The Princess of Wales' Fancy

The Princess of Wales' Fancy is an old Scottish Country Dance. It was devised by Lowe in about 1831 and published in Lowes' Ball-Conductor and Assembly Guide. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2025. It is a dance for 4 people. There is no progression in this dance. The dance lasts 48 bars.

From Lowes' Ball-Conductor and Assembly Guide:

Reel and set; after which pousette one couple round the other. (this may be danced to any tune of three parts.)

William IV became king of England in June of 1830. If the dance were written before that, then the Princess of Wales would have been his wife, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, but although she was heir apparent, I don't believe Victoria was formally invested with the title.

This appears to be a standard reel of four, with a poussette tacked on at the end.

The term "poussette" is ambiguous in this period. It might mean the traditional English push-out, pull-back poussette, or it might mean that the couples waltzed around each either. I don't think the waltz poussette would have been adapted to reel music this early, so I think the traditional poussette more likely, but I could be wrong.

The Lowes describe the reel of four earlier in their work:

Before commencing the Reel of Four, the Gentlemen place their partners upon the opposite sides of the room, or at the ends, and stand either before or beside them; if before them, all four mus begin at once; but if otherwise, the Ladies ought to begin first; each person describes the figure of eight, and the Gentlemen set to the Ladies alternately.

Unfortunately this description is misleading. The figure of a reel for four people is not a figure eight, it's a figure eight with an extra loop. The Fletts kindly point this out.

The Fletts also mention that the reel should be performed "giving shoulders", that is when passing someone of the opposite sex in the reel the shoulder closest to that person should lead (so the dancers are almost back to back), while when passing someone of the same sex the outside shoulder should lead (so the dancers are almost face to face).

the Gentlemen set to the Ladies alternately means that the gentlemen finish the reel in each other's places so they are setting to the woman who is not their partner (at least the first time through, they are back with partners after the second time).

The Lowes seem to suggest that only the Gentlemen set, but the Fletts say all four dancers do.

The animation plays at 120 counts per minute. Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color.

The dances of George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.

1-8Pass partner right to start a reel of four (gentlemen do not do their last change)
9-16Set to opposite
17-24Take hands with opposite, ladies push the gentlemen in for a full poussette around the other couple
25-32Pass opposite right to start a reel of four (gentlemen do not do their last change)
33-40Set to partner
41-48Take hands with partner, ladies push the gentlemen in for a full poussette around the other couple

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=PrincessOfWalesFancy

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2025 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2025 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This website is copyright © 2021-2025 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.