The Comical Fellow is an English Country Dance. It was published by Thompson in 1776 in Twenty four Country Dances for the year 1776. It was interpreted by W. S. Porter, M. Heffer, A. Heffer in 1931 and published in The Apted Book of Country Dances. Found in The Playford Assembly. Mentioned in the article A Trip to Netherfield. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 40 bars. Someone thought this dance was Easy.
See Colin Hume's version for a closer approximation to what would have been danced in the Regency Period.
He also suggests having the 2s set forward as well as the 1s in the A part.
1st. Man set and turn the 2d. Wo. the 1st. Wo. set & turn the 2d. Man lead down the middle up again & cast off 1 Cu. & clap 4 times & turn single hands 6 round clap 4 times again and turn your Partner
The original gives a 4 bar A tune which is repeated, but the Heffers give us two 8 bar A, each being two of the original As.
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: hand turn (allemande), set, cast, lead, rights and lefts, down the middle and back (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=ComicalFellow
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1931 by W. S. Porter, M. Heffer, A. Heffer. 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
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.