Regency Oddities: Heys for Four

When I add new extended-Regency-era country dance tune books to my collection of photos and scans, one of the things I do is quickly skim through the figures looking for anything out of the ordinary.  And while heys (or reels) are quite common figures for country dances in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (indeed, all the way back to the seventeenth century!), in this period, they are almost always heys for three.  Figures like "hey your own sides", "hey contrary sides and hey your own sides", "hey top and bottom" (where one dancer in a couple goes up and one goes down the set), and the corner-formation heys where the lady heys with two gentlemen and the gentleman with two ladies are all very common.  But these are all heys for three dancers.  A "right and left" quite round is technically a circular hey for four, but a classic, Scotch reel-style hey for four dancers in a line is not listed as a standard figure and doesn't really turn up.  

Until, of course, it does. 

I have two examples of heys for four inserted into conventional country dance figures from this era.  Let's take a look!

The first figure is found in Sixteen New Country Dances & Strathspeys with their proper Figures for the Scotch & Irish Steps, To which are added, two favorite Minuets Composed by Mr. Fichat Jun^r.  This typical little tune book was published in London by Thomas Preston, probably in 1798, as one of the tunes included was "Admiral Duncan’s Victory, or the Dutch defeated", which referred to the victory of Admiral Adam Duncan at the Battle of Camperdown on October 11, 1797.  It is possible it is from a few years later, but it is unlikely to have been published later than 1804, as by 1805, Preston had begun to publish under his surname only and Admiral Duncan was dead.

Here's the original wording for the figure:

Figure.  1^st. and 2^nd. Coup: the hey for 4, the 1^st. Lady to begin the hey with the 2^nd. Gent: passing to the left in the middle, and to the right with their partners out-side, the 1^st. Gent: and 2^nd. Lady, pass to the left in the middle, and to the right out-side, and so on till done and to finish at their places,                  1^st. and 2^nd. Coup: Promenade round, the 1^st. Coup: lead down one Coup: and set.

(Yes, that long blank space is in the original.)

This is an unusually helpful set of instructions because it spells out in detail exactly how the hey works, with left shoulder passes in the center and right shoulder passes on the outside with the dancers weaving along the diagonal passing through the original places of the first gentleman and second lady.  There should technically be eight passes in total, but for the dancers to get back to their original places the first lady and second gentleman will pass left shoulders once more at the end as they curve back to their lines.

The rest of the dance is straightforward: the first two couples promenade around, then the first couple leads down the center one couple and sets until the end of the music.  While in period country dances would have been performed in triple minor sets, in this case the third couple has nothing at all to do except help keep the other dancers oriented to their lines.

These figures were attached to a tune called "Bonny Kate of the West", which is where the problems start.  The tune is in 2/4 and has two strains, an eight-bar A and a sixteen-bar B, with the repeat markers indicating an AAB structure for a thirty-two bar dance.  That is a very generous amount of music for these figures; it would suggest that the dance goes:

AA        16b        two couples hey for four
B             8b        two couples promenade
                8b        first couple lead down (progressive) & set

There are other music correlation issues in this book, which could indicate general editorial carelessness about matching figures to tunes, as is rather common in this period.  But there's no easy way to shrink this particular tune and still maintain the proportions of the figures.  The B does have some internal repetition -- bars 1-4 and 9-12 match -- but there's enough difference in bars 5-8 and 13-16 that I don't think eliminating an A and chopping the B in half is a good solution.  And for that hey for four with the extra time needed to get back to places, eight bars is going to be a tight fit anyway.

And then there's that wording in the title...for the Scotch & Irish Steps.  The music is littered with the dotted eighth notes characteristic of the "Scotch snap" of a strathspey.  I think the best solution might be to perform these figures with Kemshoole step as described by Francis Peacock in 1805 as the basic traveling step, assigning each one two measures of music, and choosing from Peacock's various setting steps for the final setting.  Just be careful not to make the hey "one Kemshoole per pass" -- that won't quite work.  Keeping the proportions of steps to music the same, there would be time for four minor setting steps such as the minor Kemkossy or Aisig-thrasd or two single setting steps such as the single Kemkossy, "extended" Aisig-thrasd, Lematrást, etc.  For variety, the "extended" Kemshoole step could be used in the promenade and (with very small steps, and perhaps sideways) in the lead down.

In the absence of the original tune, it is legitimate (and common) period practice to use a different one of the correct length.  In this particular case, I'd also recommend it being of the same strathspey style.

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The second dance figure in which I found a hey (in this case called a reel) for four dancers can be is firmly dated to the actual Regency era, having appeared in Monro's Annual Selection of Country Dances, Waltzes, &c., For the Year, 1816.  For this one, I can share an actual image, shown at left (click to enlarge). 

From this you can see that the 2/4 tune it is attached to, "Friend Sandy, or a Trip to Russia", has two strains, an eight-bar A and an eight-bar B, with the repeat markings indicating it is played da capo, AABA, for a thirty-two bar dance figure.  This tune is not a strathspey, and the music/figure correlation is conventional.

The figure:

1^st. & 2^d. Cu: set 2^d. Cu: fall in between 1^st. & set again, reel, down the middle, up again, and turn corners.

This is a figure I've actually taught and danced -- in Kirov, Russia, back in 2016, using different music.  Unlike in the previous figure, the reel (hey) is not explicitly for four and the method of performance is not spelled out in detail, but the setup for it, with the second couple between the first, indicates a reel for four straight across the set.  Also unlike the other figure, the third couple in the triple minor set also has something to do: they participate in the final turn corners.

Here's how I reconstructed it:

A        4b    1st & 2nd couples set diagonally to the center
           4b    2nd couple crosses up to between 1st (2b) & all four set again (2b)
A        8b    reel (hey) for four, ending in original places
B        8b    1st couple down the middle and up again to second place (progressive)
A        8b    turn corners

Performance notes:

The first couple will need to back up a little when the second couple crosses up to stand between them.  The second gentleman should yield right-of-way to the second lady, meaning in effect that they pass left shoulders moving into places.

The starting positions for the reel are:

G1    L2    G2    L1

I generally perform the reel (hey) of four by passing right shoulders on the outside and left in the center, as in the previous figure.  There are six passes; on fifth pass, which starts in this position:

                L1    G2    L2    G1

the dancers pass right shoulders on the ends and the second couple then needs to "bow out" of the reel a bit early by curving around to their original places while on the sixth pass the first couple pass left shoulders in the center and return to theirs.  This is easier to dance in practice than it is to explain in words!

The down the middle and up again is generally performed holding two hands with partner and moving sideways down the set, preferably no further than the third couple, though Thomas Wilson spends enough time complaining about people traveling too far that it must have been a common problem.  Filling it out with setting steps is a useful strategy to avoid too much travel when given eight bars, as in this figure.

Turn corners is described in detail here.

I've been rethinking Regency-era country steps recently, but this figure is late enough that it wouldn't be a terrible problem to use French quadrille steps, as listed for country dance figures by London dancing master Thomas Wilson in The Complete System of English Country Dancing -- sequences of chassé, jeté, assemblé and perhaps a pas de basque for the setting.

As usual for the period, if neither live musicians nor the actual music are available (and I do not have a recording of it), then any tune of matching length may be substituted.

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I don't believe I have any other dance figures of this era with a hey/reel for four in them, but my collection, while quite large, is not obviously not comprehensive, so where there are two there might be a few others as well.  For many years I only had one!  I would not regard it as a good idea to throw a hey for four in when composing and calling figures according to period practice, however; it's clearly an oddity.

Comments

[Joshua Kronengold]

Nice. Are you going to do a C&K about your newer ideas regarding Regency country steps or is there not enough there there yet?

[Susan de Guardiola]

The essential question is, while Wilson gives the French quadrille steps for use in country dancing, he does that very late in the Regency era, and he's the only one who does. Wilson was a little OCD and clearly would have liked everyone to do everything by the rules, which as usual does not reflect how things went in the real world, but I don't generally find him outright WRONG. And usually he's more behind the times than ahead of them. But even if you grant those steps for late 1810s, it can't really be correct to use them earlier, in the "extended Regency" from the 1780s on - it's not clear they were even fully developed in France that early. So...what were they doing in 1800? Or 1790? I have some thoughts on this, but they aren't fully developed yet. And the last several years I've been working intensely on other periods and places.