The Faithful Swain ~ Sheffield
The Constant Lover ~ Sheffield
The Faithful Swain ~ Sheffield or The Constant Lover ~ Sheffield is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Nathaniel Kynaston in 1710 and published in Walsh's Twenty Four New Country Dances for the Year 1710, London. It was interpreted by Ken Sheffield (website) in 1995 and published in From Two Barns, Vol 7. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Sheffield has renamed this dance from The Constant Lover to The Faithful Swain. There is a dance called The Faithful Swain in Rutherford, 1759, but this is not it.
As is often the case I do not have a copy of Walsh/Kynaston's publication and am using text from Playford which came out the same year.
Note: Each Strain is to be Play'd twice over.
The first Man and second Woman go the whole Figure thro' the first Woman and second Man Then first and 2d Men cross over with their Partners, and change Sides, and change Places with your Partners Then first Man falls betwen the third Cu. and the first Woman falls between the second Cu. then each take Hands and go quite round Then the first Man go up the middle to his Partner, then lead up a-breast with the second Cu. and cast off :
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 Ken Sheffield (including adaptations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license by the CDSS Online Library.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
| A1 | 1-8 | 1st corners full figure eight around 2nd, passing each other right, then left around partner, passing left, right around neighbor |
| A2 | 1-4 | Fall back with neighbor and come forward |
| 5-8 | Face partner, three changes of rights and lefts | |
| B1 | 1-4 | M1 cast below the next twos ending in center facing up, as W1 cast above her 2s ending in center facing down |
| 5-8 | Circle four right (M1 not in the same circle as his partner or 2s) | |
| B2 | 1-4 | 1s pass opposite left, meet partner and two hand turn counter-clockwise three quarters as 2s cast down to the ends of a line of four facing up |
| 5-6 | Line of four lead up a double | |
| 7-8 | 2s back up to gate the 1s into progressed places |
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=TheFaithfulSwain
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1995 by Ken Sheffield. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA 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.