126 BULLETIN OF THE ESSEX INSTITUTE. 



Her subject was English and French Dance Music. She 

 regretted that there was no means by^ which she could 

 give us a sample of the music played by Orpheus, Apollo 

 and others that we read of in mythology. It was at a 

 considerably later date that the art of printing music upon 

 paper and parchment was invented. She said that there 

 had been found in London upon the cover of an old law 

 book, printed at a time when paper and parchment were 

 scarce and costly, and they had evidently destroyed one 

 book in making another, the music of some dance then in 

 fashion, and this she played showing the difference be- 

 tween the slow music of those days and the lively airs of 

 the present time. About the year 1640 the minuet was 

 introduced in France, and kings and queens, the courts 

 and nobility of Europe were all obliged to study it. It 

 was a very complicated measure involving some two hun- 

 dred and twenty steps and every dancer must be perfect. 

 In a dance called the Cushion Dance, the following dia- 

 logue was sun Of : — 



The leader of the dance addressing the band master : 

 " This dance it can uo farther go." 



Whereupon the band master replied also in tune : 



"I pray you, good sir, why say you so?" 



" Because Joan Sanderson will not come too." 



"She must come too and she shall come too." 



" And she miist come whether she will or no." 



" Prinkum-Prankum is a fine dance," 



" And shall we go dance it once again," 



" And once again, and once again," 



" And shall we go dance it once again?" 



and then the gallant knelt upon his cushion and the 

 obdurate beauty was fain to yield. 



The minuet was so fashionable, she said, that once the 

 great Cardinal Richelieu, then the master intellect of 



