Roger de Coverley
country dance
Roger de (or of) Coverley (also Sir Roger de Coverley or ...Coverly) is the name of an English country dance and a Scottish country dance (also known as The Haymakers). An early version was published in The Dancing Master, 9th edition (1695). The Virginia Reel is a North American adaptation.
History
The dance Roger of Coverly probably originated in Northern England; An early version was published in The Dancing Master, 9th edition (1695). The tune is said to derive its name from the Calverley family, who hailed from Calverley, Yorkshire. A manuscript in the British Museum called The First and Second division Violin, which is attributed to John Eccles, 1705, describes the tune as "Roger of Coverly the true Cheisere way." Alternatively Roger refers to Royalists in the English Civil War and that ‘Coverly’ was a corruption of ‘Cavalier’ The Virginia reel is a North American adaptation.
The dance is supposed to be danced at the end of the evening.
References in modern culture
It is mentioned in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) when the Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge a party from his apprenticeship with Mr. Fezziwig. "...the great effect of the evening came after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler ...
“Roger de Coverley” enters the record as country dance. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Roger, Coverley and country can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roger de Coverley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.