Young's Wisdom

Young's Wisdom is an English Country Dance. It was published by Wright in 1740 in Wright's Compleat Collection of Celebrated Country Dances, Vol. 1, London. 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.

Also found in Walsh's The Second Book of the Compleat Dancing Master, 1740. The wording is basically the same.

Wright writes:

The 1st. Cu. Hey the Man on the Wo. side & the Wo on the Mans Then Hey on their own sides The 1st. Cu. cross over and half Figure through the 2d. Cu. Then Right and Left with the 2d. Cu.

The cross-over mirror hey variants in A1&2 cover a lot of ground I expect people will be running. I think this would work better in the original triple minor format where couples don't end up so far apart.

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.

A11-81s cross between 2s, outside next 2s with mirror hand turns half way, inside 2s, outside previous 2s with mirror hand turns
A21-81s cross again between 2s to their own sides, outside next 2s with mirror hand turns half way, inside 2s, outside previous 2s with mirror hand turns
B11-41s cross, go below, as 2s lead up
5-81s half figure eight up through 2s
B21-8Face partner, four changes of rights and lefts

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=YoungsWisdom

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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 © 2021,2022,2023,2024 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.