The Cornish Squire
The Cornish Squire is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1695 in The Dancing Master, 9th ed.. It was interpreted by Colin Hume (website) in 2024 and published in Colin Hume's Website. 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 18 bars. It is in the key: F major.
Playford writes:
The 1.cu. cross over and meet in the 2. cu. place, the 1. man take hands with the 3.cu. and lead all three abreast downwards, and the 1. wo. take hands between the 2.cu. and lead with her face upwards, the 1. man and 3. cu. going the Hey at the same time, and the 1. wo. and 2.cu. do the like; the 1. man meet his own Partner in the middle and turn her round, lead through the 1. cu. and cast off into 2.cu. place again, then go the Figure of 8 though the 3.cu. into the 2. cu. place.
The tune was published by Henry Playford with the dance and the music was synthesized by Colin Hume.
The animation plays at 69 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.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, cast, lead, figure eight, hey, hey for three, lead and cast, cross go below (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=TheCornishSquire
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2024 by Colin Hume. 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.