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