Nigel Gatherer wrote: > Perhaps it was a rare occurrence, but he certainly wrote some. I have a > book - The Galloway Album - published by Foss in which are four of his > tunes. Strange from a musician's point of view, because all have four > 6-bar sections. I've no doubt it makes perfect sense from a dancing > p.o.v. - my woeful ignorance of dancing hampers me once again!
Nigel, you piqued my interest on this one because Foss is one of my favorite dance devisors so I checked this out in Alan Paterson's DanceData database. It appears that Laurieston and the other 3 tunes from this book are all name tunes for Foss' dance Cairn Edward Jig. This dance is a 24-bar 3-couple jig which is unusual in that like the tune it's comprised of 3-bar figures. I don't know of any other dance written this way, although since Alan's database now contains over 10,000 dances there must be some! Scottish country dancers tend to shy away from figures having odd number of bars, I suppose because of the problem of remembering which foot to start on. However, this dance looks like it would flow well, like all Foss' dances that I've encountered, and the steps do make perfect sense even though all the figures are familiar ones that are normally done with an even number of steps. Unfortunately, I still couldn't find anything on The Lilly of the Vale. -Steve -- Steve Wyrick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- Concord, California Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
