Jack A Lent: A Song History
"Jack a Lent" was among the dances John Playford put into the first edition of The English Dancing Master, the London collection of 1651 that printed 105 country dances with their tunes and grew into a long series of editions.[1] Robert Keller's compendium of the series traces it as "Jack a Lent" in every edition from the first through the seventh, and as "Jack-a-Lent" in the eighth;[2] his bibliography dates the seventh to 1686 and the eighth to 1690.[3] The page Keller reproduces from the 1686 printing heads the dance "Longways for six," a set of three couples.[2]
Frans Hogenberg, Lent and Carnival, etching, 1558. A Flemish crowd scene of Carnival and Lent, shown for the season in the dance's title; it has no connection to the tune.
The title recalls a Lenten pastime: according to the glossary of the Richard Brome Online edition, a Jack-a-Lent was a brightly dressed puppet of a man that people pelted with stones for as long as the fast lasted, much like the Aunt Sally of later fairs.[4] Shakespeare turned the word into a teasing name in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where Mistress Page calls the boy Robin a little Jack-a-Lent.[5]
Cecil Sharp printed his reading of the dance in Part VI of The Country Dance Book, which holds fifty-two dances and carries an introduction dated Hampstead, March 1922.[6] He gives it as a longways dance for six in six parts, taken from the first edition; most parts begin with partners leading up and falling back, and the figures between have dancers trading places across the set, couples ducking under one another's arms, and the top couple making its way to the foot.[6] Mark Gilston's dulcimer arrangement appears in English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 1, a 35-page download of 24 tunes, each also supplied as its own PDF, which Gilston publishes as one of a two-book set.[7]
Sources
- Country Dance and Song Society: "The Dancing Master, 1651–1728: An Illustrated Compendium – Introduction" (Robert M. Keller).
- Country Dance and Song Society: "The Dancing Master, 1651–1728: Jack a Lent".
- Country Dance and Song Society: "The Dancing Master, 1651–1728: Bibliography".
- Richard Brome Online: "Glossary (words starting with J)".
- Folger Shakespeare Library: "The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 3, Scene 3".
- Library of Dance: "Cecil J. Sharp, The Country Dance Book, Part VI".
- Mark Gilston: "English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 1".
- Image: Frans Hogenberg, Lent and Carnival, etching, 1558. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.