Daphne: A Song History
"Daphne" is among the dances John Playford printed in the first edition of The English Dancing Master (London, 1651), where it is set out as a longways dance for eight.[1] According to the Traditional Tune Archive, Playford kept it in the editions of 1652 and 1657.[2]
Anthonie Waterloo, Apollo and Daphne, etching; third state of three, 17th century. It shows the myth behind the title, but has no connection to the tune.
The same archive says the melody is older than Playford's book and appears to have carried a seventeenth-century ballad on the Greek myth of Apollo's pursuit of the nymph Daphne.[2] The English Broadside Ballad Archive catalogues "A pleasant new Ballad of Daphne," credited to Thomas Deloney, in a Roxburghe Collection copy it dates, with a query, to 1619–1629; it assigns the ballad to the standard tune "Daphne," although the sheet itself calls for "a new Tune."[3] Giles Farnaby wrote keyboard variations titled "Daphne," preserved as No. 112 in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, and the Traditional Tune Archive counts that piece among the tune's appearances.[4][2] The archive also lists it in Dutch collections, among them Jacob van Eyck's recorder anthology Der Fluyten Lust-hof, where it is titled "Doen Daphne."[2]
Early-music ensembles have recorded it, among them The King's Noyse and Hesperus.[2] Mark Gilston includes it in English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 1, a set of 24 dulcimer arrangements of old English dance tunes.[5]
Sources
- Eric Praetzel (transcription, University of Waterloo server): "The English Dancing Master (1651)".
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Daphne".
- English Broadside Ballad Archive (UC Santa Barbara): "A pleasant new Ballad of Daphne" (EBBA 30261).
- Fitzwilliam Museum: "Daphne" by Giles Farnaby, Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.
- Mark Gilston: "English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 1".
- Image: Anthonie Waterloo, Apollo and Daphne, etching; third state of three, 17th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.