St. Martin's Lane

St. Martin's Lane is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1696 in The second Part of the Dancing Master, London. It was interpreted by Helwig in 1988. Found in The Playford Assembly. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 35 bars.

Playford writes:

The 1. man cast off below the 2. man, then turn the 3. wo. and cast up into his own place; then the 1. wo. cast off below the 2. wo. then turn the 3. man and cast up into her own place. This to the first Strain play'd twice

Lead down the 2. cu. then all hands a-breast with the 3. cu. and go the Figure through, then cast up and all four hands a-breast with the 2. cu. then lead up and go the Figure through the 2. cu. then meet in the 2. cu. place and turn; the others do the like


The tune was composed by Henry Purcell for use in a play called The Virtuous Wife. It was performed by the Odd Sundays Garage Band (Judy Linsenberg, Shira Kammen and Patti Cobb). The music is used with permission from the Odd Sundays Garage Band.

The animation plays at 106 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), cast, lead, figure eight, double 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=StMartinsLane

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1988 by Helwig. 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.