Childgrove: A Song History
"Childgrove" is an English country dance tune that first appeared in 1701, in the eleventh edition of The Dancing Master issued by the London publisher Henry Playford.[1] It remained in each later edition until the series ended with the eighteenth in 1728, and Walsh also printed it in the Compleat Country Dancing Master, in editions of 1718 and 1747.[1] The Traditional Tune Archive gives its mode as D Dorian or D minor.[1] The sources consulted here do not settle where the name comes from; researcher Graham Christian, cited by the Archive, has suggested an original "Child's Grove," after Sir Josiah Child, whose estate was Wanstead House in Essex, but this is only speculation.[1]
Hendrick Danckerts, The Manor House, Cresswells, pen, ink, wash with watercolor, c. 1665. An English country house of the Playford era, shown for the tune’s period and the speculation that its name recalls an estate; it has no connection to the tune.
Cecil Sharp published his interpretation of the dance in Part VI of The Country Dance Book, whose introduction is dated March 1922, naming the 1701 edition as his source.[2] Playford and Sharp both give it as a proper duple-minor dance, but the Up a Double dance index, citing The Playford Ball, reports that dancing it improper became common in the 1940s and is now usual.[3] The tune keeps a place in the repertoire of both English country dancers and American contra dancers.[1]
Mark Gilston includes it in English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2, one of a two-volume set of his dulcimer arrangements of old English dance tunes, published by Mark Gilston.[4]
Sources
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Childgrove".
- Library of Dance: "The Country Dance Book, Part VI" (Cecil J. Sharp, 1922).
- Up a Double: "Childgrove ~ Sharp".
- Mark Gilston: "English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2".
- Image: Hendrick Danckerts, The Manor House, Cresswells, pen, ink, wash with watercolor, c. 1665. The Cleveland Museum of Art.