Come Let's Be Merry

Come Let's Be Merry is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1726 in The Dancing Master, The Third Volume, 2nd ed., London. It was interpreted by Tom Cook in 1975 and published in Come Let's Be Merry. Found in The Playford Assembly. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 312. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Playford writes:

Note: The first Strain is to be play'd twice, and the last but once.

The first Man lead his Woman by the Right-hand half round, and back again by the Left-hand Cast off into the second Couples place, then into the third Couples place Then lead thro' both Couple and cast off, then all three Couple take Hands round 'till the first Couple meet in the middle, and turn Hands

Originally a triple minor.

The tune, also called Come Let's Be Merry, was published in the Dancing Master with the dance. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album Invitation to Waltz. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.

The animation plays at 113 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 (no music plays during this slow set). 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 dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, circle, cast, lead, waltz (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=ComeLetsBeMerry

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1975 by Tom Cook. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2020 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.