The Washington times., 1894-12-26
ORIGIN OF DANCES.
How the Jig, the Country Dance, the Ian
GERS and Others Came into Being.

How the Jig, the Country Dance, the Ian
GERS and Others Came into Being.
Our national pride should to some extent
be satisfied by the admission, in which ali
foreign exponents OF the code of Terpsichore
are unanimous. that the French ''contre-
danse" Is a deportation from England and is a
corruption of our country dance and old
English rural exercitation belonging to
Maypole times says, writer in London Tele-
graph.
With equal frankness our neiGbbors ac-
knowledge that they owe the zig to John Bull,
although their etymology of the word is some
what eccentric. They speliit ''gigue,' for the
reason that the rapid bounding movements of
the dance agitate the top of the cali OF the
leg. or "gigot;' but although 'jigot' is a
wel-known ScottIcism for a leg of mutton,
"gigue' is synonymous with the old English
word gig which meaas 4 fiddle, any little
thing which is whrled around in q play q
top q romp, long, narrow rowing hoat. a
one-horse chaise, and short dart or har-
poon. According to old Tusser, in his Five
Hundred Points of Husbandrv, 'fisgig' or
''fshgig,' was common name for dog,
and it is toerably clear that the verb Ito gig
gle,' meaning to lsugh 10 a rapid and inele-
giant manner, is also derived from gig"
The gavoite is French dance racy Of the
soil and derives its name from the Givots, q
race OF mountaineers in the enyirous OF Gap,
while "ls.aefs rigaCoon.' the meaning of
which so sorely puzzled English eighteenth
century critics. is simply dance called the
rigodon. invented by one Rigaud, dancing
master OF Marselles.
Tie saraband, SO often written about and
so little understood. was a grave and noble
dance of Spanish origin. in which Ninon de
PEncios was Il charming proficient, accom-
] u
while the coranto, in which Charles IL ex-
celled is only an adaptation of the Spanish
seguidiila. When the allied armies invaded
! France in 1914 they found that the favorite
! dance, both in the most aristocratic salons
and the humblest vile guinguettes were the
| "contredanse," which is an English pastime,
| and the quadrille, the development of the
! namely, the "poule," the ''pantalon," the
''ete, y the "pastourelle" and the ''trenise, or
"trenltz' Cthelast possibly the name of a Ger
/ man dancing master r)-have long been the de-
! spair of philologists, nor. again, should it be
| forgotten that under the restoration this now
! almost non-dancing England Of ours favored
| France with a delightful dance called the
! lancers. probably so called because it was
/ favored by the officers OF British light-cavalry
regiments.
For some ineXplicable reason the lancers
| were hung up early ill the Victorian era, but
! come twenty years ago or so the lancers, tC
the intense qualification of all lovers Of a
most graceful rhythmical exercise, were re-
vived. The allied armies brought with them
the waltz, which prior 10 1914 had been
danced at Almacks and bitterly satirized by
| Byron.
Modern French experts however, assever-
! ate that the waltz is q very old Provence
dance, which so far back as the twelfth cen
fury was known as the volta, but however
that may be, it seems undeniable that th'
world-famous polka, which the dancing mas
ter, Coulon, introduced into France about
1874, and which owed much of its popularity
to its figures being illustrated by the brilliant
pencil of Gavarni, originally came from Po-
land or Hungary or from some remote dis
/ trict OF Southeastern Europe