The Lassie in the Yellow Coatie
The Lassie in the Yellow Coatie is an English Country Dance. It was published by Johnson in 1742 in A Choice Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, Vol II. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2021. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Although Johnson published this first, Rutherford published the same figure a few years later and his book is online.
The first Couple casts of two Couple cast up again Cross over & half figure right hand and Left quite round with the second Couple foot it Corners and turn foot it the other Corners and turn Lead through the Mens side and turn your Partner Lead through the Womens side and turn it out
Rutherford's description seems clear, the only qualms I have are that he is trying to pack too much movement into too little time. Each strain is only 4 bars, and doing a cross, cast down, half figure eight all in four bars sounds a little tight to me.
The animation plays at 120 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance is 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 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.
| A1+2 | 1-8 | 1s cast down, go outside below 3s, turn, and come back |
| B1 | 1-2 | 1s cross, go below, as 2s lead up |
| 3-4 | 1s half figure eight up through 2s | |
| B2 | 1-4 | 1s+2s face partner, four changes of rights and lefts |
| A3 | 1-4 | 1s set to 1st corners and two hand turn them |
| A4 | 1-4 | 1s set to 2nd corners and two hand turn them |
| B3 | 1-2 | 1s lead out between the two men, loop around them and meet in the middle |
| 3-4 | 1s two hand turn | |
| B4 | 1-2 | 1s lead out between the two women, loop around them and meet in the middle |
| 3-4 | 1s two hand turn to 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.
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 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.