Albion's Queen ~ Andrew Shaw

Barksheir

Albion's Queen ~ Pat Shaw Albion's Queen ~ Andrew Shaw

Albion's Queen ~ Andrew Shaw or Barksheir is an English Country Dance. It was published by Walsh in 1706 in Twenty four New Country Dances for the year 1706, London. It was interpreted by Andrew Shaw in about 2018. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 16 bars.

I do not have a copy of Walsh's publication, so I fall back on John Young's copy from 1710.

John Young writes:

The 1. man cast off below the 2. man, and go the Hey with the 2. man and 2. wo. till the 1. man comes into the 2. man's place The 1. wo. cast off below the 2. wo. and do the like First cu. being in the 2. cu. place, the two men lead to the wall, and the two we. do the same at the same time, then the 1. cu. lead up and the 2. cu. lead down at the same time, then right-hands a-cross all four half round, and then left-hands and back again, till the 1. cu. comes into the 2. cu. place The rest do the like

Andrew Shaw points out that this choreography was used earlier by Playford for Edinburgh Castle (Playford, 1698).

The animation plays at 120 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance will often be slowed down so people can learn the moves more readily. Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color, however the border of each dancer indicates what role they currently play so the border color may change each time through the minor set.

An online description of the dance may be found here.

The dance contains the following figures: gypsy, cast, lead, hands across (and probably others).

If you find what you believe to be a mistake in this animation, please leave a comment on youtube explaining what you believe to be wrong. If I agree with you I shall do my best to fix it.

If you wish to link to this animation please see my comments on the perils of youtube. You may freely link to this page, of course, and that should have no problems, but use one of my redirects when linking to the youtube video itself:
https://www.upadouble.info/redirect.php?id=AlbionsQueen

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~2018 by Andrew Shaw. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This website is copyright © 2021,2022,2023,2024 by George W. Williams V
Creative Commons License 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.