The Carl cam' ower the Croft ~ 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 about 1977 and published in Miss Milligan's Miscellany 2. It is R8×32 3C/4C, a proper Triple Minor dance. R32.
SINGLE FIGURE (Each strain repeat)
Set & change sides with 2d. Cu: set & back again swing with right hands round 2d. Cu: & allemande
OR THUS The 1st lady meets & turns the 2d gent: the 1st. gent: meets and turns the 2d lady lead down the middle up again & set to the top Cu:
DOUBLE FIGURE (Tune played twice thro' with repeats)
Hands 6 round & back promenade 3 Cu: whole poussette & the double triangle
Wilson spells the title as "The Carle came o'er the Craft".
The music consists of two 4 bar strains.
The RSCDS is interpretting Wilson's DOUBLE FIGURE (The Wilson's poussette and double triangle are completely different from those of the RSCDS).
Wilson defines most of his figures in his An Analysis of Country Dancing, 3rd Edition.
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: circle, promenade round, double triangle, back to back (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=TheCarlCamOwerTheCroft-RSCDS
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © ~1977 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
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.