Step Stately: A Song History

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Step Stately is an English country dance that the London publisher John Playford included in the first edition of The English Dancing Master, issued in 1651.[1] Cecil Sharp, describing the dance in the early twentieth century, dated that first edition to 1650, so sources differ by a year.[2] Playford's own tune for it, in F major, stayed in the Dancing Master series through the tenth edition of 1698.[1]

Detailed ink drawing of the Gothic east end of Old St Paul's Cathedral in London with its tall square tower and rose window

Wenceslaus Hollar, Old St. Paul's Cathedral, London, seen from the East, pen and brown ink and brown and gray wash over black chalk, 1656–58. Old St Paul's Cathedral in London, drawn in the 1650s, the decade Playford first published the dance there; the drawing has no connection to the dance.

The Step Stately of Sharp's revival, however, is danced to a different melody.[3] In The Country Dance Book, Part IV, Sharp set it out as a longways dance in three parts for an odd number of couples, from three up to nine.[2] For the music he passed over Playford's air in favor of a minor-key 6/8 tune known as "Jack Pudding" or "Merry Andrew," which Playford had printed with a different dance.[3] That tune also dates from the 1651 first edition and picked up the name "Merry Andrew" from the fourth edition of 1670.[4] Both titles are old names for clowns: Merry Andrew came to be used of jesters generally, and a Jack Pudding was a comic performer whose routine made play with puddings.[4]

Dulcimer players can find Step Stately in Mark Gilston's English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2, the companion to his first volume of old English dance tunes, which he publishes himself as a 39-page PDF book; the listing gives titles only, so it does not show which of the two melodies he set.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Step Stately"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Step Stately (2)".
  2. Library of Dance: "Cecil J. Sharp, The Country Dance Book, Part IV".
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Step Stately (1)".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Jack Pudding".
  5. Mark Gilston: "English Country Dance Tunes, Volume 2".
  6. Image: Wenceslaus Hollar, Old St. Paul's Cathedral, London, seen from the East, pen and brown ink and brown and gray wash over black chalk, 1656–58. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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