A Trip to Bengall
A Trip to Bengall is an English Country Dance. It was published by Thompson in 1765 in Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1765. It was interpreted by George Williams in 2021. It is a proper Duple Minor dance. The minor set lasts 32 bars. An online description of the dance may be found here.
This was originally published by Thompson in 1765, republished by him in 1780, but I first found it in Straight, 1784..
Straight writes:
The 1st. Man Sets to the second Wo: and turns her The 1st. Wo: Set to the second Man and turns The 1st. Cu: cross over and half Figure Foot and right hand and left
According to Charles Learthart in Kentish Hops, the term "foot it" meant "... it is thought to have consisted of jumping and kicking out one's right leg eighter sideways or to the front, another jump and kicking with the left leg." I interpret it as a simple set, but if you wish to try the other, go for it.
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 | M1 set twice to W2 |
| 5-8 | 1st corners two hand turn | |
| A2 | 1-4 | W1 set twice to M2 |
| 5-8 | 2nd corners two hand turn | |
| B1 | 1-4 | 1s cross go below as 2s lead up |
| 5-8 | 1s half figure eight up through 2s | |
| B2 | 1-2 | 1s set (foot it) |
| 3-8 | Face partner four changes of rights and lefts |
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 transience of my youtube URLs. 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=ATripToBengall
The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 2021 by George Williams. And is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2021 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This website is copyright © 2021-2026 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.