Money Musk ~ Werner #1
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Inspired by Keith Rose's Crib Diagrams, for Playford style dances I have added a few extra symbols.
Money Musk ~ Werner #1 is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Werner in 1785 and published in 8 Cotillions, 6 Favorite Country Dances and two Minuets, with their proper Figures for the Harp, Harpsichord and Violin Book xvii for the year 1785. It was interpreted by George Williams sometime before 2026-10-23. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Monymusk is an estate in Aberdeenshire is Scotland.
Cracking Chestnuts says the tune was written by Daniel Dow and published in Thirty Seven New Reels and Strathspeys in 1776.
The Thompson brothers published a dance called "Money Musk" in their Thompson's Complete Collection of Country Dances and Cottillons, ~1780 but I have been unable to find a copy as yet.
Werner Book XVIII For the Year 1785 (London, 1785) writes:
Turn your partner with the right hand; quite round, and cast off one Cu. Turn with the left quite round, Set three and three top and bottom, and turn your Partner, Set three and three sideways and turn your Partner. Hands six quite round and back again Lead out sides and turn your Partner with both hands.
I have several difficulties with this.
The next is how to fit Lead out sides and turn your Partner with both hands into 8 bars. This figure is used in Prince William where it takes 16 bars. But we need to squinch it down into 8 bars, probably by making the turns almost non-existant.
Once we've settled that, if we decide that all the other non-left arm turns take 2 bars (instead of 4) then the dance fits nicely into 32 bars of music.
Werner says turn your partner four times, (and on turn with the left) and only once says how far. The first turn at the beginning of the dance is quite round, so let's take him at his word here.
Then Turn with the left quite round can't mean a full turn, because that wouldn't leave the 1s at the top or bottom. So here we assume quite round actually means once and a quarter.
The next turn your Partner can't mean a full turn because that would leave the ones still at top and bottom and not on the sides. A quarter turn is unlikely, so let's assume a three quarter turn.
After setting on the sides we have another turn your Partner. This could be a full turn, or another three quarter turn, or even a half turn. The dance could be made to work with any of these. I like the symmetry of having this also be a three quarter turn, but that leads to an rather odd circle — possible, but unlikely (though I will explore it in another interpretation). The half turn leaves everyome proper, which is nice, but the transition from the circle into "lead out sides" flows better with a full term.
Then we have the turns inside Lead out sides and turn your Partner with both hands. This needs to be a very quick turn, only half way the first time, so that they lead out again with the woman on the right, then the final turn is just a quarter turn (barely a hand touch really) to places.
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 right turn and cast down |
| 5-8 | 1s left turn once and a quarter finishing W1 between 2s, M1 between 3s in lines across | |
| A2 | 1-2 | Lines of three across set once |
| 3-4 | 1s right hand turn three quarter finishing 2nd place improper | |
| 5-6 | Lines of three on the sides set once | |
| 7-8 | 1s right hand turn | |
| B1 | 1-4 | Circle six left... |
| 5-8 | ...and back to the right | |
| B2 | 1-3 | 1s lead out through the women's line, cast away from each other, loop corners, meet on the center line |
| 4-4 | 1s two hand turn half and open out to face the men's line | |
| 5-7 | 1s lead out through the men's line, cast away from each other, loop around corners, meeting again on the center line | |
| 8-8 | 1s two hand turn a quarter to 2nd place proper |
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. I do not have a date for the interpretation, so it may be under copyright. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2026 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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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.