Hunt the Squirrel ~ 1909 is an English Country Dance. It is a traditional dance with no clear origin. It was interpreted by Cecil Sharp (website) in 1909. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
There is a Playford dance (1709, 14th edition) with this name but the figures are completely different and the dance is 64bars.
The tune, also called Hunt the Squirrel, was published in Playford with a dance of the same name. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album A Playford Ball. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.
The animation plays at 115 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.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
A1 | 1-4 | 1s+2s circle left... |
5-8 | ...and back by the right | |
B1 | 1-8 | 1s cast below 3s lead up to face 2s who move up to the top |
A2 | 1-8 | 1s facing 2s they move down the set to bottom and back up, 2s stopping when they reach home and making an arch for the 1s to pass through to reach their home |
B2 | 1-8 | 1s+2s partner swing, counter-clockwise around each other to progress |
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=HuntTheSquirrel-Sharp
The dance is out of copyright in the US, but I'm not sure of other jurisdictions. The interpretation is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. 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.