Lady Baird's Reel ~ Williams is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Wilson in 1816 and published in A Companion to the Ball Room, London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2024. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
In his A Companion to the Ball Room, 1816, Thomas Wilson published Lady Bairds Reel:
SINGLE FIGURE Each strain repeated
Set & change sides with 2d. Cu: set & back again lead down the middle up again & right & left with the top Cu:
OR THUS The 1st. lady lead down the 2d. gent: the 1st. gent: lead down the 2d. lady lead down the middle with your partner up again & set to the top Cu:
DOUBLE FIGURE Tune played twice thro with repeats
Promenade 3 Cu: whole poussette set 3 across set 3 in your places & the double triangle
Wilson's music consists of two 4 bar strains, both repeated. The RSCDS chose to interpret the DOUBLE FIGURE so the music should be played AABBAABB.
Wilson defines most of his figures in his An Analysis of Country Dancing, 3rd Edition.
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+A2 | 1-8 | Three couple promenade round |
B1+B2 | 1-8 | 1s+2s poussette once and a half counter-clockwise, W1+M2 push |
A3 | 1-2 | 1s move right to stand between end couples |
3-4 | Lines of three across set | |
A4 | 1-2 | 1s move left back to places |
3-4 | Lines of three on the sides set | |
B3+4 | 1-8 | Wilson's double triangle: 1s loop 1st corner right, pass partner's place left, 2nd corner right, return home |
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=LadyBairdsReel-Williams
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2024 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2024 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.