The Jovial Beggars - Playford

The Jovial Beggars - Playford is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1701 in The Dancing Master, 11th ed., London. It was interpreted by Charles Bolton (website) in 1989 and published in Retreads Vol.4. Found in The Playford Assembly. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 28 bars.

Playford writes:
The 1. man cast off below the 2. man into the 2. wo's place, the 1. wo. follows her Partner into the 2. man's place, To the first Strain once The 1. wo. in the 2. man's place cast up into her own place and the man follows her into his own place The 1. man take his Partner and lead through the 2. cu. and back again and cast off; The second Strain once All four lead up hands abreast, lead through and cast off into the 2. cu. place; The second Strain twice The rest do the like.

The tune, Jovial Beggars, was published by Playford with the dance. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album At Home. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.

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 (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 dances of Charles Bolton (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license by the CDSS Online Library.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

A11-4M1 cast down, W1 chase, 2s move up, M1 end in W2 spot
5-61s left half gypsy to proper
A21-4W2 cast down, M2 chase, 1s move up, W2 end in M2 spot
5-62s right half gypsy to proper
B11-41s lead down, turn lead up between 2s
5-82s gate 1s up into a line of four
B21-4Up a double and back
5-81s lead up, cast down while 2s meet and 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=JovialBeggars

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1989 by Charles Bolton. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2020 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA 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.