Petronella ~ Lowes

Petronella is an Old Scottish Country Dance devised by Nathaniel Gow of Edinburgh in about 1820. The earliest description of the figure I can find was printed by the Lowes in Edinburgh in 1831. They classify the dance as an “English Country Dance“, (I don’t know why). It is a proper duple minor longways dance. First couple chassé round to the right, and set in the middle; round to the right again, and set on the sides; to the right again, and set in places; down the middle, up again, and pousette. (In other dances published by the Lowes (in the same book), “down the middle, up again“ is progressive, while “poussette“ is not. This is at odds with the RSCDS interpretation of this dance.) Before about about 1860 minor set dances always started with just the top two (or three) couples dancing. Then the top couple would move down one and dance with the next couple (the third from the top), still no one else would be dancing. After two iterations of the dance the new top two couples would join in and you would have four couples dancing. This would continue with new couples starting at the top until the whole line was in motion. When the original top couple reached the bottom they would wait out one iteration, and then start dancing up the line. When they reached the top, they would stop, and would not move again but the dance would continue below them until everyone reached theiroriginal place. If you have a line of n couples this would take 3*n-3 iterations of the dance. I show here the dance with 4 couples (which takes 9 iterations to finish) and it shows the origins of the Scottish two couple dance in a four couple set progression (though that only goes through 8 times and so leaves the bottom two couples in the wrong place). The animation plays at 120 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance is 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.