Menzies Rant ~ Menzies
Menzies Rant ~ Menzies is an old Scottish Country Dance. It was devised by Castle Menzies in 1749 and published in The Register of Dances at Castle Menzies, Scotland. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2024. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Quoted from The Register of Dances at Castle Menzies (as transcribed by Jim Healy):
1st man turns 2d woman & casts off, then the 1st woman does the same then the 1st pair goes figure of eight through the 2d pair; then the 1st man sets to the 2d woman & turns her, then the 1st woman the same; then the 1st pair goes four hands round with the 2d pair & right & left
This is my attempt to make sense of what was written in the Castle Menzies Register.
First of all, I see nothing in the text that suggests it should start improper. The last improper dances published in England came out in 1726, more than 20 years before the register, and they were flagged as improper. So I shall assume this dance is like all the other dances of this period
Having made that assumption, the rest is pretty self-explanatory. The turns all need to be 2 bars (rather than 4) to fit into 32 bars.
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 | M1+W2 two hand turn |
| 3-4 | M1 cast down as M2 moves up | |
| 5-6 | W1+M2 two hand turn | |
| 7-8 | W1 cast down as W2 moves up | |
| A2 | 1-8 | 1s full figure eight up through the 2s |
| B1 | 1-4 | M1+W2 set and two hand turn |
| 5-8 | L1+M2 set and two hand turn | |
| B2 | 1-4 | Circle left four |
| 5-8 | Face partner, four quick changes of a circular hey |
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=MenziesRant-Menzies
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.