Dunrobin Castle ~ Triple Minor

Dunrobin Castle ~ Triple Minor Dunrobin Castle

Dunrobin Castle ~ Triple Minor is an English Country Dance. It was devised by a Person of Quality in 1718 and published in Twenty Four New Country Dances Compos'd by a Person of Quality. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2021. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 16 bars.

Walsh writes:

Note: The first Strain twice over, and the last but once.

The 1st. man go down the middle turn the 3d. wo. then the 2d. man half round the 1st. wo. do the same contrary sides the 1st. cu. figure through the 2d. and 3d. wo. then through the 2d. and 3d. man take hands with the contrary couples fall back the 1st. man cast up, the 1st. wo. at the same time cast off proper

The B part only makes sense if M1 is between the 3s and W1 is between the 2s. But how do the A parts get them there?

If M1 turns W3 and ends in the center of square containing the 2s+3s, and then turns M2 and returns to that center then he can easily fall back between the 3s (and later W1 can fall back between the 2s). I know Walsh says to turn M2 half, but that I can't make any sense of that and shall assume it a misprint. For another thing a half turn only takes 4 counts but we've probably got 8 to use up.

Or... If we want to do a left turn half then M2 needs to be where M1 wants to end up, so we could have M2 cast left to between the 3s. Now a left hand turn half takes 4 counts, and a cast 4 more, so that does use up our 8 counts, but it leaves M1 idle for 4 of them. Which feels wrong. I suppose he could set to W3... but this path just seems to involve more and more inventions beyond what Walsh wrote and is probably wrong.

Then there is the problem that I have lines across where the 2s and 3s are and I want those lines to fall back so that the 2s end in 1st postion, and the 3s in 3rd. But the 3s are already in 3rd position. What I want is for the two lines to be symmetrical about the middle couple. If they do this early on then the 1s don't have as far to go to reach the 3s when they turn them. (There is no hint of this in Walsh, of course, but then there wouldn't be as the 2s+3s are rarely given instructions they just need to be in the right place.

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.

A11-2M1 dance down as 2s and 3s slip up one step and right hand turn W3
3-4M1 left turn M2 and fall back between the 3s
A21-2W1 dance down and left hand turn M3
3-4W1 right turn W2 and fall back between the 3s
B1-21s half figure 8 through the women
3-4...and half figure 8 through the men
5-6Lines of three at the ends come forward and fall back
7-81s long cast right to end in 2nd place proper

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=DunrobinCastle-TripleMinor

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2021 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 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.