Glasgow Lasses ~ Williams

Glascow Lasses ~ Williams

Glasgow Lasses ~ Williams or Glascow Lasses ~ Williams is an English Country Dance. It was published by Walsh in 1748 in Caledonian Country Dances Vol. II Part 1. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2022. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 16 bars.

Walsh writes:

First Man foot it to the 2d Wo. and cast off into the 2d Man's Place, and the 2d Wo. cast up at the same time into the 1st Wo. Place — Then the 2d Man foot it to ye 1st Wo. (he being at Top) and cast off into his Place, and the 1st Wo. cast up into her Place then the 1st and 2d Man foot it to their Partners, the 1st Cu. cast off one Cu. take Hands with the 2d. Cu. and lead up, foot it and cast off into the 2d Cu: Place.

The music is two eight bar strains, the first repeated, the second not.

Walsh's strain marks suggest that First Man foot it to the 2d Wo. and cast off into the 2d Man's Place should take all the first A strain, and one could translate foot it as "set twice" and the "cast off" as a long cast. But I don't think I've ever seen a cast like this taking 4 bars. I think modern dancers would prefer it all to fit in 4 bars... The RSCDS adds a two hand turn between M1+L2, but I see no justification for this.

That leaves then the 1st and 2d Man foot it to their Partners, the 1st Cu. cast off one Cu. take Hands with the 2d. Cu. and lead up, foot it and cast off into the 2d Cu: Place. to fit into either 8 or 16 bars. But I count it out as 10, maybe you can rush the two casts and do each in a bar, but I'd rather throw out the initial "foot it". The RSCDS solves this problem by changing almost every aspect of the figure.

Saltator, Boston, 1802, has a dance called The Lasses of Glasgow but it has an unrelated figure.

Walsh spells "Glasgow" as "Glascow".

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.

A1-4M1+W2 set and cast left as others twirl into their places
5-8W1+M2 set and cast left as others twirl back home
B1-21s cast down to the ends of a line of four
3-4Line of four lead up
5-6...and set
7-81s cast down as 2s lead up

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=GlasgowLasses-Williams

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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
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.