Lord Rosslyn's Fancy
Lord Rosslyn's Fancy is a Scottish Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Wilson in 1815 and published in Le Sylphe, An Elegant Collection of Twenty four Country Dances, for the Year 1815, London. It was interpreted by RSCDS in 1949 and published in RSCDS Book 15. It is J8×32 3C/4C, a proper Triple Minor dance. J32.
Button and Whitaker published Wilson's books so some places list one some the other. Wilson was the deviser, Button and Whitaker the publisher. The crib diagram gives a date of 1812, but if you look at the Regency dance site's list of the dances published by Button and Whitaker you will find it did not come out until 1815. Wilson spelled his dance Lord Roslyns Fancy (with only one "s").
According to Robert Keller's site dancers go forward and back in A2 rather than crossing, but other than that the figures seem to match.
Wilson defined all his figures in his book The Analysis of Country Dancing. Double triangles appear in the 3rd edition of that work. Wilson's double triangles are completely different from those of the RSCDS. Wilson probably invented the figure and used the term to mean: the middle couple loop first corner right shoulder pass outside partner's place, then loop 2nd corner right shoulder and return to place.
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.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
The dance contains the following figures: set, hands across, double triangle (and probably others).
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=LordRosslynsFancy
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1949 by RSCDS. 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.