The Carle came o're the Craft ~ Williams

The Carle came o're the Craft ~ Williams is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Wilson in 1816 and published in A Companion to the Ball Room, London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2024. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Wilson writes (page 35):
SINGLE FIGURE (Each strain repeat)
Set & change sides with 2d. Cu: set & back again swing with right hands round 2d. Cu: & allemande

OR THUS The 1st lady meets & turns the 2d gent: the 1st. gent: meets and turns the 2d lady lead down the middle up again & set to the top Cu:

DOUBLE FIGURE (Tune played twice thro' with repeats)
Hands 6 round & back promenade 3 Cu: whole poussette & the double triangle

Wilson spells the title as "The Carle came o'er the Craft".

The music consists of two 4 bar strains.

The RSCDS is interpretting Wilson's DOUBLE FIGURE (The Wilson's poussette and double triangle are completely different from those of the RSCDS).

Wilson defines most of his figures in his An Analysis of Country Dancing, 3rd Edition.

  1. hands 6 round & back again may be found on page 5 and means what you expect. All take hands and circle left then right.
  2. promenade 3 Cu: is defined on page 18 and means that all three couples take promenade hold and, with the 1s leading, travel in a counter-clockwise elipse around and back to places.
  3. whole poussette is defined on page 15 and means: "top two couples join hands with partner, circle, counter-clockwise, one and a half times around the other couple to change places with them."
    Note: this is unlike a normal English Poussette as the couples travel once and a half around each other rather than once. And is quite different from the Scottish Poussette.
  4. the double triangle is defined on page 113 and means: "the middle couple loop first corner right shoulder pass outside partner's place, then loop 2nd corner right shoulder and return to place.
    This is completely different from the RSCDS version of double triangles.

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.

The dances of George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.

A11-4Circle left six...
A21-4...and back to the right
B1+21-8Three couple promenade round
A3+41-81s+2s poussette once and a half counter-clockwise (W1+M2 push)
B3+41-8Wilson's double triangle: 1s loop 1st corner right, pass partner's place left, 2nd corner right, return home

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=TheCarleCameOerTheCraft-Williams

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2024 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2024 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.