PROBABLY the best-known of Balfour Gardiner's orchestral pieces, this 'Shepherd Fennel's Dance' is dedicated to Sir Henry Wood. It appeared in 1910. The composer tells us that it is a description in music of a passage from Thomas Hardy's 'Wessex Tales.'
'The shrill tweedle-dee of the boy fiddler has begun, accompanied by a booming ground-bass from Elijah New, the parish clerk, who had thoughtfully brought with him his favourite musical instrument, the serpent the dance whizzed on with cumulative fury, the performers moving in their planet-like courses, direct and retrograde from apogee to perigee, till the hand of the well-kicked clock at the bottom of the room had travelled over the circumference of an hour.'