The Isle of Skye ~ Williams
The Isle of Skye ~ 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 2024. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 16 bars.
In his Rutherford's compleat Collection of 200 of the most celebrated Country Dances both Old and New, Vol. 2, ~1759, David Rutherford published The Isle of Skie, and dance which begins with "set, cross, set, cross", but the rest of the dance is different. His music consists of 2 four bar strains.
In his Treasures of Terpsichore, 1809, Thomas Wilson published Isle of Sky:
Set and change sides down the middle, up again, and turn your partner
In his A Companion to the Ball Room, 1816, Thomas Wilson published a different Isle of Sky:
Quoted from The Register of Dances at Castle Menzies (as transcribed by Jim Healy):
SINGLE FIGURE 1st. strain repeated 2d. played straight thro
The 1st. lady turns the 2d. gent: the 1st. gent: turns the 2d. lady lead down the middle up again & half poussette with the top Cu:
OR THUS The 3 ladies join hands the 3 gent: join hands set and lead thro set & back again lead down the middle up again & set to the top Cu:
Wilson's music consists of a four bar strain (repeated) and an eight bar strain (not repeated).
Wilson defines his lead down the middle up again may be found on pages 10-11 of his An Analysis of Country Dancing, and it means: "lead down two couples, turn, lead up to the place of the couple who were below (who move up)" Wilson does not specify a hand hold for the lead, nor whether the 2s take hands.
The 3s do nothing except take set and cross. I think modern dances would prefer a duple minor.
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.
| A1 | 1-2 | All set on the sides |
| 3-4 | Partner change | |
| A2 | 1-2 | All set on the sides |
| 3-4 | Partner change | |
| B | 1-4 | 1s lead down, turn, lead to 2nd place as 2s lead up |
| 5-8 | 1s face the 2s and set twice to them |
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=TheIsleOfSkye-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.