Not I

Not I is a Scottish Country Dance. It was published by Johnson in about 1754 in Caledonian Country Dances Vol. II, London. It was interpreted by RSCDS in 1977 and published in RSCDS Book 28. It is R8×32 3C/4C, a proper Triple Minor dance. R32.

RSCDS Book 28 contains the comment "The source given is Caledonian Country Dances, 1754 but attempts to trace this manuscript have been unsuccessful.

Walsh published books with "Caledonian Country Dances" in their titles in about 1735, 1737, 1740, 1745, 1748, 1751 and 1755, and Johnson published one in 1750. None of these works contains a dance with anything approaching this name. But there may be other works I have no access to.

Note: RSCDS Book 10, for the dance The Lady's Breist Knot has a more nearly complete attribution: "Jno Johnson Caledonian Country Dances Vol. II, c. 1754" but I still can't find it.

Thompson published a dance call "No Indeed Not I" in 1791, but its figure does not match this one.

My copy of Book 28 says for bars 25-28: "2nd, 1st, and 3rd couples dance an allemande turn to the right.", and for 29-32: "2nd, 1st, and 3rd couples dance an allemande turn to the left."

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, cast, petronella (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=NotI

< Prev Top Next >

The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1977 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
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.