A. B. Paterson's Jig

Scottish Country Dance Instruction

A. B. Paterson's Jig (J4x32) 4C set Lewis N Derrick 2016

1-8 Eight hands round and back
9-12 The 1st and 4th couples cross over giving right hands, 1st couple cast off one place while the 4th couple cast up one place; the 2nd and 3rd couples step up and down, respectively, on bars 11-12
13-16 The 1st and 4th couples dance half rights and lefts, omitting polite turns to end facing fourth corners
17-24 The 2nd, 4th, 1st and 3rd couples dance right-shoulder reels of four on own sidelines
25-26 With hands joined on sidelines, all set
27-30 All four men advance and retire making arches while all four women, dropping hands, dance round their own partners by the right and back to place
31-32 With hands joined on sidelines, all set

Repeat three more times from new positions each time

(Dance crib compiled by the deviser, Lewis N Derrick 2020)

Dance Notes

Bars 27-30: The arches should be complete within lines, linking all the sets down the length of the room.

Dance Information

This dance was devised by Lewis Derrick to commemorate Alexander B. Paterson, founder and administrator of the Byre Theatre, St Andrews.

Bars 27-30 represent the rise and fall of a theatre curtain within the proscenium arch - although the Byre didn't actually have that style of curtain!

Suggested tune: Saddle the Pony.

Devised 2016, first published electronically 2020.

(Dance information from The McGhie Scottish Country Dance Sheets #11, reproduced here with the kind permission of the deviser, Lewis N Derrick)

The Byre Theatre was founded in 1933 by Charles Marford, an actor (found in the Who's Who of 1921) and Alexander B. Paterson, a local journalist and playwright, with help from a theatre group made up from members of Hope Park Church, St Andrews.

The third and current building, designed by Nicoll Russell Architects, was opened in 2001 by Sir Sean Connery. Its main auditorium is named after A. B. Paterson.

The Byre Theatre, 2015

Published in The McGhie Scottish Country Dance Sheets, Collection 2, reproduced here with the kind permission of the deviser, Lewis N Derrick.
This page uses content under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, along with original copyrighted content and excerpts from Wikipedia and other sources.
Text from this original Byre Theatre article on Wikipedia.
Image copyright Graeme Yuill under this Creative Commons Licence 2.0.

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