For some years, when Derek Schofield was editor of the EFDSS magazine English Dance & Song I used to write reviews of CDs and, occasionally, books. One of the books I was sent to review was entitled Lenham Camp: Dance Music from Eighteenth Century Harrietsham including music from the collection of Robert Thomas Bottle (1761-1849). This was compiled and edited by George Frampton, and published by the Faversham Society (Faversham Papers No. 110, 2010, still available to purchase for just £ 5.45). I seem to remember that my review wasn’t exactly bubbling over with enthusiasm, but actually it’s a good solid piece of work by George, putting into the public domain the contents of a manuscript which had only recently been added to the collection of the Centre for Kentish Studies, and which otherwise would have been seen by very few. Admittedly over half of the 80 tunes in the volume are minuets, and a lot of the rest are military-sounding marches; but that’s not to say there’s nothing here to interest the modern country dance musician. And of course, it’s informative simply to see the repertoire of an 18th / 19th century village musician (he was the village postmaster and, if this collection is any guide, unlike Scan Tester he must have played to quite a lot of posh dances).
Looking at the book recently for the first time since I wrote that ED&S review, my eyes were drawn to these two cotillions.
The cotillion (also cotillon or French country dance) is a social dance, popular in 18th-century Europe and North America. Originally for four couples in square formation, it was a courtly version of an English country dance, the forerunner of the quadrille and, in the United States, the square dance.
It was for some fifty years regarded as an ideal finale to a ball but was eclipsed in the early 19th century by the quadrille. It became so elaborate that it was sometimes presented as a concert dance performed by trained and rehearsed dancers. The later “German” cotillion included more couples as well as plays and games.
There’s a well-known session tune which goes by the name of ‘The Sussex Cotillion’ so I decided to christen these two ‘Kentish Cotillions’. I don’t recognise the first one from anywhere else, but most followers of this blog will spot that Cotillion 2 is ‘Captain Lanoe’s Quick March’, known to the folk world from the version in William Aylmore’s 1796 West Sussex MS (via The Sussex Tune Book).
Kentish Cotillion 1
Kentish Cotillion 2
Played on four-stop one-row melodeon in C.
Squeezed Out 