Maggot!

Well now, here's a little bit of history for you.

I've been watching too many Masterpiece Theatres, and spent half the day with the music from that dance scene where Elizabeth and F. Darcy have a duel of wits, so I looked it up to find out what it was called...and it is called "Mr. Beveridge's Maggot"...what the heck?

Along with gavottes, quadrilles, allemandes, minuets, waltzes, jigs, and so on, people in the 18whatsits would occasionally dance a maggot. Or dance to a maggot. I think a maggot is a type of music, rather than a type of dance. I have here that the Middle English word maggot means "a whim, fancy, or silly idea" and that this concept comes from the belief (morbidly derived from observations of cadavers) that the brain was full of maggots whose bites gave rise to strange ideas. The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable apparently references the expression "when the maggot bites" - "when the mood takes me". This then led to anything "whimsical or fanciful" being termed a maggot.

There are other maggot dances...the most ironic (prophetic?) being, in my opinion "Huntington's Maggot"...but all of them are "tunes that are unique and unusual and don't fit into other categories."

Anyway, in my quest to learn more about maggots (and other country dances), I happened upon this hilarious video. It plays for me without any sound, which only makes it better...although I don't know whether Jane Austen would agree.