Waltz the Hall: The American Play Party

Folklore, April, 2006 by Mavis Curtis

Waltz the Hall: The American Play Party. By Alan L. Spurgeon. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005. 238 pp. $45.00 (hbk). ISBN1-57806-742-1

This is the first book since the 1930s to study the American play party, a phenomenon brought about mainly by the prohibition against dancing of some Christian fundamentalist sects. The play party was in its heyday in the nineteenth century, the earliest recording of the phenomenon being 1837, though it survived in some parts of the United States until the 1950s. Spurgeon has had the foresight to interview a large number of people who attended these events, and writes in an accessible style about his subject.

The first part of the book (much the shorter of the two sections at fifty-seven pages) is concerned with the play party itself. Spurgeon gives a vivid account of attending these events, often in the words of the people he interviewed, and outlines the strict rules imposed on young girls: no waist swings, no dancing to fiddle music, no kissing games, leave if the boys start smoking or swearing or being "wild." He gives a history of the play party, analyses its social and geographical position in American society and covers previous research into the topic. He also analyses to some extent the musical content--and I would have welcomed more in this section, in view of the fact that Spurgeon is an associate professor of music. He positions the play party between square dancing, which has more complicated dance movements and employs musicians to render the tunes, and the children's game, which is simpler. The tunes and games are often derived from a British or European source. The songs were always sung by the participants because of the distrust of musical instruments, especially the fiddle, which was regarded with particular horror as an instrument of the devil. Methodists and Lutherans were less strict in their prohibitions against dance and music than the Baptists. Spurgeon is careful not to criticise what would seem to many people to be a very narrow view of the world, but he quotes the response of one young lady who was called to account by her local church elders because she had attended a square dance. When asked if she was sorry, she replied, "Yes! I'm sorry that any Christian church could be so stupid in its rules." She thus became "a social outcast doomed to bitter spinsterhood."

The real delight, for me, was the second part, which is a collection of ninety play party songs with a description of the dances that accompany them. These were collected either from the people Spurgeon interviewed or from American printed sources and archive recordings. Considering the European sources of much of this material, it was a surprise to find that Iona and Peter Opies' The Singing Game (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988) does not appear in the extensive bibliography, although Spurgeon has read Gomme's much earlier collection, The Traditional Games of England, Scotland and Ireland (London: David Nutt, 1894-98). It would have been helpful if Spurgeon had noted which games used the same tune; a melody such as "Looby Loo," for instance, being used for a number of different dances. Similarly, if he had been aware of the Opies' work, he could have commented on the overlap between the American games and the English versions. Some of these games, such as "There came a duke a-riding," are still played in English playgrounds today; so it was particularly interesting to see their American equivalents. However, he has done sterling work collecting these songs and dances, and it would be churlish to complain about such omissions.

The play party tradition may have died out, but the songs still survive among young American children, and this book constitutes a most useful addition to the body of knowledge of this material.

Mavis Curtis, National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield, UK