Rural Felicity - Wilson

Haste to the Wedding ~ Sheffield

Rural Felicity - Wilson or Haste to the Wedding ~ Sheffield is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Wilson in 1816 and published in A Companion to the Ball Room, London. It was interpreted by Ken Sheffield (website) in 1982 and published in From Two Barns, Vol 1. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 231. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Wilson writes:

The Original DOUBLE FIGURE Each strain repeated

The top lady sets & passes down the middle at the same time the gentleman casts off 2 Cu: the lady then cast up & the gent. sets & passes up the middle to the top cross over one Cu: half figure round the 3d. Cu: hands 3 round with the bottom lady who passes under to her place hands 3 round with the bottom gent: who passes under to his place

Sheffield calls his hey (which is rather different from the original) a reversed grimstock hey, he also says the 1s should pass outside the 2s. Now I'd guess a reversed grimstock would have the 3s+2s start the hey while the 1s cross... but that means the 1s will pass inside the 3s. So I am ignoring his comment about "reversed grimstock".

Oh. Possibly by "reversed" he means the 1s start outside rather than inside.

I think the hey needs a seventh change, so the 1s end up in the middle.

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 Ken Sheffield (including adaptations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license by the CDSS Online Library.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

A11-2W1 set to M1
3-4M1 cast below 3s, W1 move down the inside to just above them
5-81s+3s left hands across
A21-2M1 set to W1
3-4W1 cast to place, M1 goes to his place through center
5-81s+2s left hands across
B11-81s cross, into seven changes of a mirror hey on the sides
B21-4Circle three on the sides (1s starting and ending in 2nd place outside)
5-81s cross go below as 3s move up, turning single, and 2s turn single to top

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=RuralFelicity-Wilson

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1982 by Ken Sheffield. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 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
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.