Dance The Dashing White Sergeant 1562

If I had a beau,
For a soldier who’d go,
Do you think I’d say no?
No, no, not I.
For a soldier who’d go,
Do you think I’d say no?
No, no, no, no, no, no, not I!
When his red coat I saw,
Not a tear would it draw,
But I’d give him eclat for his bravery!
If an army of Amazons e’er came into play,
As a dashing white sergeant I’d march away.
A dashing white sergeant
I’d march away, march away, march away, march away,
March away, march away, march away, march away,
March away, march away!

“The Dashing White Sergeant” is an anomaly. Based upon the old Highland pattern of set and reel, it is an English round-the-room dance.

The words were written by General George Burgoyne (1722–1792). Burgoyne fought in the Seven Years War and in 1777 as a Brigadier General he led the British forces that invaded the rebellious American colonies from Canada. After his victory at Fort Ticonderoga he was made Lieutenant General. His rise was very short lived for on 17 October 1777, the British red-coats under his command where soundly defeated at Saratoga and he was recalled in disgrace to England. For the rest of his life he lived in retirement and devoted his energies to writing plays and poetry. In 1786 the highly successful The Heiress was produced. His Dramatic and Poetical Works in two volumes were published posthumously in 1808. Though married to the daughter of the Earl of Derby, he had several children by the opera singer, Susan Caulfield, among them Field Marshal Sir John Fox Burgoyne (1782–1871) who served with distinction both in the Peninsular War under Wellington and in the Crimean War.

The dance, as we know it, was devised by Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (1786–1855). Bishop studied under the Italian Francisco Bianchi and as a composer for Covent Garden wrote incidental music for Shakespeare’s plays and several operas, from one of which, Clari (1823), came the enduring “Home, Sweet Home”. He became composer at Drury Lane and, eventually, musical director at Vauxhall where he composed “My Pretty Jane”. In 1841 Bishop became professor of music at the University of Edinburgh and it was doubtless while there that he became familiar with the traditional music and dance forms of Scotland. From Edinburgh he moved to the Chair of Music at Oxford. Bishop held the distinction of being the first English musician to be knighted.