Wright's Butter'd Peas
Butter'd Pease
Wright's Butter'd Peas or Butter'd Pease is an English Country Dance. It was published by Wright in 1740 in Wright's Compleat Collection of Celebrated Country Dances, Vol. 1. It was interpreted by Ken Sheffield (website) in 1982 and published in From Two Barns, Vol 1. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
This dance has many sources, Wright, Walsh, Johnson, and Wilson at minimum. Perhaps others. so presumably it was popular. Wright, Walsh and Johnson all use the same words and were approximate contemporaries. Wilson (as usual) is different, and 100 years later.
Wright writes:
Each strain twice.
The 1st Man and Wo. set. Foot it & turn The 1st Man does the same with ye 2d Wo. as at the same time doth his Partner with the 2d Man 1st Cu. cross over below the 3d Cu. Then slip up the Middle to ye Top, Foot it and cast off.
Sheffield has replaced the original "Foot it", which is rather undefined, with a rant step. If you are unfamiliar with the rant step, see Colin Hume's description. If all else fails, just set.
Sheffield has added a turn single at the end of the dance. This means that the slip up (which goes through 2 places) only has 2 bars instead of 4. If that feels rushed, I suggest omitting the final turn single. (It isn't in the original).
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 Ken Sheffield (including adaptations 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.
| A1 | 1-4 | Set and foot it to partner (set and 2 rant steps, set twice, etc) |
| 5-8 | Partner two hand turn, 1s once and a half, 2s once | |
| A2 | 1-4 | Set and foot it to neighbor |
| 5-8 | Neighbor two hand turn once and a half | |
| B1 | 1-4 | 1s cross, go below next 2s, who move up |
| 5-8 | Left hands across with that neighbor | |
| B2 | 1-2 | Slip home, 1s inside, 2s outside |
| 3-4 | Foot it (2 rant steps, set) | |
| 5-6 | 1s cast down as 2s lead up | |
| 7-8 | All turn single |
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=WrightButterdPeas
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1982 by Ken Sheffield. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.
This website is copyright © 2021-2025 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.