The Caledonian Rant ~ Williams

The Caledonian Rant ~ Williams The Caledonian Rant ~ RSCDS

The Caledonian Rant ~ Williams is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Thomas Wilson in 1816 and published in A Companion to the Ball Room, London. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2023. It is a proper Triple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.

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 has the 1s cross and cast up, and then says half figure round the top Cu:. But the 1s have cast up and are the top couple. Presumably he means the 2s, even though they are below the 1s. Should the 2s move down when the 1s cast up? They just led up. And they if they do move down they will need to lead up again soon.

What is meant by chase round the 3d. Cu:? Wilson, on pages 61,62 of his An Analysis of Country Dancing defines "chace", but not "chase". From the context I think the chase needs to take the 1s from the top and leave them below the 3s ready to lead up.

Except that leaves them improper, with nothing to get them back proper. So perhaps the chase continues and crosses below the 3s, looping around M3 to just the middle above the 3s, ready to lead up.

I assume the lead thro the top Cu: has an implied cast after it, otherwise the 1s are in no position to foot with the bottom couple in the next figure.

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.

The dances of George Williams (including interpretations like this one) are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA license.

A11-41s cross, go below, as 2s wait and lead up
A21-41s half figure eight down through 3s
B11-41s cross left, go above, as 2s wait and lead down
B21-41s half figure eight down through 2s
A31-4W1, followed by partner, cast below 3s, looping M3, ending together above the 3s in center (as 2s lead up)
A41-41s lead above top and cast back to 2nd place
B31-41s+3s advance to center, set, and fall back
B41-41s+2s circle four left

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-Williams

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2023 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 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.