A form of dance related to the carole and farandole. The word may derive from the French haie or German Heide; the form ‘heydeguise’ might be rendered ‘hedgewise’, signifying a weaving action similar to the laying of a hedge. The dancers follow serpentine passages in single file, concluding in a circle. Descriptive and pictorial references to the hey are found from the 15th to the 18th centuries. The form continued in country dances and contredanses and still persists in American ‘set-running’, in the northern sword-dance, in the ‘grand chain’ of quadrilles and reels and, as ‘the heys’, in the horn-dance of Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire.
No particular rhythm or step is asssociated with the hey, but when incorporated in figured dances such as the branle or the Italian bassadanza, it is adapted to their structure, gesture and step; by turning the file on itself and by the interweaving of dancers facing in opposite directions, innumerable variations of movement are achieved. Three is the smallest number of dancers required. No particular melody is identified with the hey, but some affinity has been perceived between the tune ‘Shepherd’s Hey’ and ‘An Aliké’, a call employed by shepherds in Brittany.
T. Arbeau: Orchésographie (Langres, 1588/R, 2/1589/R; Eng. trans., 1948, 2/1967); ed. J. Sutton (New York, 1969)
J. Davies: Orchestra, or A Poem of Dancing (London, 1596); ed. E.M.W. Tillyard (London, 1945/R), stanzas 62–5
F. Caroso: La nobiltà di dame (Venice, 1600); ed. J. Sutton and F.M. Walker (Oxford, 1986)
C. Negri: Le gratie d’amore (Milan, 1602/R)
J. Playford: The English Dancing Master (London, 1651)
R.A. Feuillet: Recueil de contredanses (Paris, 1706)
T. Wilson: Analysis of Country Dancing (London, 1808, 2/1811)
MARGARET DEAN-SMITH/R