Mage On A Cree: A Song History
John Playford's The English Dancing Master, which appeared in London in 1651 and was the first book to print English country dances together with their music, included "Mage on a Cree" among its 105 dances.[1][2] Robert Keller's compendium of the series traces the title through every edition of the first volume up to 1728, while its spelling drifted: "Mage on a Cree" through the two printings of the third edition (1657 and 1665), "Mage on a Tree" from the fourth edition of 1670 to the seventh of 1686, and "Madge on a Tree" from 1690 to the sixteenth edition of 1716.[2] The last two editions, of 1721 and 1728, call it "Madge on a Tree, or Margery Cree," and the compendium treats the dance printed under that title as a separate one from the original.[2][3]
Wenceslaus Hollar, Hawks and Owls, etching, 1654–58. Owls and hawks, shown for one reading of the later title as an owl in a tree; it has no connection to the dance.
A tune called "Magina-cree" is named two decades before Playford, in "Good Admonition," a broadside ballad of about 1630 in Samuel Pepys's collection, and the Traditional Tune Archive links that ballad to Playford's title.[4][5] Sources differ on what the title means: the Archive regards it as unexplained, perhaps a mangled Irish word or phrase,[5] while the Library of Dance thinks the later titles point to a "madge" owl sitting in a tree, and adds that "mage" (a magician) and "cree" (to soften grain by boiling) were both 17th-century words, so the book's first readers may also have been puzzled.[6]
Cecil Sharp printed his interpretation in Part II of The Country Dance Book; in the revised edition of 1913 it is a three-part dance for four couples in a ring, drawn from Playford's first edition.[7] Each part begins with everyone in the ring or with partners dancing together, after which come smaller figures: the men and then the women circling four together in the middle, the men skipping halfway round the ring, and each man turning one woman after another until all are home.[7] The Library of Dance notes that a weaving passage for the women in the original is commonly dropped today so that every part is the same length.[6] Dulcimer players can find it among Mark Gilston's own arrangements in English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 1, half of a two-book set whose listing describes every tune as fun to play and historically significant.[8]
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: Title Index – M".
- Country Dance and Song Society: "The Dancing Master, 1651–1728: Madge on a Tree [#2], or Margery Cree".
- UCSB English Broadside Ballad Archive: "Good Admonition" (EBBA 20239).
- The Traditional Tune Archive: "Mage on a Cree".
- Library of Dance: "Mage on a Cree".
- Library of Dance: "Cecil J. Sharp, The Country Dance Book, Part II (2nd ed., 1913)".
- Mark Gilston: "English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 1".
- Image: Wenceslaus Hollar, Hawks and Owls, etching, 1654–58. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.