Spanish Jigg

Spanish Jigg is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1695 in The Dancing Master, 9th ed., London. It was interpreted by Douglas & Helen Kennedy in 1978 and published in Country Dance Book, New Series. Found in The Playford Assembly. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. It is in the key: C major.

Playford writes:

The 1. cu. set to their Partners and cast off, the 2. cu. set to their Partners and cast off The 1. man turn the 2. wo. and the 2. man the 1. wo. The 1. cu. take hands and lead below the 3. cu. and back again, then cast off Go the whole Figure through
Note: Every Strain is to be play'd twice over.

Originally a triple minor, in which the 3s did nothing.

The Playford Assembly also attributes this dance to James Morrison, but as far as I can tell, these is exactly the same dance the Kennedies describe in their book. I think he merely republished it in the CDSS News.

The tune was published with the dance. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album Strong Roots. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.

The animation plays at 115 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 (no music plays during this slow set). 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 dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, cast, lead, figure eight (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=SpanishJigg

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1978 by Douglas & Helen Kennedy. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2020 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.