The Doubtful Shepherd ~ Williams
The Doubtful Shepherd ~ Williams is an English Country Dance. It was published by Thompson in 1780 in Twenty four Country Dances for the Year 1780, London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2023. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Thompson writes:
The 1st.&2d.&3d. Gent: take hands & go round their Partns The Ladies do the same The 1st Cu. go round with the Allemand till they come to their places the 2d.&3d. Cu. follows Cross over and Right & Left at top The 1st
The music consists of two 8 bar strains, both repeated.
What does Thompson mean by Cu. go round with the Allemand till they come to their places the 2d.&3d. Cu. follows? It sounds more like the Scottish Allemande for three couples than it does the standard Regency Allemande. But the Scottish Allemande is progressive and leaves the 1s&32 swapped, so that's wrong. It might be a three couple promenade round, though I've never heard that called an "Allemande". I suppose it might mean the 1s do a Regency Allemande in the first 4 bars, and then the 2s+3s do the same on the last 4...
At least the promenade flows nicely from the woman's circle...
Presumably the Cross over at the start of B2 means, "1s cross the set, go below and two hand turn half as the 2s move up". A fairly standard sequence.
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 | 1-8 | Men take hands, M1 leads clockwise circle around the women back home |
| A2 | 1-8 | Women take hands, W1 leads counter clockwise circle around the men back home |
| B1 | 1-8 | Three couple promenade round |
| B2 | 1-4 | 1s cross, go below, as 2s lead up, then 1s two hand turn half |
| 5-8 | 1s+2s face partner, four changes of a circular hey |
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.
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https://www.upadouble.info/redirect.php?id=TheDoubtfulShepherd
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2023 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2023 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
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.