The Matelot

The Matelot is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Matthew Welch in 1767. It was interpreted by Pat Shaw (website) in 1967 and published in Six Simple Country Dances. 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 32 bars.

This dance is described in Feuillet diagrams which I shall not try to reproduce. You can find them in Pat Shaw's book, Another Look at Playford.

Another Look at Playford. claims that this interpretation was published in Six Simple Country Dances (which was published in 1964/5), and that Pat worked on it in 1967, two years after publication. Perhaps he revised it?

Pat refers to Feuillet's La Matelotte (The Female Saylor) in his notes, I'm not sure why, both the figure and the music are different.


Rigadoon: Feet together, swing right foot out to side toe pointing down, swing left foot out to side toe pointing down, feet together - jump hop on each step - even beats (quoted from Pat Shaw)

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, hey for three (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=TheMatelot

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1967 by Pat Shaw. 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.