John Black's Daughter
John Black's Daughter is an English Country Dance. It was published by Walsh in about 1740 in The Compleat Country Dancing-Master Book 1, 4th Ed., London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2024. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 16 bars.
The RSCDS attributes this dance to Johnson (who published it in ~1748), but Walsh published it first.
Hey on the Men's side Then foot it to Partners then to sides turn single after Each the the 1st Man turn 3d. Cu. half round and cast up into the 2d Place The Wo. do the same back again change sides and foot it cast up change sides and foot it cast off
The music consists of two 4 bar strains.
If Hey on the Mens side takes up one strain of music, as the first seems to indicate, and the strain is only 4 bars long, then each bar must be 4 counts long (not 2).
I'm going to assume that Hey on the Mens side is an instruction directed to M1 and implies a similar instruction to W1.
There is no obvious place for progression. The 1s need to be near the 3s when M1 turns the 3s. There's no obvious way for progression to happen in a bunch of sets and turn singles, so I'm going to make the progression happen in the hey.
Finally change sides and foot it cast up change sides and foot it cast off. We have 6 movements each of which takes at least 4 counts and we have to fit that in to 16 counts. I'm going to have to throw out two of the movements. If I throw out the two foot it everyone ends where they should
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.
| A1 | 1-4 | 1s lead between 2s to start mirror heys on their own sides. The 1s+2s do an extra change, ending progressed |
| A2 | 1-1 | 1s set |
| 2-2 | 1s turn single right, end facing 2s | |
| 3-3 | 1s+2s neighbor set | |
| 4-4 | 1s+2s turn single right | |
| B1 | 1-1 | M1+3s circle left half |
| 2-2 | M1 cast right into 2nd place | |
| 3-3 | W1+3s circle left half | |
| 4-4 | W1 cast left into 2nd place | |
| B2 | 1-2 | 1s cross, go above 2s |
| 3-4 | 1s cross by left, go back to places |
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.
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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2024 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 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.
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.