Minuet for Lilibet

George Mahon is a 30-year-old songwriter from Glasgow who cannot read music. But he can hum a tune and rhyme a verse, and a month ago he hummed into a recording machine, packed the record and a verse to go with it off to a publisher. Adele England, creator of steps for the Lambeth Walk, which swept England in 1938, heard it and devised a courtly old-world dance to match.

This week London debutantes were rushing off to their dancing academies to learn the new Royal Minuet, prepared as "a tribute to H.R.H. Princess Elizabeth on the occasion of her 21st birthday." The first part (with dance partners side by side, hands crossed in front) was a sprightly gavotte; after that came a quick waltz-step chorus to be danced in ballroom style.

Although the Keeper of the Privy Purse had pruned Mahon's verse--a member of the Royal Family must not be named in anything that can be exploited commercially--it was still a comely tribute to Lilibet. Sample:

Come and dance the Royal Minuet, Such a dainty thing you're bound to get. It's created for a gracious name, A sweet princess of Royal fame.*

Princess Elizabeth was still in South Africa (see PEOPLE) and had not heard the song yet, but she is known to foot a nifty minuet.

* Copyright 1947 by Macmelodies Ltd., London, for the entire world except U.S.A. and Canada. Copyright 1947 by Peter Maurice Music Co., Ltd., New York, for U.S.A. and Canada.

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