The Sutherland Reel ~ Williams
The Sutherland Reel ~ Williams is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Wilson in 1816 and published in A Companion to the Ball Room. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2024. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
SINGLE FIGURE Each strain repeated
Set & change sides with 2d. Cu: set & back again lead down the middle up again & right & left with top Cu:
OR THUS Cast off 2 Cu: & back again lead down the middle up again & allemande
DOUBLE FIGURE Tune played twice thro with repeats
Hands 3 round on the ladies side, hands 3 round on the gent: side lead down the middle up again cast round the top Cu: set 3 across set 3 in your places half poussette with top Cu: & lead thro the bottom
The music consists of two eight bar strains. So if you repeat each strain you get 32 bars, which doesn't make sense for a SINGLE FIGURE. I think Wilson must have a misprint.
None of Wilson's figure's matches the RSCDS version very closely. The DOUBLE FIGURE at least begins with the two circles, followed by a lead down, up and cast. After that things are completely different.
Wilson defines most of his figures in his An Analysis of Country Dancing, 3rd Edition.
- Hands 3 round on the ladies side, hands 3 round on the gent: side this figure does not seem to be defined in any of Wilson's books - which is odd because Wilson uses it frequently. In The Sutherland Reel the RSCDS interpreted it as: "Hands three round at top on the Ladies' side, etc." which has the 1s circling with L2, and then the 1s circling with M2. Whereas in Ruffian's Rant they have the three ladies circling, and then the three gents - which seems a more obvious reading of the words.
- lead down the middle up again cast round the top Cu: may be found on page 27 Top couple leads down to between the third couple, 1s turn and lead up to the top and cast down as the second couple moves up. (Wilson's pictures show them moving up the sidelines and not leading)
- set 3 across & set 3 in your places is defined on page 21 and means: "L1 moves between the 2s as M1 moves between 3s, then the lines of three across set, then L1 moves back to her place and M1 back to his, and then lines of three on the sides set to each other.
- half poussette is defined on page 14 and means "top two couples join hands with partner, circle, counter-clockwise, around the other couple to return to places."
Note: that this is actually two thirds of the whole poussette as defined by Wilson, and what most people would call a full poussette. - lead thro the bottom does not seem to be defined. I assume it means lead through the bottom couple and cast back to 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 George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.
| A1 | 1-4 | 1s+W2 circle left |
| 5-8 | 1s+M2 circle left | |
| A2 | 1-8 | 1s lead down, turn, lead back and cast down, as 2s lead up |
| B1 | 1-2 | 1s move right to stand between end couples (W1 up, M1 down) |
| 3-4 | Lines of three across set | |
| 5-6 | 1s move left back to places | |
| 7-8 | Lines of three on the sides set | |
| B2 | 1-4 | 1s+2s full poussette in 4 bars, M1+W2 push |
| 5-8 | 1s lead down between 3s and cast back to place |
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=TheSutherlandReel-Williams
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2024 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 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 © 2021-2025 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.