Woo'd & Married & A'
Woo'd & Married & A' is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Wilson in 1816 and published in A Companion to the Ball Room. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
In Wilson's A Companion to the Ball Room, 1816, he published "Woo'd & Married & A'". Wilson writes:
SINGLE FIGURE (Each strain repeated)
Swing with right hands (round the 2d. Cu:) then with left & set contrary corners
OR THUS Set & change sides with 2d. Cu: set & back again down the middle up again & allemande
DOUBLE FIGURE (Tune played twice thro' with repeats)
Hands 6 quite round & back again promenade 3 Cu: whole poussette set 3 across & set 3 in your places
Wilson's music is a slip-jig with 2 four bar strains. The RSCDS uses the DOUBLE FIGURE so it should be played AABBAABB.
Wilson defines most of his figures in his An Analysis of Country Dancing, 3rd Edition.
- Hands 6 quite round & back again is defined on page 5 and means what you expect.
- promenade 3 Cu: is defined on page 18 and means that all three couples take promenade hold and, with the 1s leading, travel in a counter-clockwise elipse around and back to places.
- whole poussette is defined on page 15 and means: "top two couples join hands with partner, circle, counter-clockwise, one and a half times around the other couple to change places with them."
Note: this is unlike a normal English Poussette as the couples travel once and a half around each other rather than once. And is quite different from the Scottish Poussette. - set 3 across & set 3 in your places is defined on page 21 and means: "L1 moves between the 2s as M1 moves between 3s, then the lines of three across set, then L1 moves back to her place and M1 back to his, and then lines of three on the sides set to each other.
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.
| A1 | 1-4 | Circle six left... |
| A2 | 1-4 | ...and back to the right |
| B1+2 | 1-8 | Three couple promenade round |
| A3+A4 | 1-8 | 1s+2s poussette once and a half counter-clockwise, W1+M2 push |
| B3 | 1-2 | 1s move right to stand between end couples |
| 3-4 | Lines of three across set | |
| B4 | 1-2 | 1s move left back to places |
| 3-4 | Lines of three on the sides set |
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=WoodAndMarriedAndA-Williams
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2024 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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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.