My Only Jo and Dearie, O ~ RSCDS

My Only Joe & Deary O ~ Williams My Only Jo and Dearie, O ~ RSCDS

My Only Jo and Dearie, O ~ RSCDS is a Scottish Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Wilson in 1816 and published in A Companion to the Ball Room, London. It was interpreted by RSCDS in 1961 and published in RSCDS Book 21. It is S8×32 3C/4C, a proper Triple Minor dance. St32.

In Wilson's A Companion to the Ball Room, 1816, (page 33) he published "My Only Joe & Deary O". Wilson writes:

SINGLE FIGURE (Tune played straight thro')
Hey on your own sides lead down the middle up again & allemande

OR THUS Swing with right hands round 2d. Cu: right & left with 3d. Cu: lead thro the top & turn your partner

DOUBLE FIGURE (Each strain repeated)
The 3 ladies lead round the 3 gentn. the 3 gentn lead round the 3 ladies promenade 3 Cu: & whole poussette

Wilson provides 2 eight bar strains, presumable played as reels not strathspeys.

Wilson defines most of his figures in his An Analysis of Country Dancing, 3rd Edition.

  1. the three Gentlemen lead round the three Ladies is defined on page 16 and means "The gentlemen take hands, and, with M1 leading, dance clockwise around the ladies and back to places. As they do that the ladies take hands, advance into the middle, pause, and fall back."
  2. the three Ladies lead round the three Gentlemen is defined on page 16 and means "The ladies take hands, and, with L1 leading, dance counter-clockwise around the gentlemen and back to places. As they do that the gentlemen take hands, advance into the middle, pause, and fall back."
  3. promenade 3 Cu: is defined on page 18 and means that all three couples take promenade hold and, with the 1s leading, travel in a counter-clockwise elipse around and back to places.
  4. whole poussette is defined on page 15 and means: "top two couples join hands with partner, circle, counter-clockwise, one and a half times around the other couple to change places with them."
    Note: this is unlike a normal English Poussette as the couples travel once and a half around each other rather than once. And is quite different from the Scottish Poussette.

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.

An online description of the dance may be found here.

promenade round, diamond poussette (and probably others).

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=MyOnlyJoAndDearieO-RSCDS

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1961 by RSCDS. 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
Creative Commons License 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.