Hunt The Squirrel: A Song History

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The earliest printing of "Hunt the Squirrel" in the sources consulted here is in the fourteenth edition of The Dancing Master, the London country-dance collection begun by John Playford in 1651; that 1709 edition was printed by W. Pearson and sold by the instrument makers John Young and Mich. Rawlins.[1][2] Robert Keller's index of the series finds it, spelled "Hunt the Squiril," in every edition from then through the seventeenth, and as "Hunt the Squirril" in the eighteenth, of about 1728.[1][2] Sources differ on its debut: the Traditional Tune Archive names John Walsh's Country Dancing Master of 1718 as the earliest source of tune and dance, which Keller's 1709 finding predates.[3]

Ink painting of two squirrels on the branches of a chestnut tree

Ge Shuying, Squirrels on the Chestnut Tree, hanging scroll, ink on paper, 1300s. Shown for the squirrels of the title; it has no connection to the dance.

By 1711 the dance had found its way into The Spectator (No. 67, 17 May), which printed a letter that the editor guessed came from a tradesman, describing a dancing-master's ball he had attended with his daughter and a figure there in which "while the Woman flies the Man pursues her," until she turns and the chase reverses.[4] The writer thought the dance carried a fitting lesson in feminine reserve, but was scandalised by the liberties the young dancers took with one another and ended by carrying his daughter home.[4] John Gay later fitted a song to the tune as Air XXXIV of Polly, his sequel to The Beggar's Opera, which the Lord Chamberlain kept off the stage in December 1728 and which Gay published in 1729.[5]

Cecil Sharp published his reading of the dance in Part VI of The Country Dance Book, a collection of 52 dances from the Playford volumes whose introduction he dated March 1922.[6] He sets it as a longways dance for as many as will, in triple minor sets, cites the 1709 edition as his source, and has each first dancer weave through the next two of the same sex, trailed by a partner, before the first and second couples cross over diagonally, circle halfway round and finish with a circular hey and a turn.[6] Mark Gilston, whom the book's product page calls an ethnomusicologist and national dulcimer champion, includes it in English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2, a 39-page collection of dulcimer arrangements that he publishes himself, the second of his two books of old English dance tunes.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Hunt The Squirrel"

Sources

  1. Country Dance and Song Society: "The Dancing Master, 1651–1728: Hunt the Squiril" (Robert M. Keller).
  2. Country Dance and Song Society: "The Dancing Master, 1651–1728: Bibliography".
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Hunt the Squirrel (1)".
  4. Project Gutenberg: "The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3" (No. 67, 17 May 1711).
  5. Internet Archive: "John Gay, Polly: An Opera, Being the Second Part of The Beggar's Opera" (1922 edition, foreword by Oswald Doughty).
  6. Library of Dance: "Cecil J. Sharp, The Country Dance Book, Part VI".
  7. Mark Gilston: "English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2".
  8. Image: Ge Shuying, Squirrels on the Chestnut Tree, hanging scroll, ink on paper, 1300s. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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