The Christmas Tale ~ Hume

The Christmas Tale ~ Hume is an English Country Dance. It was published by Thompson in 1778. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Thompson writes:

First Gent: turn his Partner with the right hand Then left lead down two Cu. up again & cast off Allemand with your Partner lead thr'o the bottom and Cast up lead thr'o the top & cast off

Colin Hume sets out to interpret all the dances in Thompson's annual of 1778, and then concludes that this one will not appeal to modern dancers, because only the 1s do anything. He considers turning it into a duple minor, which would be easy, but even so, all the 2s do is lead up.

This is one of the many examples of dances that are not interesting to modern dancers, nevertheless he (and I) have examined it to prove that it is, in fact, not worth the attention we have given it.

Colin also points out that just because we have come to like dances where everyone is active all the time, this was not the case in times past. Indeed a dance where only the 1s do anything would have been a good deal easier to learn in a time with no walk throughs, where everyone learned the dance by watching the top couple dance it.

The tune was published by Thompson with the dance and the music was synthesized by Colin Hume's software.

The animation plays at 113 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.

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=TheChristmasTale-Hume

The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. I do not have a date for the interpretation, so it may be under copyright. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2025 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

A1	1-4	1s right hand turn...
	5-8	...and left hand back
A2	1-8	1s lead down below 3s, turn, lead back and cast down as 2s lead up
B1	1-4	1s regency allemande right...
	5-8	...and back by the left
B2	1-4	1s lead below the 3s and cast back to middle
	5-8	1s lead above the 2s and cast back to middle