Note 77 — Chapter VI · THE HOWARDS AND THE SEYMOURS
Reading edition
This ball was, it appears, given for the purpose of conciliating the Seymours and at Surrey’s express request. It must have been a picturesque function, with its rich costumes, its splendid but rather roughly expressed profusion and hearty welcome. Just such a ball as this old Capulet gave on that ever-memorable night when Juliet first met her Romeo. Was it to dance the Volta or the Salta with him that Surrey invited the angry Countess? These, the two most fashionable dances of the period, had been but recently introduced from France and Italy. The latter resembled, and very closely too, our modern waltz, only in the Salta the gentleman lifts the lady from time to time an inch or so from the ground, as in the German hop waltz.
“Yet there is one, the most delightful kind, A lofty jumping, or a leaping round, When arm in arm, two dancers are entwin’d, And which themselves, in strict embracements bound And still their feet, an anapest do sound; An anapest is all their music’s song Whose first two feet are short, the rest are long.” Sir John Davies’ Orchestra.
See also for an account of the Volta, the Orlando Furioso of Boiardo, book xv. stanza 43. These two dances, the Volta and the Salta, were introduced into Scotland by Madeleine de Valois, the first wife of James V, and gave terrible offence to the “unco’ guid” folk of “Auld Reekie.”