Versuvienne: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

The name, more often spelled Varsouvienne or Varsovienne, refers to a girl from Warsaw, though the Traditional Tune Archive notes it may only signal a dance in the Warsaw style; the tune is a mazurka in 3/4 time, and the couple dance alternates a phrase of heel-and-toe stepping with a phrase of waltzing.[1] The Archive credits the original, an eight-part piece, to Francisco Alonso and dates its Paris debut to 1853.[1] In the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s summary, that study tracks the dance from Spain and Poland and the salons of Paris until it reached London theatres.[2] American publishers kept issuing new varsovienne sheet music decades later, among them a piano piece printed in New York in 1880 and another from Boston’s Oliver Ditson in 1884.[3][4] In ballrooms, though, the fashion had faded by the end of the century, and an 1888 guide judged it “rather a boisterous sort of performance.”[1]

Engraving of a couple dancing energetically in a crowded Paris ballroom while onlookers in top hats watch.

Winslow Homer, A Parisian Ball - Dancing at the Casino, wood engraving (Harper's Weekly), 1867. Couples dancing at a Paris ball, engraved after Winslow Homer in 1867, shown for the varsovienne's beginnings in Paris; the engraving has no connection to the tune.

In the 1920s, as Henry Ford led a revival of old-fashioned dancing, Henry Ford’s Old Time Dance Orchestra recorded a “Varsovienne” on an Edison Diamond Disc that the Henry Ford museum dates to between 1926 and 1929.[5] Under the name “Put Your Little Foot,” the Archive lists the tune from New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and Arkansas, and notes that Vance Randolph recorded Farmington, Arkansas, fiddler Lon Jordan playing it for the Library of Congress in 1941.[6] The Archive also points to a New Mexico setting from fiddler Forest Delk in R.P. Christeson’s Old Time Fiddlers Repertory, a Bob Wills version in Phillips’s Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, and a 78 by Louise Massey and the Westerners on Vocalion.[6] The Traditional Ballad Index dates sung words to the tune to 1943 and reports singer Glenn Ohrlin’s remark that the song was usually what touched off a fight.[7] Irish musicians know a version of the tune as “Shoe the Donkey.”[1]

For dulcimer players, it is one of fifteen tunes in Steve Eulberg’s Old School, Old Time, from Owl Mountain Music, which gives each tune in mountain and hammered dulcimer arrangements by Eulberg and a fiddle arrangement by Vi Wickam; the parts work together for a trio or stand alone for a soloist.[8]

Our book that contains the song "Versuvienne"

Sources

  1. Traditional Tune Archive: "Varsovienne (1) (The)".
  2. English Folk Dance and Song Society: "Folk Music Journal 2025".
  3. Library of Congress: "Varsoviana" (Dodworth, 1880).
  4. Library of Congress: "Dream of home; Varsovienne" (Edwin Christie, 1884).
  5. The Henry Ford: "Edison Diamond Disc Record, 'Varsovienne' and 'Heel and Toe Polka,' 1926".
  6. Traditional Tune Archive: "Put Your Little Foot".
  7. Traditional Ballad Index: "Put Your Little Foot (Varsouvienna)".
  8. Steve Eulberg: "Old School, Old Time".
  9. Image: Winslow Homer, A Parisian Ball - Dancing at the Casino, wood engraving (Harper's Weekly), 1867. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

← Back to Browse By Song