The Fair Emigrant
Mrs. Dawson's Delight
The Fair Emigrant or Mrs. Dawson's Delight is an American Country Dance. It was devised by Hezekiah Cantelo in 1785 and published in Twenty Four American Country Dances danced by the British during their Winter Quarters at Philadelphia, New York, & Charles Town. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2022. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 64 bars.
Cantelo writes:
First Lady foot it & turn the 2d. Gen: — First Gen: Ditto with the 2d. Lady — Gallop down two Couple & foot it — Go up one Cu: — & turn — foot it & half turn with the right hand — Ditto with the left hand — foot it 6 in hand — go the compleat round to the Right —
I make no attempt to match the music to the instructions. The music has four 4 bar strains, all repeated. The instructions are for 64 bars.
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.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
| A1 | 1-8 | W1+M2 foot it (set forward twice) and two hand turn |
| A2 | 1-8 | M1+W2 foot it and two hand turn |
| B1 | 1-4 | 1s gallop down passing two couples |
| 5-8 | ... and foot it | |
| B2 | 1-4 | 1s slip up to 2nd place as 2s lead up |
| 5-8 | 1s two hand turn | |
| C1 | 1-4 | 1s foot it (set twice) to partner |
| 5-8 | Right hand balance and right turn half | |
| C2 | 1-4 | 1s foot it (set twice) to partner |
| 5-8 | Left hand balance and left turn three quarters (falling back between end couples) | |
| D1 | 1-4 | Lines of three across, set twice, 1s finishing in progressed places |
| 5-8 | Lines of three on the sides, set twice | |
| D2 | 1-8 | Circle six right |
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=TheFairEmigrant
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2022 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 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.