Blue Bonnets over the Border

Blue Bonnets over the Border Blue Bonnets ~ RSCDS

Blue Bonnets over the Border is an old Scottish Country Dance. It was published by W. Smyth in 1830 in A Pocket Companion for Young Ladies and Gentlemen, Edinburgh. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2023. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

Smyth writes:

First Lady and second Genlemen advance and retire, and pass back to back, the first Gentleman and second Lady the same Down the middle and up again, and poussette.

So where is the progression in this dance? Either in the poussette or in "down the middle and up again". If you look at Mrs McLeod (page 33) you will see "down the middle and up again" is progressive.

Smyth (an Edinburgh dancing teacher) classifies this as a "Scotch Country Dance".

An earlier version of the dance was published in 1827 by by Goulding & D'Almaine as Blue Bonnets are over the Border. I do not have access to the original text. but Robert Keller gives the figures as:
Change sides
Change sides (again)
Lead down and back
Poussette

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 George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.

A11-42nd corners advance and retire
5-82nd corners left back to back
A21-41st corners advance and retire
5-81st corners back to back
B11-81s lead down, turn lead up to 2nd place as 2s lead up
9-16Full poussette, W1+M2 push

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=BlueBonnetsOverTheBorder

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2023 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2023 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International 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.