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Arbeau says that in his youth the dance was given as a kind of “ballet,” by three young men and three girls, with grace and dignity and he bewails its subsequent decadence. The old English term was “current traverse.” In Sir John Davies’ Orchestra one finds the following reference:

“What shall I name those currant travases

That on a triple dactyl foot do run

Close by the ground in sliding passages?”

In Shakespeare’s Henry the Fifth, too, is the following:

“Bourbon: They bid us to the English dancing-schools

And teach lavoltas high and swift corantos;”

and Sir Toby Belch, it will be recalled, asks: “Why dost thou go to church in a galliard and come home in a coranto? My very walk should be a jig ... sink-a-pace.”

There seems, however, considerable ground for question as to what the courante, or coranto, really was, whether a slow or quick dance. Arbeau’s directions are, for once, not quite clear. He speaks of it being a more graceful affair in his younger days; and he was an old man at the time his Orchésographie was published. In England it certainly seems to have become a fairly lively dance, of which the main feature was its “running” steps.