The Merry Conceit ~ Bolton

The Merry Conceit ~ Shaw The Merry Conceit ~ Bolton

The Merry Conceit ~ Bolton is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Nathaniel Kynaston in 1710 and published in Walsh's Twenty Four New Country Dances for the Year 1710, London. It was interpreted by Charles Bolton (website) in 1992 and published in Retreads Vol.6. 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.

Kynaston writes:
The 1st man take his wo. by her left hand and leads her round him down the middle and Figure through the 3d cu. the 2d cu. do the same all four hands half round the 1st cu. go between the 3d cu. cast up then hands back again with the 2d cu. 1st cu. Set and cast off

Originally a triple minor.

There is also a Playford dance with this name (actually there are several dances with this name in the various Playford editions) which is quite different.

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 Charles Bolton (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license by the CDSS Online Library.
An online description of the dance may be found here.

A11-21s face up, take hands, wheel around to face down (man backs)
3-41s lead down, 2s move up
5-81s half figure eight down as 2s two hand turn
A21-23s face down, take hands, wheel around to face up (man backs)
3-43s lead up, 1s move down
5-83s half figure eight up as 1s two hand turn
B11-4Circle six left half
5-82s stand, 3s followed by 1s lead through them and cast to top
B21-4Circle six right half
5-6All set up and down
7-81s cast down, bottom couple lead up, top couple turn single away

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=TheMerryConceit-Bolton

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1992 by Charles Bolton. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA 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.