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Strathglass House (was: Lead - Right hands or Nearer Hands)
Norma or Mike Briggs
Jan. 26, 2005, 8:50 p.m. (Message 40416)
Now I'm confused. Rosemary, I don't doubt that you're correct in
stating that the 18c term "cross over two couples" translates into the
modern term "cross, cast, cross, cast." Where I got lost was at the
point where you said that in the 18c the figure required only 4 bars of
music, thus the difficulty faced by the RSCDS editors.
Why shouldn't a fair interpretation be as follows?
Bars Movement
1 1C cross RH
2 1C cast off below 2C
3 1C cross RH
4 1C cast off below 3C
5-6 1C lead to top
7-8 1C cast off (2C step up) to finish in the middle facing 1st corners
Any ideas why the RSCDS editors substituted "advance and retire" for
"lead out sides" at bars 25-28 and called for the circle to keep going
left at bars 7-8 rather going back to the right (as I think is implied
by the phrase "back again?"
Mike
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Easy answer regarding sub for "lead out at the sides" it was in my notes from conversations with Miss M. The actual question was not mine to start with, it came from the late Milt Levy who thought about this stuff a lot but did not get out much from Cal Tech at the time. Every year, I sent Miss M a list of questions I wanted to discuss over tea at St Andrews as a part of my research (no surprise questions, except those that arose from here answers). In this case, when I mentioned the missing figure in Montgomery, and the use of it in Waverly, she said that as with the case of ·"double triangles" (which are neither double, nor triangular), there were many figures in the old dance books that we simply did not understand at the time we published the dances. After each session with here, I typed up my notes for her comment, and after I left St Andrews after her death, gave a copy of all my research to the Society. The "new blood" until very recently (Summer 04) was unaware of this material. I was only informed up stairs at a Younger Hall dance, that some of it had been found. Unfortunately, this was towards the end of the course, and I had no time to contact my university friends there (I had been an employee) to get a usable archive copy downloaded since it contained a data base of about 10,000 dances.* As I understand it, what the Society has found is an enormous stack of computer hard copy print out, redundant in that it contains several sorts (date, alpha, choreography, etc.) ----- *Depending on how one counts. For example Montgomery´s Rant (Reel - RSCDS) and Montgomery´s Rant (Strathspey - Menzies) would count as two since the figures are not the same, as would most RSCDS published dances. On the other hand there Duke of Perth, counts as 4 even though the choreography is the same (except for the missing coda), since there are at least 4 names. Since there were often more choreographies than tunes, and dances were often named after the tunes, this inflated my numbers considerably, especially when you have guys like Wilson, who in one book published three dances for each named tune (can´t remember which, but one of our RSCDS published dances produced another since it contains unrelated bars from two of these dances).
In a message dated 1/26/2005 1:51:53 PM Eastern Standard Time, xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xxx writes: Any ideas why the RSCDS editors substituted "advance and retire" for "lead out sides" at bars 25-28 and called for the circle to keep going One possibility is that it evolved from a similar chain of reasoning to that developed by Thurston in Scotland's Dances, originally stemming from the description of a figure named lead out sides and in given in Dukes [1752] - "the first two men turn inwards about, lead out, turn, and lead in." Thurston traces the possible development of this figure by 1880 to out side and back again - "lead out to sides, three and three in line, the lady between the two gentlemen, and the gentleman between the two ladies" - from Mozart Allan's Reference guide to the ballroom. Thurston actually concludes, however, that these figures evolved independently - perhaps the Society's editors decided otherwise? Moira Turner Chesterfield VA