The Maid in the Mill

The Maid in the Mill is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1698 in The Dancing Master, 10th ed., London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2021. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 16 bars.

Playford writes:
The 1. cu. cast off below the 2. cu. lead up all four hands a Breast; then all four hands half round, then right and left with your Partners till the 1. cu. come into the 2. cu. place.

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.

A11-41s cast below 2s and come up between them in a line of four
A21-4Line of four lead up a double, fall back bending the line
B1-4Circle left half, and turn single left
5-8Face partner, two changes of rights and lefts

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=TheMaidInTheMill

< Prev Top Next >

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 © 2021,2022,2023,2024 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.