Miss Devon's Reel
Miss Devon's Reel is an English Country Dance. It was devised by D. Mackenzie in 1795 and published in Campbell's 10th Book of New and Favorite Country Dances & Strathspey Reels, London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2024. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 24 bars.
The RSCDS attributes this dance to William Campbell, and he did publish it, but he attributes the dance to "D. Mackenzie".
On page 17 of book 10, Campbell writes:
The 1st. & 2d. Cu Reel on the Ladys side the same on the Gents. side the 1st. Cu. lead down the middle up again to the top and Allemande.
The music consists of a four bar strain and an eight bar strain. I assume it is intended to be played AABB; though given the structure of the dance BBAA seems a more reasonable assignment.
I think the RSCDS's interpretations of the reels is unlikely, given how crowded that would make the duple minor set.
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+2 | 1-8 | M1 pass W2 right to hey for three on the women's side |
| B1 | 1-8 | L1 pass M2 left to hey for three on the men's side |
| B2 | 1-4 | 1s lead down for 1 bar, turn, lead back and cast down as 2s lead up |
| 5-8 | 1s right allemande |
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=MissDevonsReel-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.