A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Trihoris
TRIHORIS, TRIORI, TRIHORY, TRIORY, an old Breton dance, long obsolete. Cotgrave describes it as 'a kind of British and peasantly daunce, consisting of three steps, and performed, by three hobling youths, commonly in a round.' It is mentioned by Rabelais ('Pantagruel,' bk. iv. ch. xxxviii.) and by his imitator, Noël du Fail, Seigneur de la Herrisaye, in chapter xix. of his 'Contes et Discours d'Eutrapel' (1585). From this passage it would seem that it was a 'Basse Danse,' and was followed by a 'Carole'—a low Breton name for a dance in a round, or according to Cotgrave 'a kind of daunce wherein many daunce together.' [See Tourdion.] (Compare the Italian 'Carola,' described in Symonds' 'Renaissance in Italy,' vol. iv. p. 261, note.) Du Fail says the dance was 'trois fois plus magistrale et gaillarde que nulle autre.' It was the special dance of Basse Bretagne, as the Passepied (vol. ii. p. 662) was of Haute Bretagne. Jehan Tabourot, in his 'Orchésographie' [see vol. ii. p. 560a], says the Trihoris was a kind of Branle, and that he learnt it at Poitiers from one of his scholars. He gives the following as the air to which it was danced:
