The Frog & Mouse

Thompson writes:

The 1^st. Gent: set to the 2^d. Lady and not turn the 1^st. Lady do the same cast off and hand 4 round at bottom lead thro the top Cu: cast off and Right and Left

Thompson's description of this dance have a number of problems. And Colin Hume refuses to interpret the dance because of them. But fools rush in... so here is my take

The first problem is the music. Colin Hume suggests that instead of being an 8 bar A and 16 bar B it should be rebarred to a 4 bar A and 8 bar B.

The next is Thompson's cryptic direction of "not turn" in 1^st. Gent: set to the 2^d. Lady and not turn. What does that mean? The man stands with his arms folded refusing to turn? Or as Colin says Chris Page suggests, that the man turns his partner rather than his corner? The man has either 6 or 2 bars to do his "not turn" (depending on how the music is barred), while in Thompson's book turns are usually 4 bars... Perhaps the man advances to his corner and then falls back, not turning her? (I say "the man" but the first lady has the same problem in A2).

The final problem is the ending Right and Left. Up to now all the rights and lefts have taken 8 bars, and this one only has 4 bars allotted to 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.

The dances of George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

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=TheFrogAndMouse

A1	1-2	M1 set to W2
	3-4	M1 advance to W2 and fall back (not turn)
A2	1-2	W1 set to M2
	3-4	W1 advance to M2 and fall back (not turn)
B1	1-4	1s long cast down as 2s lead up
	5-8	1s+3s circle left four at bottom
B2	1-4	1s lead above top and cast back to middle
	5-8	1s+2s face partner, four changes of rights and lefts