Mr. Darcy's Twosome Reel of Tulloch
Mr. Darcy's Twosome Reel of Tulloch is an old Scottish Country Dance. It was devised by George Williams in 2025. It is a dance for 2 people. The minor set lasts 16 bars.
The Fletts say that a mention of a 'threesom reel' occurred in 1710. But a description of the dance is not given. Foursome reels occurred soon thereafter, and by 1808 there were reels of 3,4,5,6 and 9.
In Pride and Prejudice, while Miss Bingley is playing a lively Scotch air, Mr. Darcy asks Elizabeth to dance a reel with him. Now there don't seem to be any reels of two. So what did Mr. Darcy intend?
The reel figure cannot be danced with just two people, it needs at least three, so we can't have a traditional reel which consists of reeling and setting.
Now Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813 which was approximately when the Reel of Tulloch was being devised, and the turn figure of that dance can be danced by two people. So perhaps Darcy had something like this in mind...
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 this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.
| 1-4 | Face partner, put right hand under partner's right elbow, left hand behind back and turn by the right once and a half |
| 5-8 | Switch hands and directions, turn left twice (ending in each other's 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.
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=MrDarcysTwosomeReelOfTulloch
The dance is copyright © 2025 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2025 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This website is copyright © 2021-2025 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.