Scottish Country Dancing Dictionary

The Great Western Road

Scottish Country Dance Instruction

The Great Western Road 32-bar jig for five couples in a five-couple longwise set. Ian Robertson

1-4 1st couple weave in front of 2nd couple and behind 3rd couple, finishing below 3rd couple. 2nd couple step up on bars 3-4.
5-8 1st couple continue weaving in front of 4th couple and behind 5th couple, finishing below 5th couple. 3rd, 4th and 5th couples do not step up.
9-12 1st couple, giving left hands, lead up crossing over to finish in second place on opposite sides.
13-16 2nd and 1st couples dance left hands across.
17-18 1st couple, giving right hands, change places with 3rd couple.
19-20 1st couple, giving left hands, cross to own side.
21-24 1st couple repeat bars 17-20 with 4th couple, finishing on partner's side.
25-28 1st couple repeat bars 17-20 with 5th couple, finishing on own sides.
29-32 2nd and 3rd couples dance four hands round to the left.
 At the same time, 5th and 1st couples dance right hands across.

Repeat from new positions.

(Dance crib compiled by the deviser, Ian Robertson)


Keith Rose's Crib Diagrams


Dance Instruction Videos

The Great Western Road - Scottish Country Dancing Instruction Video

Dance Information

This dance was devised by Ian Robertson in November 2015 to mark the Great Western road's bicentenary.

Although coal was discovered in Newcastle in 1797, the Blue Mountains continued to hem in the colony of Sydney in New South Wales to the west. After the explorers Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson completed the first crossing by Europeans in 1813, Governor Lachlan Macquarie commissioned William Cox to build the new road over the mountains.

He travelled over it in early 1815, naming it the Great Western Road, and opening up the fertile plains beyond.

Suggested music: The Travelling Men, Crowe and Johnstone, Leeds 25th Anniversary.

(Dance information by the deviser, Ian Robertson)


Published in Hunter Valley Dances Book 2, reproduced here with the kind permission of Allyn Douglass, Secretary RSCDS Hunter Valley Branch.

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