The Galloping Carousel

Jul 25

Merry Go Round Day

Other Scottish Country Dances for this Day

Merry Go Round Day

The Galloping Carousel

Today's Musings, History & Folklore

"Reach for the brass ring if you dare,
Luck is waiting in the air.
Miss today? Don't wear a frown—
The carousel comes back around!"

Jiggedy-jig and giddy-up, dancers! Hold onto your hats with this lively 32-bar jig, devised by John de Chastelain, packed with plenty of merry-go-round turns and whirling motions. Just try not to get dizzy!

The choreography mostly turns clockwise, which may feel familiar to those with British carousel memories. Our North American friends, however, might find themselves wondering why the horses are going the "wrong" way! American carousels have traditionally turned counterclockwise, a custom dating back to cavalry riding exercises. Because soldiers usually wore their swords on the left hip, they mounted from the left side, and early carousel builders copied this familiar movement. While many British and European carousels later came to rotate clockwise, American merry-go-rounds have continued spinning the opposite way for well over a century.

Originally inspired by European and Middle Eastern jousting training devices, carousels evolved into one of the great attractions of fairs and amusement parks by the late 19th century. Steam engines, dazzling electric lights, and lively calliope music transformed them into magical spectacles, while the United States entered its Golden Age of Carousels, producing some of the world's finest examples.

American carousel makers developed several distinctive styles. The Coney Island style delighted riders with extravagantly carved horses sporting ornate, sometimes faux-jeweled saddles. The Philadelphia style emphasized beautifully painted, realistic horses, while the Country Fair style often dispensed with saddles altogether. Across the Atlantic, British "gallopers" became famous for horses that rose and fell in a spirited galloping motion, adding an extra thrill to the ride.

And if simply staying on the horse wasn't enough of a challenge, some American carousels featured the famous brass ring game, where riders snatched rings from a dispenser as they passed, hoping to grab the elusive brass ring and toss it into the mouth of a clown for a prize.

Giddy-up and jiggedy-jig! 🕺 💃 ❤️ 💛 💙 🎪 🎠🎠🎠

The Galloping Carousel

Also known as The Painted Ponies, The Merry-Go-Round, and The Roundabout, the carousel, has a long history beginning with war games training.

The word carousel comes from the Italian word carosello (meaning "little war"). Carosello was a 12th-century game played by the Arabs and Turks, on horseback, using scented balls tossed from one to another.

Carosello was adopted by the French into an exhibition (now called carousel) of many types of horsemanship pageantry and competition, including spearing a ring suspended from a post or tree, while riding at full speed.

A practice machine was created to help young knights prepare for this competition - a series of legless wooden horses attached to a rotating platform (driven by human-power or horse-power).

Eventually, the carousel gained popularity as the amusement device we know today.

The "golden age" of the carousel was from about 1880 to about 1930.

The phrase to "grab the brass ring," sometimes used figuratively, is derived from the carousel.

"Grabbing the brass ring" or getting a "shot at the brass ring" also means striving for the highest prize, or living life to the fullest. It is not clear when the phrase came into wide use but has been found in dictionaries as far back as the late 19th century.

A carousel's brass ring is a small grabbable ring that a dispenser presents to a carousel rider during the course of a ride. Usually there are a large number of iron rings and one brass one, or just a few. It takes some dexterity to grab a ring from the dispenser as the carousel rotates. The iron rings can be tossed at a target as an amusement. Typically, getting the brass ring gets the rider some sort of prize when presented to the operator. The prize often is a free repeat ride.

Although there are a lot of carousels extant, only a handful of carousels still have brass rings.

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There are many interesting and unique carousels operating throughout the world. The Tom Mankiewicz Conservation Carousel in Los Angeles, California, features all endangered species. Located in the Los Angeles zoo, it also features “California Sound” music from the 1960s and 1970s, including Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, the Carpenters, and other popular musical groups from that era.

Among the unique animals featured are a tapir, an armadillo, a gorilla, a skunk, a caterpillar, three racehorses, a dung beetle, and a unicorn!

See below for a video of the dance performed at Youth Weekend West in 2015, in Victoria, British Columbia.

For some other fascinating restorations of historic hand-crafted carousels in the US, click the picture of the calliope, from a vintage advertising poster of 1874 titled "Calliope, the wonderful operonicon or steam car of the muses."

Click the dance cribs or description below to link to a printable version of the dance!