A Man's a Man for a' That ~ RSCDS

A Man's a Man for a' That ~ Williams A Man's a Man for a' That ~ RSCDS

A Man's a Man for a' That ~ RSCDS is a Scottish Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Wilson in 1816 and published in A Companion to the Ball Room, London. It was interpreted by RSCDS in 1981 and published in RSCDS Book 30. It is S8×32 3C/4C, a proper Triple Minor dance. St32.

Wilson writes (page 42):

SINGLE FIGURE (Each strain repeated)
Hands 3 round on the ladies side hands 3 round on the gent^ns. side lead down the middle up again & allemande

OR THUS Set & change places with 2^d. Cu: set & back again & whole poussette

DOUBLE FIGURE (Tune played twice thro' with repeats)
Set & hands across quite round with 2^d. Cu: set & back again lead down the middle up again set to top Cu: swing corners chain figure four round with top Cu: & turn your partner

The music consists of two 4 bar strains. Probably played as a reel rather than a strathspey.

The RSCDS is interpretting Wilson's DOUBLE FIGURE

Wilson defines most of his figures in his An Analysis of Country Dancing, 3rd Edition.

Set & hands across quite round is one figure which Wilson does not define. However he defines hands across on page 12 where he defines a normal hands across but says they only turn half round (with a footnote saying it is often done by turning completely round and then back again).
So I'm going to assume that quite round actually means half round. So two bars of setting, followed by two bars to do half a hands across.
lead down the middle up again set to the top Cu: may be found on page 8 Top couple leads down to between the third couple, 1s turn and lead up to 2nd place as the second couple move up (Wilson's pictures show them moving up the sidelines and not leading), then actives set (or foot it) to the second couple. (This seems to take 8 bars)
swing corners is defined on pages 55-58 and appears to mean: the 1s turn partner by the right hand then 1st corners by the left hand, partner right, 2nd corners left and returning home the shortest way (by the left shoulder).
Chain figure for four may be found on page 76 and boils down to what anyone else would call rights and lefts.
Turn your partner may be found on page 2 and boils a two hand turn (Wilson calls a right hand turn "swing your partner").

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: hand turn (allemande), set, lead, hands across, rights and lefts, back to back (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=AMansAManForAThat-RSCDS

The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1981 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.