Crief Fair ~ Williams

Crief Fair ~ Williams Crief Fair ~ RSCDS

Crief Fair ~ 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 2023. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars.

Wilson writes (on page 76):

SINGLE FIGURE Each strain repeated
Set & change sides with the 2d. Cu: set & back again lead down the middle up again allemande & set contrary corners

OR THUS The 1st. Lady lead down the 2d. gent: the 1t. gent: lead down the 2d Lady lead your partner down the middle up again & right & left with top Cu: & the double triangle

The music consists of three 4 bar strains. I assume the music should be played at 2 beats per bar and that " " indicates two repetitions of each strain.

Wilson usually gives multiple figures for a tune, this is an attempt to understand the first figure he describes.

Wilson defines most of his figures in his An Analysis of Country Dancing.
Set & change sides with the 2d. Cu: may be found on pages 26-27 and means: set to neighbor, and change sides with partner (ladies between the men), set to neighbor again, and change back (ladies between men). Wilson does not say that hands should be taken.
lead down the middle up again may be found on pages 10-11 and means: "lead down two couples, turn, lead up to the place of the couple who were below (who move up)" Wilson does not specify a hand hold for the lead, nor whether the 2s take hands.
allemande may be found on page 7 and appears to mean a gypsy (or perhaps a back-to-back). This is an unusual meaning for "allemande", but, as best as I can understand, that is what Wilson describes.
set contrary corners may be found on pages 55-57 and means "move to 1st corner and set, pass partner right moving to 2nd corner, set, return to places the easiest way". Wilson does not show the corners setting back, but I expect modern dancers would want to.

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.

A11-41s+2s set to neighbor and change places with partner (women between men)
A21-41s+2s again set and change
B11-41s lead below 2s, turn, lead to 2nd place as 2s move up
B21-41s right gypsy
C1+21-81s set to 1st corners, pass right, set to 2nd corners, 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=CriefFair-Williams

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2023 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2023 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.