About the animations

My animations are mostly 720p, and those without music usually play at 120 counts per minute, while those with music will play at whatever tempo the music suggests.

Most of my animations have no music, but I have secured permission from four sources to include their music in my animations:

• A few local performers have allowed me to use the works they prepared for our Santa Barbara dances.
• Gary Roodman let me use the music from his CDs, performed by Celantrio, MGM, Reunion, and Bare Necessities.
• Country Dance Society Boston Centre have allowed me to use The English Country Dance Collection as performed by Bare Necessities.
• Colin Hume has allowed me to use any of the music on his website.
• The Odd Sundays Garage Band has allowed me to use their music.
• Joseph Pimentel and the band Goldcrest have allowed me to use the music of their two alba The Goldcrest Collection and The Green Jay Collection.

In most dances with progression, the first set of the dance will be slowed down (and no music will play for those dances with music), this is to make it easier to understand and learn the dance. Subsequent iterations will be at dance pace.

The dancers taking the men's roles are drawn as rectangles (with a circle poking out to show which way he is facing), those taking the women's roles are drawn as elipses (again with a circle poking out for a head). . Each couple is drawn in its own color and the main color of the dancer remains unchanged through the dance. However the border color indicates what role the dancer is currently playing and this may change during the course of the dance. Dancers waiting out at the ends (in a minor set dance) have a black border, those playing the 1s have a red border, those playing the 2s have greenish border, those the 3s have a blueish, and so forth.

The band (or the "presence") orients the set. Following Playford's conventions I usually place the band to the left of the animation. Toward the band is "up" the set. The 1s are the couple closest to the band.

How to use this site

The site has two main componants: The index page, which displays a list of all my animations with some metadata on each, and the dance page which displays the animation of a single dance with more metadata.

The main index page

The list of the index page may be sorted by various criteria,

• By default it is sorted alphabetically by dance title (initial articles like "A" and "The" are ignored in this sort)
• By starting formation: duple minor, triple minor, 3 couple, proper or improper, etc.
• By style: Is the dance intended to be an (English) Country Dance, or one of its more derivative forms: Scottish Country Dance, American Contra Dance, etc.
• Creation or publication date of the dance (sometimes these are approximate, sometimes these are unknown)
• Alphabetcially by the name of the devisor (or, if that is unknown the publisher)
• Alphabetically by publication
• For those dances with music, alphabetically by the name of the album from which I got the music
• And finally: by when I created the dance animation

Once an ordering has been established it may be useful to apply a secondary ordering. For instance, if you sort dances by formation, well there are a lot of duple minor dances. Do you want them sorted by name or by creation date?

It is also possible to restrict the list so only certain dances are displayed (to search for them, if you wish).

The behavior of this menu is perhaps slightly unexpected. If you select one restriction and then another both will be applied (so you can restrict the list to display all duple minor dances which contain "Skipper" in their title). If you wish to get rid of a restriction, select "Unrestricted" from the menu.

You may restrict the list

• Title - show only dances whose title contains the phrase you specified.
• When written (or published) - Show only dances written between the years you specify. (Be aware that the dates of some dances are approximate, your sources may not agree with mine to the exact year)
• Devisor - Show only those dances devised (or interpreted) by the name specified
• Publication - Show only those dances that appeared in a given publication. My database of publications is in no way complete. For instance Cuckolds All A Row appeared in the Lovelace Manuscript of ~1649, in every edition of Playford from 1651 to 1728, in Cecil Sharp's The Country Dance Book (Part 2), in The Playford Ball and doubtless a host of other sources.
• Dance Style - Show only dances which are Contra Dances, or Scottish, etc.
• Formation - Show only Duple Minor dances, etc.
• Dance Figures - Show dances which contain a "Figure of Eight" or "Mirror Heys". My data here are not perfect. I use a simple algorithm to parse the dances' list of calls to turn that into a list of standard figures. The algorithm often makes mistakes, but I hope it will, none-the-less be helpful.

The dance page

This displays the animation for a single dance and some information about the dance (like who devised it, when, what formation the dance is in, how many bars of music needed, etc.).

Some dances have more than one animation: for instance the same dance may have a longways animation and one in a Sicilian Circle. Triple progression triple minors usually have three different animations to display the three different end effects that occur with different numbers of starting couples. If a dance as several animations there will be a list of radio buttons underneath the animation to display the choices.

Some old dances are described so obsurely in Playford (or Walsh or whoever) that there may be several different modern interpretations of what the original instructions meant. If a dance has multiple interpretations I will provide a set of buttons pointing to other versions.

At the bottom of the page are three buttons: Prev, Top, and Next. The Top button will take you back to the index page close to where you started from. The Next and Prev buttons will select the next (or previous) dance as currently ordered on the index page. So if the dances are ordered alphabetically then the next dance in alphabetical order will be selected, but if they are ordered by creation date then the dance written after this one will be selected. If there are no more dances then the button returns you to the index page.

Interpretations

Playford's dance descriptions are frequently missing essential features. Or simply wrong. Consider the description of Row Well Ye Mariners (1651):

Lead up a D. forwards and back · That again :

First man two slips cross the Room one way, the woman the other · Back again to your places :

Fall back both · Meet again :

Clap both your own hands, then clap each other's right-hands against one another's; clap both your own hands again, then clap left-hands, then clap both hands again, then clap your breasts, then meet both your hands against one-another · The same again, only clap left-hands first :

---

First man sides with the next wo. and his wo. with the next man, doing the like till you come to your own places, the rest following and doing the same.

Sharp thought this was a two part dance, and the music for each part is 24 bars. The first part is non-progressive and intended to be danced once as an introduction, the second is, according to Playford, progressive. The first part is well defined, with clear descriptions of movements to fit every 4 bar sub-section. But the second part contains only: First man sides with the next wo. and his wo. with the next man, doing the like till you come to your own places, the rest following and doing the same. The only clear instruction is that the active couple sides with their neighbors, something that takes 4 bars (and is not progressive), and that somehow the actives should progress. Anyone trying to interpret this must make up five sixths of the part out of thin air. It is little wonder that the two interpretations I know of have wildly different movements.

Now, about 5 years after I first noticed this conundrum, I believe that both interpretations are wrong. Playford is obliquely saying this is an "Up a double/Siding/Arming" dance, and what Sharp saw as a completely different second part is simply Playford trying to say: "Now do all that again, except start with siding rather that up a double".

My example is from Playford, but most other publishers in the 17th and 18th centuries are almost as obscure.

I have become fascinated by seeing the different ways people can interpret the same text, and am now actively seeking out as many variants as I can find.

I have also become leery of believing that when we dance a modern interpretation of an old dance it is anything like what people were dancing back in 1650. Some interpreters go to more effort to be historical, while others put more effort into making a dance interesting to modern dancers.

And there was variation back in 1650 as well. If you look at Lovelace's description of Jack Pudding it is rather different from Playford's.

There is probably no one right answer to the question of what was danced then.

To see some of this diversity I have a list of dances with multiple interpretations or variants.

Some Notes on Copyright

These dances are subject to copyright law.

Background

The first copyright law in England was the Licensing of the Press Act 1662. The first copyright law of Great Britain was the Statute of Anne, 1710. The US Constitution grants Congress the right to create copyright laws and the first such law in the US was in 1790.

Currently, my understanding is, that in the US for works created before 1978 copyright lasts for 95 years from the publication of the work. While in the UK and the EU copyright lasts for 70 years from the end of the year in which the creator died. In Canada, Japan and Korea copyright lasts 50 years from the end of the year in which the creator died.

Note, in the US, the UK, and in other signatories to the Berne Convention, there is no need to claim or register copyright. Copyright is automatically granted by the act of publication.

Copyright holders may waive certain of their rights by printing licenses which specify what uses are permitted. In the dance world the most common licenses are the Creative Commons ones.

What does this mean?

Playford's works are out of copyright in both the US and the UK. BUT... Playford's dance descriptions are so obscure to the modern reader that they generally need to be reinterpreted for the modern dancer, and these interpretations are probably still in copyright.

Cecil Sharp printed the last part (part 6) of the Country Dance Book in 1922 and he died in 1924 so his works are out of copyright in both the US and the UK. BUT... the fifth part of the Country Dance Book (1918) was coauthored with Maud Karpeles who died in 1976, so the fifth part is out of copyright in the US (because it was published more than 95 years ago), but not in the UK (because it has not been 70 years since Maud Karpales's death).

Some devisors and interpreters (for instance Charles Bolton) have released their dances under a Creative Commons license which allows non-commercial use as long as attribution is given.

The whole thing is very complex. I only print a list of calls on the dance page in cases where I believe the dance to be out of copyright in the US, or where the devisor has specifically waived the protection.

Note that simply publishing a dance on the web without a copyright notice does not waive copyright (at least in the US and UK), on the contrary according to the Berne Convention it establishes copyright.

I have talked mostly about choreographies here, because that is what this website focusses on, but the same applies to the music for the dances - the composer holds a copyright (and any modern interpretations of old music also imply a copyright), and performers of that music hold an additional copyright.

I hope I have not infringed on anyone's copyright on this site. If you are a copyright holder and believe I have infringed your rights please contact me by leaving a comment on the youtube animation, asking me either to remove your dance(s) or correct some mistake(s) in attribution.

What do the flags mean?

I include dances from several different styles in my lists, I use little flags to distinguish these styles:

This is the flag of England (St. George's Cross) NOT the UK. I use it for English Country Dances. I use this for modern dances in this style even if the devisor does not live in England.

This is the flag of Scotland (St. Andrew's Cross). I use it to represent Scottish Country Dances (I use it for dances devised or interpreted in Scotland after November of 1923 under the auspices of the (Royal) Scottish Country Dance Society).

This is the old Scottish (or Scotch) Union Flag, I use it for dances devised in Scottland before 1923. These were basically the same as the generic "Country Dance" that was common across the British Isles, hence the "Union" flag.

This is the flag of Europe. I use it to represent old dances from continental Europe (Contredanse Anglaise).

This is one of the many flags used during the US revolutionary war. I use it for dances devised in North America, but not recently, in a style more like an English Country Dance than either a modern Contra or Square dance. The flag looks halfway between the Union Jack and Stars and Stripes and seems a good choice for this role.

This is the US flag. I use it for modern New England Contra dances.

This is an old version of the flag of Europe except that it is square. I use it for cottilions which evolved in Europe using a square set to display country dance changes.

This is the flag of Europe except that it is square. I use it for quadrilles which evolved from cottilions in Europe using a square set to display several contredanses.

This is the US flag, except that it is square. I use it for modern Square dances.

This is the US flag, except that it is in a circle. I use it for Appalacian Big Circle dances.

Errors

I make more errors than I would like.

Unfortunately I have no one to proof-read my animations, and my own proof-reading often only shows me what I expect to see.

If you find an error, please leave a youtube comment, and if I agree with you I shall do my best to fix the problem.

History (of this site)

In 2018 we were unable to find videos for all of the dances to be danced at the Santa Barbara Winter Dreams Ball of 2019 so I began making animations to cover that lack.

I designed an xml for describing dances and wrote a program to convert that into animations (at first using ffmpeg, and later libav directly). I was inspired by the style of the Taminations website (which provides animations of all Modern Western Square Dance calls). I liked their style better than others I had seen because it showed both the dancer's orientation and hand clasps. Things which some other animations omitted.

After having created the program and animating all dances for the ball, I started making animations of those dances which struck my fancy after dancing them in one of our local dance groups.

Then COVID-19 struck and I couldn't dance any more, and making animations seemed like an entertaining way to pass the time. I started working my way through the dances in The Playford Assembly.

I also went through all the dances I had animated so far, looking for errors (and sadly finding many), and then correcting them. There are doubtless many uncorrected errors still to find.

Gary Shapiro (one of the local ECD leaders) gave me copies of the music performed by a few local artists for our dances and I rewrote my program so that it could fit the music and the animation together.

Gary Roodman expressed interest in my animations so I started working my way through his books. I asked if I might use the music from some of his CDs and he gave me permission to do so, and then he gave me the CDs which I did not already have.

I then worked my way through The Playford Ball, and started on Cecil Sharp's The Country Dance Book. The dances in Part 1 of that work are quite different from any other Country Dances I'd run across. It is clear that Sharp did not care for them¹, but I think some have a certain charm...

I contacted the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc. and got permission to use the music of Bare Necessities for my animations.

Fitting Music to Animations

When I started work on this project I had no expectation of having music for the animations (musical performances tend to be under copyright) and I made a decision then which hampers fitting music to the animations. I decided that a bar of music would have an integral number of frames, this simplified creating animations, but means that my format only allows a few specific values for music tempi.

Film historically had a frame rate of 24 frames per second. Television, ignoring interlace, in the US used 30, and in Europe 25 (the difference between NTSC and PAL).

When fitting music I calculate the music's desired counts per minute, then I look at the three frame rates above and find a frame per bar that produces the closest counts per minute to that specified by the music -- that is, I fit the video to the music as well as I can, and then I change the speed of the music to fit it to the video.

References

• The Playford Ball and The Playford Assembly and many other books and CDs may be purchased from the CDSS online store.
• There are several transcriptions of the works of Playford's Dancing Master on the web. The two I use are:
  • Scott Pfitzinger-Kumle's website released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license
  • The CDSS hosts Robert Keller's version
  • The International Music Score Library Project has scans of several editions.
• The Lovelace Manuscript contains 32 dance descriptions from before Playford published The English Dancing Master in 1651.
• The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library contains scans of many dance booklets from the 18th and 19th centuries.
• The Library of Dance contains links to many sources.
• Mosescore has the text of Pierre Trappeniers's Receuil de Contredanse with French instructions for some European Contredanses, published 1775.
• and a list of links to dance book(let)s printed between 1700 and 1852.
• IMSLP's list of Country Dance books
• The Register of Dances at Castle Menzies, 1749 contains transcriptions of the early forms of many Scottish Country Dances.
• Mosescore has the text of Pierre Trappeniers's Receuil de Contredanse with French instructions for some European Contredanses, published 1775.
• The Library of Congress has OCR copies of some old dance descriptions.
  • Raoul-Auger Feuillet's Recuëil de Contredanses, Paris, 1706
  • Francis Peacock's Sketches relative to the history and theory, but more especially to the practice of dancing, Aberdeen, 1805
  • T. Wilson's The Treasures of Terpsichore, London, 1815
  • Thomas Hillgrove's The Schollar's Companion and Ball-Room Vade-Mecum, New York, 1857
  • Elias Howe's Complete Ball-Room Hand Book, Boston, 1858
  • Elias Howe's American Dancing Master, Boston, 1862
  • Charles Link's Unique Dancing Call Book, Rochester, NY, 1893
• Richard Powers has a collection of scans of original dance manuals
• The New York Public Library provides William B. De Garmo's The Prompter
• The Round (the Country Dance group for Cambridge University) provides a online transcripts of
  • all of Cecil Sharp's The Country Dance Books that are out of copyright (in the UK).
  • Palmer's Pocket Playford
• The Pat Shaw legacy group has posted many of his dances on the web.
• The CDSS has various collections of dances:
  • The CDSS online library has made the dances of Charles Bolton available subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
  • The CDSS online library has made the dances of Ken Sheffield available subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
• John Sweeney has various collections of dances:
  • Various dances published in the English Dance and Song Society's newsletter.
  • The Lovelace Manuscript.
  • His own dances.
• Colin Hume has posted many of his own dances (and some other people's as well)
  • And ?all? the square dances printed in Northern Junket, a magazine published by Ralph Page containing early square and contra dances.
• As has Michael Barraclough
• The Ashover Book by David Wall, ~1764, and Hume's interpretations.
• Victor Skowronski's dances are available here.
• Elizabeth Burchenal's American Country Dances, 1918 is available here.
• Sharon Green's dances are available here.
• Both The Scottish Country Dance Dictionary and Scottish Country Dance Database seem to have almost every Scottish Country Dance ever written.
• While Contra DB and The Caller's Box do something similar for Contra Dances.
• The Lambertville site has some dance instructions, and an unparalleled list of ECD videos.
• Cecil Sharp's Sword dance book.

Some statistics

Style	Number of dances	Number of interpretations	Number of videos	Number with music
	1906	2258	2298	703
	20	22	22	3
	113	155	157	12
	11	12	12	2
	4	6	6	0
	408	416	418	6
	15	17	17	5
	215	219	227	19
	41	44	44	6
	29	36	36	0
	2762	3185	3237	756

(Many older dances have more than one interpretation [Playford leaves things out, makes errors, and uses terms we no longer understand, so one person thinks he means X and another Y and a third Z, who knows?] or may have evolved over time, hence there are more interpretations than dances. Some dances have more than one video. They may have both a longways version and a sicilian one, or a triple progression triple minor will usually have three videos one with 9 couples, one with 10, and one with 11 to show the different behaviors at the end of the line)

This list contains all the dances in:

• The Playford Assembly — Graham Christian
• The Playford Ball — Kate Van Winkle Keller/ Genevieve Shimer
• The Country Dance Book (Part 1), (Part 2), (Part 3), (Part 4), and (Part 6) — Cecil Sharp
• The Country Dance Book (Part 5) — Cecil Sharp
• all the Calculated Figures books (as of 2023) — Gary Roodman
• all except the Morris dances in GEMS The Best of the Country Dance and Song Society Diamond Jubilee Dance Contest
• The Engliſh Dancing Maſter by John Playford, 1651.
• Antwerp Antics, Belgian Boutades, Continental Capers, and Seasons of Invention by Philippe Callens.
• Cracking Chestnuts by David Smukler and David Millstone.
• Impropriety Vol. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6 by Brooke Friendly and/or Chris Sackett.
• Maggot Pie by Marjorie Heffer and William Porter in 1932,
  and The Apted Book of Country Dances by Porter, Heffer & Heffer in 1931.
• Retreads Vols. 1-10 by Charles Bolton.
  (These dances are © Charles Bolton and released by the CDSS Online Library under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA)).
• The Fallibroome Collection Vol. 1-6 and Fallibroome Garden by Bernard Bentley.
• A Choice Selection of American Country Dances of the Revolutionary Era by Kate Keller and Ralph Sweet, 1976, and Twenty Four Early American Country Dances, Cotilions & Reels for the Year 1976 by James E. Morrison, 1976.
• The 2019-2020, 2022-2023, 2023-2024 & 2024-2025 Cue Books of the Los Angeles Branch of the RSCDS
• Ease and Elegance, 1995, and Serendipity, 2009 by Fried de Metz Herman.
• Colin Hume
  • The interpretations on his website (except for the two unfinished dances, as of October, 2021).
  • Playford with a Difference
  • Dances with a Difference, Vol. 1
  • New Dances for Old
• Country Dance Book New Series by Douglas & Helen Kennedy, 1929.
  
• Mr. Kynaston's Famous Dance, The She Favourite, Emperor of the Moon, Farnicle Huggy, Elephants Stairs, and The Irish Howle by Andrew Shaw.
• Come Let's Be Merry by Tom Cook, 1975 (updated 1982).
• Another Look at Playford by Pat Shaw and edited by Marjorie Fennessy (except those dances where Pat's sole change to Sharp's interpretation is to supply the original music).
• Dancing Across the Atlantic by Loretta Holz.
• all the dances of Victor Skowronski that I could find on the internet (see Michael Bsarraclough's website).
• all the reconstructions of Michael Barraclough that he has posted on his website as of July 2022.
• From Two Barns Vol. 1 by Ken Sheffield.
  (These dances are © Ken Sheffield and released by the CDSS Online Library under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA)).
• Celebrations by Orly Krasner.
• Celebrating 50 Years (RSCDS Los Angeles).
• The Goldcrest Collection by Joseph Pimentel.
• Hudson Barn II, dances from the Boston Centre.
• A Choice Collection of Country Dances, published by John and William Neal in ~1726 and interpreted by Rich Jackson and George Fogg in 1990.
• Kentish Hops, by Albert Simons, sometime before 1990.
• RSCDS Book 14, 1947 & 53, 2023.
• Nightmarish (as of 2023) by Bob Lilley.
• Under the Influence by Jenna Simpson.
• all the dances danced at Santa Barbara Winter Dreams Balls (as of 2024)

And many other dances which have struck my fancy.

Dances by devisor

Dances by interpreter

Dances by period

Period	Number of dances	Number of interpretations	Number of videos	Number with music
1600-1649	18	22	22	7	22
1650-1699	257	388	392	176	384					4
1700-1749	487	631	637	147	585	6	1			33	6
1750-1799	354	453	459	55	298	3	81	8		54	9
1800-1849	129	181	182	27	87	9	28	4	5	47	1
1850-1899	43	72	79	6	8	4	40			8	1	11
1900-1949	107	115	115	9	45		1		1	2		5	26	35
1950-1999	481	496	511	141	306		1			109		69	11
2000-2049	713	720	733	186	518		1			130		68	2	1

Downloading Metadata

If you wish a copy of the metadata in my database you may grab one here:

Download as CSV

This does not include choreographies or musical scores, which are often protected by copyrights, but information like the name of the dance, who devised it, who interpreted it, when these happened, the starting formation, type of progression, etc.

A note on youtu.be URLs: These are subject to change. You are advised to use the field "My URL", rather than the youtu.be URLS as "My URL" should remain constant, whereas if I need to update an animation (add music, improve a transition, etc.) youtu.be forces a new URL for the updated video.

If you wish a copy of my program and instructions for making an xml describing a dance look here.. My program is linux based and not user friendly, furthermore you'll need to understand how to run a linux program on your machine and how to download the other packages it needs.

Linking to my animations

A word of caution when linking to my animations: I make mistakes, and sometimes notice this fact and try to correct it. Unfortunately every video loaded on youtube has its own URL. If I wish to make a correction then I must upload a new video to a new URL (and then delete the incorrect one). There is no way to update an existing video.

This means that if you link to one of my videos directly on youtube it may randomly disappear on you.

However, if you link to one of my dance pages (which has the current video embedded in it) that link should always work.

I also have a number of little scripts which will perform redirects for you.

These are all based on my "dance ID" which is usually the name of the dance with all the spaces removed. If you look at one of my dance pages, you will see the id in the URL. A little further down, I explain another way to get these dance IDs.

The simplest redirect is:
https://www.upadouble.info/redirect.php?id=ATripOerTheTweed
and this will go to the standard youtube page for the current video of the dance A Trip O'er The Tweed.

On the other hand, if you wish to embed one of my animations on your own page(s):
<iframe id="youtubeFrame" style="display: block; width: 80vw; height: 45vw; margin: 0 auto;" src="https://www.upadouble.info/embedredirect.php?id=ATripOerTheTweed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
That is, you take a standard youtube embed script, and replace the src argument with embedredirect?id=.

You can get a csv file containing a mapping between dances and dance IDs at https://upadouble.info/styleList.php.
But if you are only interested in a specific style of dancing, you can get a shorter list:

Teeshirts

I would dearly like to have a light-weight, flexible, breathable, durable (resistant to sweat corrosion, etc.), cleanable video display which could be made into a garment — so that I could wear a shirt showing a dance animation. But until such a thing is invented I'm stuck with putting static images onto teeshirts.

But how do you represent a dance as a static image?

The crib diagrams used by the RSCDS are a start. Unfortunately one has to understand an alphabet of symbols before the diagrams make sense. Something similar could be done for ECD or Contra, but I'd need a different set of symbols which no one but me would understand...

A while ago Tech Squares printed some teeshirts with images showing various square dance figures. I understand these are no longer available, so I've made up my own versions showing some figures. If you have any interest in making some shirts of your own, feel free to make use of my images.

The Long-S

I use the long-s when titling my animations of old dances.

It's what they would have done, after all. My father is a textual bibliographer who studied Elizabethan authors, and I grew up surrounded by more long-ses than most people. I have dabbled in old (and new) typography myself and have come to enjoy using them.

The use of the long-s faded away in France around 1790, but the Americans and even more the English kept using it into the 19th century. According to Wikipedia The Times (of London) stopped using the long-s on 10 September 1803, while the US Congress stopped on 1 Jan 1804. Some publishers stopped before, some after, but I have chosen 1804 as my cut-off. Anything before then will be titled with the long-s, anything after will not.

Rules for the long-s: The long-s was used for the round-s in lower case when an "s" occurred initally or medially but not finally in a word: so "ſchool", " aſpic", but "as". There are, of course, complications: before and after the letter "f" a round-s is always used, so: "offset", similarly the sequence "ss" is always spelled "ſs", even in words like "laſsie" where you'd (or I'd) expect to see two long-ses.

People tend to be more familiar with the italic long-s which looks like an integral sign (or rather the integral sign looks like it), the roman long-s looks like a lower case "f" only the cross bar is either absent, or only present on the left side of the letter.

The long-s, like the letter "f", has a large collection of ligatures, oddly, the long-s round-s ligature (the German es-zet) does not seem to have been used in English. Or not in anything I've looked at, anyway.

Acknowledgments

I should like to thank my fourth-grade music teacher, Mrs. Jenner, who taught me basic square dancing (probably much against my will). To my parents, who bought Richard Kraus's Let's Square Dance records and made me dance in my great-grandfather's disused laundry building. To the John Kollock family who joined us and took us to the community square dances in the old gym at Sautee, Ga.

To Cynthia Boche who got me dancing again after a 30 year hiatus, and who dragged me to my first English Country Dance.

To Alice Williams (no relation) who organizes these dances and has been most supportive of my interests.

To the Santa Barbara Country Dance Society who have put up with some of the results of my researches.

To Vic Ceder who got me square dancing again and answered many questions about hex "square"s, and who introduced me to the Taminations website which inspired my own animations.

To Gary Roodman who stumbled on some of my early animations and encouraged me to make more (and gave me some of his books and permission to use his music too).

To Colin Hume who answered many ignorant questions, and also let me use his music.

Contact Me

Colin Hume says I should at least put my name and email address here (but this site is about the dances not me, you shouldn't care about me).

George Williams

If you want to know about the places I dance, look here.

¹Colin Hume has asked me to support this statement, pointing out that Sharp did indeed publish these dances and that he went around teaching them. Perhaps so, but in the Introduction to Part 5 of the Country Dance Book he says:

A critical examination of these successive editions (of Playford) shows that the dance degenerated very rapidly during the period covered by them, and the large number of dance-manuals subsequently issued by Walsh, Thompson, Waylett, and others furthermore proves that this decline continued during the two following centuries...

—Cecil Sharp, The Country Dance Book part 5, 1918, p. 9

He also says, in his Introduction to part 1, that his next book will be reconstructions of Playford, not more extant dances. Which leads me to believe that he was disappointed by what he found.

This website is copyright © 2021,2022,2023,2024 by George W. Williams V
My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.