CHAPTER 2 | SONG, DANCE, AND HOME MUSIC MAKING 49
considered a social accomplishment that was possible only through instruction;
those who did so thus had enough leisure time and money for lessons. By 1725,
however, country dancing, a forerunner of square dancing and later New En-
gland contra dancing, had come into favor in England and the American colonies.
Especially popular were “longways” dances, in which a line of men faced a line of
women and patterns were traced collectively by the whole group.
As an extension of Britain’s social structure, colonial society sought to follow
Old World models in formal events like balls and banquets. The courtly French
minuet, for example, might begin a ball, danced by the most important guests;
other couple dances might follow. The rest of the evening was often given over
to country dances, whose popularity increased on both sides of the Atlantic
through the 1700s. But apparently these dances were not free from implications
of class hierarchy either. In 1768 formal balls were discontinued for a time in
New York “when consorts of General Gage and Governor Moore could not agree
on who should stand fi rst in a country dance.”
Music for country dances, like the dances themselves, came from overseas,
especially from the Anglo-Celtic traditions of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
The music circulated both orally and in written form, including printed collec-
tions and manuscripts that musicians copied for their own use. The jig “Irish
Washerwoman,” for example, survives in many
eighteenth-century copies, domestic and for-
eign, in print and in manuscript; several dif-
ferent longways country dances for the tune
have turned up in American sources. Some of
the tunes date back to the 1600s, and as already
noted, broadside ballads sometimes borrowed
their melodies from dance.
Another favorite country dance tune of the
era was “College Hornpipe,” which, like “Irish
Washerwoman” and such ballads as “The Span-
ish Lady,” survived changes of musical fashion.K British artist William
Hogarth’s painting The
Dance (ca. 1745) depicts a
“longways” country dance.K Dance in a Country
Ta v e r n, by German-
American painter John Lewis
Krimmel (1786–1821).172028_02_044-062_r3_ko.indd 49 23/01/13 8:13 PM