The Lovely Bride
The Lovely Bride is an English Country Dance. It was devised by Nathaniel Kynaston in 1716 and published in Twenty Four New Country Dances for the Year 1716. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2025. Originally a Triple Minor this version is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars.
Kynaston writes:
Note: the 1st. strain twice, the last but once
The 1st. cu. cross below the 2d. cu. then below the 3d. cu., the 1st. wo. cast up, and go round the 2d. man to her place, the 1st. man follow her to his place the 1st. man takes his wo. by both hands, and pulls her below the 2d. man, lead through the 3d. cu. and cast up, set, slip outside to the top, and turn your partner
This dance is all about the 1s. The 2s and 3s do essentially nothing, so I'm taking the 3s out.
the 1st. man takes his wo. by both hands, and pulls her below the 2d. man, is probably half a poussette. Kynaston doesn't say what the 2s do, but they need to progress. They could do half a poussette too, or they could lead up... Given the 2s are pretty much non-entities in this dance, I think it's in keeping for them just to get out of the way rather than doing a poussette themselves.
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 | 1-4 | 1s cross, go below 2s (who stand) |
| 5-8 | 1s cross again, go below next 2s (who stand) | |
| A2 | 1-8 | W1, followed by partner, cast up, outside the woman of the 2s below, then crossing the set and going outside the man of her original neighbors, crossing again to her own place (M1 ending in his place) |
| B | 1-4 | W1 push, 1s half poussette down as 2s lead up |
| 5-8 | 1s lead through couple below and cast back to place | |
| 9-10 | 1s set | |
| 11-12 | 1s slip outside 2s, finishing above them | |
| 13-16 | 1s two hand spiral down to 2nd place |
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=TheLovelyBride
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.