Wrapping up my little series on extended-Regency-era oddities, let's talk about an unusual version of the English finishing dance, Sir Roger de Coverley! This is one of the rare dances where tune and dance are so tightly associated that it's reasonable to give the dance the tune name.
I discussed a typical Regency-era version of the classic Sir Roger de Coverley figure long, long ago. Since then, I've accumulated a number of other versions of the figure with the same characteristic elements: opening figures performed on the long diagonals followed by whole-set figures that end with the original top couple progressed to the bottom. I've written up a couple of later nineteenth century versions here and here.
Now, this is not to say that there were never any other, more typical, country dance figures set to the "Roger de Coverley" tune. In its earliest appearance with dance figures in the ninth edition of Playford's The Dancing Master, published in 1695, it is printed with a normal progressive figure, completely unrelated to the later dance. One hundred and thirty years after that, a different figure, very generic-Regency, was published with it in Analysis of the London Ball-Room (printed for Thomas Tegg, London, 1825). Never underestimate the willingness of music publishers and dancers, to recycle a tune.
But there's one set of figures I've found printed with "Sir Roger de Coverley" which is a real oddity:
Six Ladys Dance Round the Six Gent. the Gent: do the same, Hand Six Round & Pousette.
These figures were published with a two-strain version of "Sir Roger de Coverly" [sic], with minor note and rhythm variations, in Hamilton's Fashionable Country Dances for 1805 (London, A. Hamilton). It is noted next to the title with "The Original Set", as is one other piece in the same book. My best guess is that this refers to the music, for which a two-strain version is something like "original", the third strain not having appeared until later. The dance figure is certainly not either the original or the oldest. And it's very difficult to know what to make of it!
The most sensible interpretation of the opening figures in which six ladies lead round six gentlemen and vice-versa is that these are whole-set figures for a six-couple set. Six-couple sets are actually very typical for country dances in America later in the nineteenth century, though one can't use that as definitive evidence for earlier practice. The other possibility -- that this is a sextuple minor dance -- is too horrible to contemplate...except that the next section consists of perfectly normal country dance figures: hands six round followed by a poussette to progress. If the active couple progresses only one place with each iteration, as this seems to indicate, then we're back to it being a sextuple minor dance, with the first couple being active six times before a new couple begins. Matching the figure to the music, which has two four-bar strains of 9/8 with repeats (AABB) would give us something like:
AABB 16b Six ladies lead round six gentlemen
AABB 16b Six gentlemen lead round six ladies
AA 8b Hands six round
BB 8b Poussette (progressive)
With that amount of time, I would expect the poussette to be like Thomas Wilson's "whole poussette", once and a half round, rather than just half round, for the progression.
Now, I'm extremely tolerant of lengthy dances and waiting out in the cause of historical accuracy, but the idea of dancing a sextuple minor progression in a long set seems absolutely deranged to me. In a set of eight couples (a very reasonable, even short, length, historically speaking) it would be repeated, if my math is correct, forty-nine times, with quite a lot of waiting out. I don't even want to think about a twelve-couple set. Or longer. Or the reaction of musicians to the whole idea.
So perhaps it's a whole-set dance for six couples after all? If danced in a six-couple set, each couple would be active five times, for thirty times through the dance, with a fairly large proportion of waiting-out time as fewer couples are involved in the lead-round figures each time. That's somewhat less ridiculous, but it's still fifty percent longer than a regular triple minor (twenty times through for a six-couple set) and I don't feel much urge to dance it.
Of course, there's also the possibility that the book was badly edited and the dance figures just don't work in any reasonable way. Never discount that possibility in country dance tune books! Sometimes making sense of printed figures is an exercise in futility. For the most part, they just weren't that important to music publishers, and were treated accordingly. Just change the opening figures to "Three ladies lead round", etc., and the problem goes away!
But since specifying "six" in the opening figures is weird enough that it seems unlikely to be pure carelessness, and since I feel stubborn enough to keep trying, let's try thinking outside the box a bit. From here on we enter the land of the Highly Speculative!
To match the usual format of Sir Roger de Coverley, at the end of each iteration of the dance, the top couple needs to progress to the bottom. Make that happen, and we have a dance which repeats six times, led once by each couple, which is actually extremely short for a historical country dance. But that's better, or at least more practical, than ludicrously long, and one could always run through the set a second time.
But all we have for the progression is that poussette. I can think of two possibilities to make it work for a full-set progression:
(1) the active couple is supposed to do the hands six round and poussette all the way to the bottom of the set. So, hands six round with the next two couples, poussette to progress one place, then hands six round with the next two couples, and so on to the bottom of the set (hands six and poussette five times total, the last time being only hands four), at which point the new top lady collects the other ladies and leads round to begin a new sequence.
This has the virtue of being a lot more lively for the other couples, as they mostly get to do hands six round repeatedly (the second couple only does it once, but they are the next to lead off) and all of the couples get to poussette in each iteration.
(2) the hands six round is only done once, followed by the active couple weaving all the way to the bottom in an extended sequence of poussettes halfway round, back and forth across the set, all the other couples eventually moving up one place to restart the dance. There's an example of this sort of weaving poussette sequence in Le Grand-père (The Grandfather), a French version of a continental finishing dance. In that dance, all the couples in turn rise to the top of the set and poussette-weave down so that everyone ends up back where they began, but it could be performed with just a single couple weaving down the set, in a path much like that of a single dancer in the cross-and-cast part of the more common Regency-era figure.
This makes for a shorter dance with less action for the other couples, and it requires less adaptation of the original instructions. But the only French sources I have with this figure date from 1819, which is rather late to be using for an 1805 dance. Le Grand-père clearly has folk dance roots, and there are versions going back to at least 1780 in French and German sources, so it's not impossible that the poussette-down-the-set figure is older, but the actual figure does not appear in any older source that I possess. And, of course, it's not quite the same, since I'm having only the top couple perform it.
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I can't choose in any meaningful way between these last two options, or even support them as high-quality reconstructions. All I can really call them is interesting speculations that are at least conceivable given what I know of period dance figures and practices and make for more interesting dances than the conservative interpretations given above. I don't normally like to post such speculations, or reconstruction problems that I can't really solve, but I don't foresee myself coming up with anything better in the future. And given lack of excitement in the conservative versions and the speculative nature of the others, I most probably will choose not to dance any of them.
One thing I will say with a fair amount of confidence: when Sir Roger de Coverley is mentioned as having been danced at a ball, these were not the figures they performed. They would have danced some variation on the "classic" figures, which were as standardized as any dance ever became in this era.
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