The Infare ~ Williams
Will Ye Marry Kitty
The Infare ~ Williams or Will Ye Marry Kitty is an old Scottish Country Dance. It was published by Castle Menzies in 1749 in The Register of Dances at Castle Menzies, Scotland. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2024. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 16 bars.
Quoted from The Register of Dances at Castle Menzies (as transcribed by Jim Healy):
1st man sets to the 2d woman & turns his partner with cross'd hands as in Jamaica then the 1st woman sets to the 2d man & then turns her own partner as above, then the 1st pair casts down one couple & turns each other half round as before; then the 1st woman goes round the 3d woman & comes into her own place; the 1st man does the same round the 3d man at the same time
The only dance called Jamaica that I know is from Playford's 4th (and subsequent) editions of The Dancing Master, and it does indeed have a crossed hand turn.
The first man take his wo. by the right hand, then the left, ans so holding hands change places, then do the same to the 2. wo. ...
Note that in Jamaica, the turn is only half. From the comment here on the third turn I assume that is intended in this dance too — however, that leaves the 1s on the wrong sides, however the description, the 1st woman goes round the 3d woman & comes into her own place; the 1st man does the same round the 3d man at the same time sounds more like a half figure eight than it does like a lead down, and that would fix things.
Jamaica gives four bars for the half turn. Modern interpretations spend those four bars thus: 1 bar to take right hands, 1 bar to take left, 2 bars to turn half. In a strathspey you could achieve the same effect in half the number of bars.
The 3s are merely posts and do nothing, so I have removed them. The 1s can half figure eight around the next 2s
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 | M1 set to L2 |
| 3-4 | 1s take right hands, take left hands, turn half |
| 5-6 | L1 set to M2 |
| 7-8 | 1s take right hands, take left hands, turn half |
| 9-10 | 1s cast down as 2s lead up |
| 11-12 | 1s take right hands, take left hands, turn half |
| 13-16 | 1s half figure eight down through the 2s below |
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.
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https://www.upadouble.info/redirect.php?id=TheInfare-Williams
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2024 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 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.