Annotation:Furlong (The)

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FURLONG, THE. English, Jig (6/4 time). C Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). The melody was printed in England in 1711 and used probably by the Waits of London and Southwark. "The Furlong" can be found as a country dance in John Young's Dancing Master, second volume (third edition, 1718, and fourth edition, 1728), and in Walsh & Hare's Second Book of the Compleat Country Dancing-Master (London, 1719). It was reprinted in John Stafford Smith's Musica Antiqua (1812). However, the earliest printing seems to be in John Eccles' Theater Musick (London, 1698, also published by Walsh) where it is given as "Furlane, The. Danc't at Ye Ball at Kingsington", set in the key of 'D'.

The title derives from the name Forlane, which was a type of 6/4 or 6/8 dance form descended from the Galliard, and which featured the rhythm of dotted-quaver, semi-quaver, quaver. The form began as a localized dance from the northern Italian province of Friuli (which is itself a condensation of the place-name Forum Julii), and was only occasionally used in other countries where it generally appeared as a novelty or curiosity.

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