Maggie Lauder ~ Williams
Maggie Lauder ~ Williams is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Wilson in 1816 and published in A Companion to the Ball Room, London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2024. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 16 bars.
In his A Companion to the Ball Room, page 41, 1816, Thomas Wilson published several versions of Maggie Lauder:
SINGLE FIGURE
Hands 3 round on the ladies side hands 3 round on the gents. side. lead down the middle up again & allemande
SINGLE FIGURE (Tune played straight thro')
The 1st. lady leads down the 2d. gent: the 1st. gent: leads down the 2d. lady lead down the middle with your partner up again & set to the top Cu:
OR THUS Set & hands across quite round with the 2d. Cu: set & back again lead down the middle up again & right & left with the top Cu:
DOUBLE FIGURE (Each strain repeated)
Swing with right hands round 2d. Cu: then with left set 3 across set 3 in your places hands 6 round & back again lead thro' the bottom & half poussette with the top Cu:
TRIPLE FIGURE Tune repeated & then played straight thro
The 3 ladies lead round the gent: the 3 gent: lead round the 3 ladies lead down the middle up again half poussette with top Cu: set contrary corners swing corners & the double triangle
The music consists of 2 eight bar strains, each potentially repeated.
The RSCDS has chosen the third figure (the one labelled "OR THUS") which Wilson intends as a 16 bar reel, but the RSCDS decided on a 32 bar strathspey.
Wilson says the hands across should be "quite round", but the RSCDS has them be half round. I would concur with this when trying to fit the dance into 16 bars, but am confused by it in the 32 bar strathspey case.
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 | 1-2 | All set |
| 3-4 | Right hands across half | |
| 5-6 | All set | |
| 7-8 | Left hands across back home | |
| A2 | 1-4 | 1s lead down, turn, lead up to 2nd place as 2s lead up |
| 5-8 | 2nd corners change by left, 1st by right, 2nd left, 1st right |
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=MaggieLauder-Williams
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.