The Happy Pair

Royal Wedding

The Happy Pair or Royal Wedding is an English Country Dance. It was published by Johnson in about 1733 in Caledonian Country Dances: with a through bass for y hopsicord, book 2, London. It was interpreted by Bernard Bentley in 1977 and published in The Fallibroome Collection, Vol. 5. 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 64 bars.

Johnson writes:

Each Strain twice.

First Man foot it and cast off one Cu. foot it again & cast off another Cu. lead up to the Top, foot it and cast off both sett to the 2d. Wo. and hands round the same with the 2d. Man lead out all four abreast on the We. side, the same on the Men's Side. Hey on the contrary. Hey on your own side.

Anne, daughter of George II, was married in 1734. I don't know if that is the Royal Wedding of the title, but it is the closest I can find to 1733. Frederick married in 1736, Mary in 1740, Louisa in 1743.

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 dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, circle, cast, lead, hey, mirror hey, siding (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=TheHappyPair

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1977 by Bernard Bentley. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 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.