General Stuart's Reel

The New Way of Gil Don

General Stuart's Reel or The New Way of Gil Don is a Scottish Country Dance. It was devised by Castle Menzies in 1749 and published in The Register of Dances at Castle Menzies, Scotland. It was interpreted by RSCDS Book 10 in 1935 and published in RSCDS Book 10. It is R8×32 3C/4C, a proper Triple Minor dance. R32.

Quoted from The Register of Dances at Castle Menzies (as transcribed by Jim Healy):

1st man sets to the 2d woman, & casts off, then the 1st woman does the same, then the 1st man turns the 3d woman by the right hand & goes half round his partner, who was turning the 2d man by the right hand then the 1st man turns the 2d woman by the left hand, while the 1st woman turns the 3d by the left hand; then the 1st pair setts cross, & then to each other, & reels att the side.

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, hey, hello goodbye setting (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=GeneralStuartsReel

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1935 by RSCDS Book 10. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2019 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.