Lady George Murray's Reel is an American Country Dance. It was devised by Hezekiah Cantelo in 1785 and published in Twenty Four American Country Dances danced by the British during their Winter Quarters at Philadelphia, New York, & Charles Town. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2022. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Cantelo writes:
Hands across the round to the left · Ditto to the Right Gallop down two Couple and foot it · up again & cast off set cross corners and turn · Ditto Hey on opposite sides · and turn to place or lead outsides and turn proper
I'm a little perplexed at the timing on this dance. The music is in 4 bar strains (rather than the usual 8), but the figures for the B music: Gallop down two Couple and foot it · up again & cast off each took 8 bars in The Monckton. So I'm going to assume that the gallop down is actually only 1 couple, not 2, and the foot it is only 2 bars, not 4.
Similarly I shall assume that the hey on opposite sides actually takes six bars and cuts across the D music, rather than the 4 bars the instructions give it.
I think set cross corners and turn means that the 1s should end on opposite sides after the corners set and turn. This means they don't need to cross over for the hey (whose timing is already tight).
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.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
A1 | 1-4 | Left hands across at the top... |
A2 | 1-4 | ...and right hands back |
B1 | 1-2 | 1s gallop down |
3-4 | ...and foot it | |
B2 | 1-2 | 1s gallop up |
3-4 | 1s cast down as 2s lead up | |
C1 | 1-4 | 1s set to 1st corners and two hand turn them |
C2 | 1-4 | 1s set to 2nd corners and two hand turn them, ending improper |
D12 | 1-6 | 2s start together for mirror heys on the sides (1s are improper) |
7-8 | 1s two hand turn half to proper |
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=LadyGeorgeMurraysReel
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
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.