The Lady Round the Lady ~ Shaw

Lloyd Shaw writes:

THE CALL:

1. Honors right and honors left.
   All join hands and circle to the left.
   Break and swing and promenade home.
2. 1. First couple out to the couple on the right
   2. The lady round the lady
   3. And the gent so low.
   4. The lady round the gent
   5. And the gent don't go.
   6. Four hands up and here we go
      'Round and around and a docey-doe.
   7. And on to the next.
   Repeat 2 as written beginning with (b).
   Repeat again, changing last line to: Now balance home.
3. And everybody swing.
   Allemande left with your left hand.
   Right hand to partner and right and left grand.
   Meet your partner and turn right back.
   Meet her again and promenade.

Repeat 2 and 3 entire for second third and fourth couples.

Ida Leven'sKentucky Square Dances, 1928 provides an earlier version of the call which shows how the nonsense in Shaw's "the gent so low" came from something which had once made sense.

1. Lady around the lady and the gent also.
2. Lady around the gent and the gent don't go.
3. Circle four.

Lloyd uses a figure he calls docey-do which is related to but different from the figure Cecil Sharp calls "do-si-do" in his description of the running set (Country Dance Book, Part 5). It is nothing like the figure I know of called do-si-do. Lloyd has many pet names for this figure and I have chosen "Ladies go si and the gents go do" to avoid confusion with the more common meaning.

At the end of a circle the hands break, ladies pass between neighbor and the other lady (ladies passing dos à dos), back to her partner who takes her left hand into his left then she turns round behind him, eventually dropping hands. He remains facing the other gentleman as she circles counter-clockwise around him.

Now each takes his/her neighbor of the opposite sex by the right hand and the ladies circle clockwise around their neighbors (the gents continue to face and drop right hands when they need to).

Then each takes partner left in left ending in a courtesy turn hold. The traveling couple can move on to the next this way.

The figure described by the active lady is just a figure of eight, but somehow that term did not cross the Atlantic. This is one of the few old American dances I know of which uses the movement.

This dance appears in Ida Levin's Kentucky Square Dances, 1928 under the name "Lady Round the Lady"

1. Lady around the lady and the gent also.
2. Lady around the gent and the gent don't go.
3. Circle four.
4. On to the next.

The tune was published by Ralph Page in Horthern Junket with the dance. Colin Hume's software synthesized the music.