The Everlasting Reel
The Everlasting Reel is an old Scottish Country Dance. It was devised by Lowe in about 1831 and published in Lowes' Ball-Conductor and Assembly Guide. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2025. It is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. In this dance the couples are permuted by: 231. The minor set lasts 8 bars.
The Lowes write:
(Three couples stand as for a Country Dance.) The first couple crosses over at the top, and again betwixt the other two couples, meeting at the bottom, and leading up the middle; every couple does the same in succession till the music stops.
If every couple does the same in succession then there must be some form of progression, or the other couples will not be at the top to cross. So I'm going to assume 1s not only leading up the middle but also "and cast to bottom as others move up.
I'm also going to assume that all of this fits into 8 bars, as 16 feels too slow. I'm not sure there's time to take hands on the crosses.
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.
| 1-2 | 1s cross by the right go below (2s stand) |
| 3-4 | 1s cross by the left (between 2s+3s) go below |
| 5-8 | 1s lead to top and cast to bottom as others move up |
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=TheEverlastingReel
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation 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.