In a post a while back on the Regency "figure eight" and the many meanings of the term "figure" in that era, I mentioned a joking suggestion made by a guest at one of my Regency balls that a half figure eight should be called a "figure four". Much to my astonishment, while pursuing some research on American country dance of this era, I actually found a figure four!
The figure is in an American manual published in 1808 in upstate New York, in the figure given for the tune "Flowers of Glasgow":
Flowers of Glasgow
First couple figure four with second couple, cast down two couple, back again, cross over, down one couple, balance, lead up, hands round with third couple, and right and left at top.
-- A Select Collection of the Newest and Most Favorite Country Dances, Otsego, NY, 1808.
I had a few minutes of excitement there, but further digging suggests that rather than inventing a new dance figure or a new way of phrasing a "double figure eight" done by four dancers, or perhaps using an odd term for some sort of reel for four, the editor or typesetter seems to have simply made a mistake.
Colonial dance specialist Kate Van Winkle Keller noted in her bibliography of American dance sources that the 1808 manual "seems to be derived from almost every dance book printed in the [previous] 15 years, including some English ones." I've observed this as well; there are a number of figures in it that go back to English manuals as far back as the 1770s. The figure given for "Flowers of Glasgow" is one of many copied directly from an 1807 Boston manual, which is itself copied extensively from other sources:
Flowers of Glasgow
First couple four hands round with second couple, cast down two couple, back again, cross over, down one couple, balance, led up, four hands round with third couple, right and left a top.
-- "Saltator", A Treatise on Dancing..., Boston, 1807
Since the other figures copied from Saltator are word-for-word the same, I suspect the editor or typesetter of the 1808 manual accidentally substituted "figure four" for "four hands round". The previous figure in the 1808 manual begins with "First couple do the figure of eight round, the second", so it would be easy to mix them up visually.
Sorry, Casey!
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