Irish Lamentation ~ Hume
Irish Lamentation ~ Hume is an English Country Dance. It was published by Walsh in about 1735 in 3rd Book of The Complete Dancing Master, London. It was interpreted by Colin Hume (website) in 1995 and published in Colin Hume's Website. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 48 bars. Someone thought this dance was Easy / Intermediate.
The waltz did not arrive in England (or Ireland) until around the Napoleonic wars. The original description calls for a minuet step rather than a waltz at the end of B2. If you are comfortable with that then by all means dance it instead.
Walsh writes:
First Man dances the Minuet Step to the 2d. Wo. & turns her the 2d Man the same to the 1st Wo the 1st Cu. cast down and up again then cross over and half Figure then right hand and left quite round and turn your Partner.
Colin Hume has the 1st corners set and turn single, but given that the original has M1 dancing the Minuet Step to W2, surely a "set forward" would be more in keeping?
Graham Christian gives Walsh's pubication date as ~1745, and says Johnson (~1740) is the original source.
The tune was published with the dance, and the music was synthesized by 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.
An online description of the dance may be found here.
The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, turn single, cast, lead, figure eight, rights and lefts, cross go below, set and turn corners (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 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=IrishLamentation-Hume
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1995 by Colin Hume. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 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
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.