United States or Portugal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They have also in Turky, as well as India and Persia, professed dancers, especially of the female sex, under the name of dancing-girls, who are bred up, from their childhood, to the profession; and are always sent for to any great entertainment, public or private, as at feasts, weddings, ceremonies of circumcision, and, in short, on all occasions of festivity and joy. They execute their dances to a simphony of various instruments, extremely resembling the antient ones, the tympanum, the crotala, the cimbals, and the like, as well as to songs, being a kind of small dramatic compositions, or what may properly be called ballads, which is a true word for a song at once sung and danced: ballare signifying to dance; and ballata, a
We think of it to-day as a song that tells a story, usually of popular origin. Derived etymologically from ballare, to dance, it means first of all, a "dance-song," and is the same word as "ballet." Solomon's "Song of Songs" is called in the Bishops' Bible of 1568 "The Ballet of Ballets of King Solomon."
Word Of The Day