The Caledonian Rant ~ RSCDS

The Caledonian Rant ~ Williams The Caledonian Rant ~ RSCDS

The Caledonian Rant ~ 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 1951 and published in RSCDS Book 16. It is S8×32 3C/4C, a proper Triple Minor dance. St32.

Wilson, on page 101, writes:

SINGLE FIGURE Each strain repeated
Swing with right hands round the 2d. Cu: allemande lead thro the bottom & right & left with the top Cu

OR THUS Lead thro the 2d. Cu. lead down the middle & up again turn your partner & half poussette with the top Cu:

DOUBLE FIGURE Tune played twice thro with repeats
Cross over 1 Cu: half figure round the 3d. Cu: cross up 1 Cu: half figure round the top Cu: chase round the 3d. Cu: lead thro the top Cu: foot corners with the bottom Cu: & hands 4 round with the top Cu:

This is an interpretation of the DOUBLE FIGURE. The music is two 4 bar strains. The strain marks suggest to me that the music should be played ABABABAB, while the text suggests AABBAABB. The figures suggest that each bar has two beats, not four.

Wilson defines foot corners on page 75 of An Analysis of Country Dancing as the four dancers move to the center and foot together. He does not say so but presumably they must return 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.

An online description of the dance may be found here.

The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, circle, cast, lead, figure eight, lead and cast (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=TheCaledonianRant-RSCDS

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1951 by RSCDS. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2023 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.