The Highland Lass ~ Williams
Divanshire Gairl
The Highland Lass ~ Williams or Divanshire Gairl is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1718 in The Dancing Master, Vol. the Second, 3rd ed., London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2024. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars.
John Young (of the Playford family) published two figures to this tune and with this name. The first was published in 1710, and the second in 1718. The RSCDS claims to have interpreted the second figure.
The first Cu. cast off and whole Figure at Top Then cast off and whole Figure at Bottom Then lead quite thro' the Top and cast off in the 2d Cu. Place, and Right and Left quite round with the 2d Cu The cross over below the 3d Cu. and half Figure with the 3d Cu. and lead up thro' the Top and turn your Partner.
The music is in 3/2 time and consists of a 4 bar strain and an 8 bar strain, both repeated.
So each A section has 4 bars of music or 12 counts. There simply isn't time to do a cast followed by a full figure of eight, but it fits very nicely into the time to do a half figure of eight. Since there are two A sections and each has a figure of eight in it this ends with everyone proper.
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 | 1-1 | 1s cast down as 2s lead up |
| 2-4 | 1s half figure eight up through the 2s | |
| A2 | 1-1 | 1s cast down as 3s lead up |
| 2-4 | 1s half figure eight up through the 3s | |
| B1 | 1-2 | 1s lead up to the top and cast down to 2nd place as 3s lead down |
| 3-8 | 1s+2s face partner, four changes of rights and lefts | |
| B2 | 1-2 | 1s cross, go below the 3s who lead up |
| 3-4 | 1s half figure eight up through the 3s | |
| 5-6 | 1s lead up to the top and cast down to 2nd place as 3s lead down | |
| 7-8 | 1s two hand turn |
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=TheHighlandLass-Williams
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2024 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2024 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.