Authentic examples of secular music in England date from the thirteenth century. It is not from this fact, though, one must suppose that it did not exist prior to that period. On the contrary, music of some kind or other has, doubtless, been a source of solace as well as amusement for untold years.
For antiquity, vocal music stands pre-eminent. Ages must have passed before instrumental music came to any position of efficacy at all correlative with it.
It must be remembered that music as we know it, is the gift that the ancient Church gave us centuries ago, and that the pangs of its birth were suffered in days of which all sense of record is lost.
That there were seculars, even in those remote days, whose ideas of musical progress would not be bound by the ties of ecclesiastical gravity may be taken for granted, and as the art progressed in the Church they would naturally take advantage of it to further their skill in the direction of a lighter and less serious type.
To seek for the earliest examples of dance music is simply to grope in the dark. As to its progress, all that can be suggested is that it fairly synchronises with that of sacred character.
This need be no matter for surprise, since seeing that the Church never did other than encourage the healthy outdoor life of the people, it may be assumed that the monks, who were responsible for the music in the Church, were as willing as able, to help in the advancement outside of it.
Research makes it certain that the first efforts at dancing were accompanied by singing, and only in its latest stages of advancement was it strong enough to dispense with this, and rely on the attraction of the rhythmic movements of the dancer.
From this it will be reasonably inferred that for countless centuries the two arts remained in combination, before the incentive genius of either proved too strong to longer brook the artificial ties that had bound them together.
It is said that the Morris dance can be traced to Saxon times, and that it is the one that has remained with the least variation from its original form. It must be admitted, however, that the difficulty of absolutely proving these assertions is almost insuperable, notwithstanding the amount of research that has been directed to the subject.