Paul's Wharfe
Paul's Wharfe is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Playford (website) in 1651 in The English Dancing Master. It was interpreted by Scott Pfitzinger (website) in about 2019. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. It is a multipart dance. The minor set lasts 144 bars. It is in the key: D Major.
Playford writes
Lead up forwards and back That againe Set and turn S. That againe First foure hand and go round Then crosse over between the 2. place As before Sides all That againe As before First two on each side hands and goe back a D. then meet and crosse over Then goe halfe round towards the right hand into each others places As before Armes all That againe As before First two men take both hands and change places, the We. as much Cast off all foure, and come to your places Do thus to all. As before
This consists of the three standard introductions each followed by a short progressive figure. In Playford's day each figure would run until everyone was back where they started.
The only instruction I have difficulty with is "Cast off all foure", generally "cast off" means "cast down" and the 1s are at the bottom of the minorset and can't cast down. Scott's interpretation that the 2s should cast down and lead up, and the 1s follow (lead up and cast down) seems likely to be what was intended.
In the second figure Playford seems to assign 6 bars of movement to A1 and 2 bars to A2, so I've moved the last "partner change" from A1 to A2.
At the start of the last figure Playford says First two men take both hands and change places, the We. as much Playford does not say "at the same time" so I presume these are sequential. Scott might be implying that they happen together, in which case both could do a two hand turn once and a half, but I think they are intended to be sequential.
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 transcriptions and interpretations of Playford dances found on http://playforddances.com/ from the various editions of The Dancing Master are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
| Up a double | ||||||||||||||||
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| Figure 1 repeats 2 times | ||||||||||||||||
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| Siding | ||||||||||||||||
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| Figure 2 repeats 2 times | ||||||||||||||||
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| Arming | ||||||||||||||||
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| Figure 3 repeats 2 times | ||||||||||||||||
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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=PaulsWharfe
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~2019 by Scott Pfitzinger. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA 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.