Sellenger's Round
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English country dance
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
"Sellenger's Round", also known as "St. Leger's Round" and<br> "The Beginning of the World" is an English and Irish country dance tune<br> in 6/8 time and G Major.<br> Kidson says “Sellenger’s Round” is a 16th century tune and<br> round dance of unknown authorship, which had immense popularity in the 16th and<br> 17th centuries. It has been called “a singularly perfect example of a<br> Mixolydian (tune) superficially resembling a major-scale melody” (Walker, 1924).<br> Flood (1906) states that Sir John Hawkins saw it danced in Ireland in 1540<br> when he retired eight years later he brought the dance back to England with him,<br> "where its popularity was so great it was arranged by the famous master<br> Dr. William Byrd". Flood further argues the English Round ("Sellenger's Round")<br> and Country Dance had origins as the Irish "Heie" or "Hey". Merryweather<br> dates it later and states that "the most plausible explanation" for the<br> tune's beginnings is that it originated in Ireland around 1590, and agrees<br> with Kidson that the original title was "St. Leger's Round." Kidson thinks the<br> original dance was a May-pole dance, and offers as evidence a rude wood-cut<br> on the title-page of a 17th century ‘Garland’ (i.e. songster), where figures<br> are depicted dancing round a May-pole with the title “Hey for Sellenger’s Round”<br> inscribed above them. <br> Chappell (1859) finds numerous references to it in the literature of the late<br> sixteenth and early seventeenth century, some indicating it had been a<br> long-established and very popular air in England and quotes a<br> passage from Bacchus' Bountie (1593):<br> While thus they tippled, the fiddler he fiddled, and the pots<br> danced for joy the old hop-about commonly called 'Sellenger's Round'.<br> The Englisn composer William Byrd's arrangement appears in Lady Neville's<br> Manuscript book of 1590 and the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book of 1610 and is the<br> one used by Cecil Sharp in his Country Dance Tunes (1909). Other early versions<br> appear in William Ballet's Lute Book of 1594 and Musick's Handmaid of 1678.<br> It retained its popularity as a dance and ballad tune from this latter 16th<br> century period through the next century when it was published by Playford in<br> his Dancing Master editions.<br> It was also printed in Barnes's English Country Dance Tunes (1986),<br> Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, vol. 1 (1859),<br> Fleming-Williams's English Dance Airs; Popular Selection, Book 1 (1965),<br> Karpeles & Schofield's A Selection of 100 English Folk Dance Airs (1951),<br> Merryweather's Merryweather’s Tunes for the English Bagpipe (1989),<br> Raven's English Country Dance Tunes (1984) and Sharp's Country Dance Tunes (1909).<br>
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