====== Field Town Stepping & Figures ======

"Field Town" was the familiar name for Leafield, a small hamlet in the Wychwood Forest.  Fifteen traditional Field Town dances were collected by English folklorist Cecil Sharp and published in 1911 in Volume IV of //The Morris Book//.

Sharp writes:  "The Sherborne and Field Town dances are the most intricate that I have yet found, and we may take it, I think, that they represent the present-day Morris at its highest development."  Sharp collected the Field Town dances from Mr. Henry Franklin, a retired police officer who was 81 years old at the time.  Franklin "left his native village in the late fifties (1850s) at the time when the forest, in the midst of which he was born, was cleared, and shortly after the Morris dancers were disbanded. ... The Field Town Morris comprised no less than fifteen dances and jigs, all of which Mr. Franklin danced and described to me down to the minutest detail, a wonderful achievement for a man of his age; one, indeed, which will seem incredible to those unacquainted with country dancers and their ways.  He is not, of course, as lissome as he was, nor can he caper as high as he used to do, but I found little or no difficulty in noting down his steps and movements, elaborate as many of them were."

===== Steps =====

{{page>double-step}}

{{page>single-step}}

{{page>hop-back}}

{{page>hockle-back}}

{{page>foot-together-jump}}

{{page>galley}}

{{page>side-step}}

{{page>plain-caper}}

{{page>beetle-crusher}}

{{page>upright-caper}}

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===== Figures =====

{{page>once-to-yourself}}

{{page>foot-up}}

{{page>half-gyp}}

{{page>back-to-back}}

{{page>rounds}}

{{page>half-hey}}