Hello Matt Firstly, many thanks to you and other kind bods for letting me know the thing got through and to Wayne for explaining the problem. I have to stress it isn't me but rather the etymologists at the OED who are suggesting that rant in terms of dance & music has a possible derivation from a 16th century dance. This does seem, perhaps, more plausible than other possibilities so far on offer. What I'm taken with is the idea of the gliding action - I've been to dances in Whittingham, Glanton, Low Barton, Bolton, Netherton, Wooler.....and haven't seen the old dancers 'stomp' a rant. I'm wondering if the gliding courant was akin to that other celebrated gliding step the pas de bas (both in triple time). If so, a courrant danced to a slow Shields Hornpipe might have evolved into a rant by upping the tempo a tad. This would explain how Shield's Hornpipe became known as the Morpeth Rant and why the courrant had '... hath twise so much in a straine, as the English country daunce'. Who knows? I'm merely throwing my thoughts into the pot. This is, for me at least, a fascinating topic but one which my limited experience/knowledge does not equip me well for researching. Undoubtedly there will be unanswerable questions but people like your goodself might offer more accurate/likely ideas. Cheers Anthony --- On Tue, 12/7/11, Matt Seattle <theborderpi...@googlemail.com> wrote:
From: Matt Seattle <theborderpi...@googlemail.com> Subject: Re: [NSP] Rants To: "Anthony Robb" <anth...@robbpipes.com> Cc: "Dartmouth NPS" <nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu> Date: Tuesday, 12 July, 2011, 20:19 Yes it got through but with some strange text added (EURYEN every so often). Interesting references Anthony. Do I take it you are identifying the Rant with the Courant(e)? Interesting how one can find diverging etymologies which converge strangely. Cheers Matt -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html