The Merry Milkmaids in Green ~ Anon

The Merry Milkmaids in Green ~ Pat Shaw The Merry Milkmaids in Green ~ Pat Shaw/3 Couple The Merry Milkmaids in Green ~ Anon

The Merry Milkmaids in Green ~ Anon is an English Country Dance. It was published by Playford (John Young) (website) in 1721 in The Dancing Master, Vol. the first, 17th ed.. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 40 bars.

Playford writes:
Note: The first Strain must be play'd twice and the last but once.
The 1st. and 2d. Man fall back to the Wall, and the Wo. fall back at the same time, and changes sides Fall back and change into their own Places again The first Man change Place with the 2. Wo. and the first Wo. with the 2. Man, go all four round and cast off, lead through the 3. cu. and through the 2. and back to back with your Partner and turn.

Originally a triple minor (Playford says "Longways for Eight." though).

Colin Hume publishes this on his website, but says it is not his interpretation. He does not say whose interpretation it is, however. It is not Pat Shaw's either...

When he published the dance, John Young used the tune for The Merry, Merry Milkmaids published in The English Dancing Master of 1651. It was performed by Bare Necessities (Earl Gaddis, Mary Lea, Peter Barnes, and Jacqueline Schwab) on the album At Home. The music is used with permission from the Country Dance Society, Boston Centre, Inc.

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 (no music plays during this slow set). 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.

An online description of the dance may be found here.

A11-4Fall back with neighbor and come forward
5-8Right hand turn partner once and a half
A21-4Fall back with neighbor and come forward
5-8Left hand turn partner once and a half
B11-41st corners change by left, 2nd by right
5-6Circle left half
7-81s cast down as 2s lead up
9-121s lead down through next 2s and cast back to place
B21-41s lead up through current 2s and cast back to place
5-8All partner back to back
9-12All partner 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=TheMerryMilkmaidsInGreen

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. I do not have a date for the interpretation, so it may be under copyright. 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.