Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Monday 11 December 2023

Multinational, polyglot.

A Lithuanian dance group
with the Italian name Festa Cortese,
and the Czech instrumental group Remdih
perform Bransles d'Escosse
at Freienfels castle in Germany.

Escosse is old French for Scotland
(though the Irish have claimed
Duns [or Dunce] Scotus). 

A bransle (also branle, brangle, brawl[e], brall[e], braul[e], brantle, [It.] brando, [Sp.] bran),
is a type of French mimetic dance popular from the early 16th century to the present, danced by couples, usually in a circle,
generally in duple measure, and accompanied by singing.

They are 'many and various' : Branle double, Branle simple,
Branle gay, Branle de Bourgoygne, Branle du Rat...

A more mimetic Branle from another Lithuanian* group
– here.

Se branler in modern French means 'to masturbate'...
which is rather more joyous, literary,
cinematic – and less dank
than the inelegant and dismissive English verb 'to wank'.


*Singing (in Lithuanian) and dancing were just about the only ways that Lithuanians could hold on to their cultural identity and language when they and the Latvians, Estonians and a third of the Poles were under the culturicidal domination of the Russian Empire (until 1921-22).

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