De'il Take the Wars is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1721 in The Dancing Master, Vol. the first, 17th ed.. It was interpreted by Andrew Shaw in 2002 and published in The She Favourite. 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: 231. The minor set lasts 36 bars. It is in the key: C major.
A dance of the same name appeared in 1695 (DM, ed. 9) with the same A part but different figures for the B.
The tune was published by Playford in 1721 for the dance Mr. Beveridge's Ground. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album Mrs. Beveridge's Triumph. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.
The animation plays at 90 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), turn single, cast, lead, hey (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=DeilTakeTheWars
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2002 by Andrew Shaw. 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.