Trip to Castle Howard ~ Williams

Trip to Castle Howard ~ Hume Trip to Castle Howard ~ Williams Trip to Castle Howard ~ Cook

Thompson writes:

Foot it 4 & change places the same back again lead down the middle up again & cast off the 1^st. Man turn the 3^d. Wo. & the 1^st. Wo. turn the 3^d. Man at the same time set 3 and 3 sides hands six half round & back again Allemand with your Partner

The music consists of 4 bar A, B, and C strains, and an 8 bar D strain, all repeated.

Colin Hume objects to Thompson's music played at 2 counts per bar, but I include it at that speed anyway.

Thompson says "foot it 4" which means just the 1s+2s should be "foot it"ing but I'm going to have everyone do it, because, why not? Similarly I'll have everyone do the allemande at the end, even though the instructions are directed at the 1s.

Thompson has M1 turn W3 which is pretty normal, just turning his first corner, but then he says W1 turns M3 at the same time. That's awkward. And unusual. The 1s have to avoid bumping in to each other when crossing over to the 3s and when crossing back. I think it's far more likely that this is a misprint, and W1 should turn M2.

Now you'd think that after turning 1st corners the 1s would finish up between the end couples in lines across the set, but Thompson says set 3 and 3 sides so it's on the sides. Now they could finish improper, but there's no way to get back to proper, unless one makes the allemande asymetrical. And that seems wrong. So the 1s finish the two hand turn where they started.

Finally there's the question of what allemand means. Since it takes eight bars it's pretty clear it means first allemande right then allemande left. But there were several different version of "allemande" being danced in 1775.

• Partners would stand side by side, intertwine right arms (for a right allemande), put left arms behind their backs and grab hold of partner's right hand, and then turn in a circle.
• Partners would join right hands, and the lady would turn under the joined hands.
• Partners would join both hands, right in right, left in left, then the lady would turn under followed by the man
• In 1808 Thomas Wilson describes "allemande" with a picture showing partners doing a back to back type of figure (but with dancers moving in a circle around each other) and mentions no taking of hands
• and probably other variants I don't know about.

Tom Cook used a variant of the second style in his interpretation, while Colin Hume used the first.

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