The Old Mole ~ Hume
The Old Mole ~ Hume is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Playford (website) in 1651 in The English Dancing Master. It was interpreted by Colin Hume (website) in 2025 and published in Colin Hume's Website. It is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. It is a multipart dance. The dance lasts 176 bars. The tune is a jig. It is in the key: D Major. An online description of the dance may be found here.
Playford writes:
Lead up a D. forwards and back, set and turn S. That again All a D. to the left hand, back again, set and turn S. As much to the right First man and last Wo. meet a D. back again, meet again and change places First Wo. and last man as much The second man as much with his own
The two first We. hands, and the two last men hands, lead forwards and back to the odd one against them, then the odd ones go under your arms Do this change four times over to the place where you began it Then first and last change as before to your places
All the men hands, and all the We. hands, meet all forwards and back the first and last, last on each side turn each other, the 2. turning his own Sides where you turned, and turn your own Men the S. Hay We. as much The D. Hey twice over Cast off and come to your places. That again.
The tune was published by Playford for the dance, The Old Mole. It was synthesized using Colin Hume's software.
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 dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, turn single, cast, hey, hey for three, circular hey, siding, (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 transience of my youtube URLs. 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=TheOldMole-Hume
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2025 by Colin Hume. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2026 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This website is copyright © 2021-2026 by George W. Williams V
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.