Finding the previous walking dance reminded me of some notes I made years ago (as you can see on my hand writing), about a walking game. I remember that I also found the melody, but I can’t seem to find it right now, so let’s hope I can make an update of this post later on with the melody. The game is from the outer islands, where the inhabitants built small labyrinths to walk in by placing rocks on the ground. The labyrinth had concentric cirles, and you could only move your walking direction (clock-wise / counter-clock-wise) when you moved from an inner to an outer cirlce or vice verse. Everyone walked in the same direction, except one person who should catch the other ones and that walked in the other direction. Everyone had to sing and walk in rhythm, and you find the lyrics a bit poorly translated from Chartagonian to English here:
The ocean isn’t blue at night when only lit by beacon light Black, black waves flash into white but only is your course… is right
As long as lights of beacons burn the red and green says you must turn Black, black waves behind your stern but rocks ahead, as you… will learn
[The last verse was found on another island, and I don’t think it was part of the standard singing, but it is worth adding for full transparency. The graphite text was added at a later time point, and is taken from a later note in the same note book.]
We will catch the smartest whale and we will set the fastest sail but Black, black waves of northern gale can hide the prey and we… will fail
UPDATE: I still have not found the melody (though I now remember and can play the first and last parts), but I will place it here if I find it later on!
Sometimes you stumble onto something unexpected in the material of the Clerk, and the other day an almost complete description of a Chartagonian walking dance was found. This dance was apparently an almost mandatory ending of festivities, before the parties returned home or continued under more informal forms (i.e., the youth kept dancing and socializing). What is particular about this dance is that it both strengthened the Chartagonian identity as well as island specific identity. The music had two parts containing two phrases, repeated as AABBAABB…e.t.c., and always ended with a single A, when everybody had danced one phrase with each person at the gathering. The A-phrase was the Chartagonian-wide melody, and the B-phrase was specific for each island. It it not clear who composed the A-phrase or the B-phrases, but it is likely that the B-phrases were changed over time, to fit the current settlements. The A-phrase has been unchanged since the first lighthouses, but we don’t know how the melody came into the descendants’ possession.
The dance is more walking than dancing, and gave everyone the opportunity to walk together in silence for a short time (or silently singing the lyrics, which is also unknown to us at this point). The dance started with everyone standing in pairs in a large circle, holding one hand of the other person, and during the dance everyone walked slowly forward in the ring to the tempo of the music, 3/4 at about 120bpm. After every phrase, the person standing on the outer side from the center moved forward to dance with the inner person in the pair in front. During every second phrase, one pair switched places, so that the outer person became the inner person, making everyone eventually dance with everyone. The last A-phrase was danced with the person you started to dance with. In practice, this meant that if there was 20 persons at the gathering, the music would play 21 phrases (with each phrase being about 16 seconds, the total duration would be 5-6 minutes).
We assume that quite a few feelings could be expressed through the light touch when leading each other in the ring, giving the opportunity to bringing people closer together or taking the edge of personal conflicts. Most of the time, this dance/walk would reduce the tempo of the party and be a real party-pooper, but most people seemed to be settling down in a good way before leaving for home.
In the example below, the melody is played as documented by the Clerk, on the form AABBAABBA (and therefore suitable for 8 people), but the first BB comes from one island and the second BB comes from another island, so you can hear the vast difference between the B-phrases of different islands. The Clerk left note transcriptions for five different islands, but leave references to other documents which we have not yet found in the archives.
The lyrics lack sophistication, and is written in an old Chartagonian style, at least in the A-phrase. There is no mentioning about lyrics for the B-phrase, but because the rhythm and length of the A-phrase does not match, we assume that there should be island specific lyrics for each B-phrase. While the known lyrics are difficult to translate to good English, the meaning should be something along these lines:
Thank you everyone for all this time There is nothing that we should regret This day will flee but we will see a- nother dawn when (the) sun has set
