Welcome Home Old Rowley
Welcome Home Old Rowley is an English Country Dance. It was published by Henry Playford (website) in 1690 in The Dancing Master, 8th ed.. It was interpreted by Colin Hume (website) in 2025 and published in Colin Hume's Website. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars. It is in the key: F Major. An online description of the dance may be found here.
Playford writes:
First and second men go the Figure round the we. till the first is second improper, and the second is first improper then the two we. do the same, then clap with your own and turn S. then clap sides, and change places to proper all, then back to back with your own, and right and left to the second proper.
The tune was published by Henry Playford for the dance. It was synthesized using Colin Hume's software.
The animation plays at 113 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.
The dance contains the following figures: turn single, lead, figure eight, double figure eight, hey, circular hey, siding, back to back, (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=WelcomeHomeOldRowley
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.