keep it simple: the active couple joins inside hands (facing up the set) and travels up to the top, separates, and curls back down to the second place again, making one continuous curving path.  Use all of the music -- don't separate too early, and make nice big loops at the side to arrive in places just in time for the hands six round.  I think this would be a nicer figure if it were "lead through top and bottom", but there are many examples in this era of a single lead through/cast off taking eight measures.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A final note: I get tired of repeating myself on this topic, so I'll only do it very briefly here, since the point of this post is really just the difference between modernized and historical figures. 

The short version:

Historically, this would not have been a dance called "The Bishop" in the sense of a locked-together tune and set of figures.  Calling for "The Bishop" would have gotten only the music, not a set of specific figures.  The lady or couple calling the dance would have selected the figures they wished to dance, which might have been those printed with the tune...or not.  And they would select a tune, which might be the one printed with those figures...or not.  This is why substituting "Miss Dolland's Delight" doesn't bother me at all.

I've discussed this at more length, with examples, here and here.

Comments

[Gene Murrow]

Great post!! Thanks

Gene M

[Susan de Guardiola]

Thanks, Gene!