Scottish Country Dancing Dictionary

Kelley's Aye

Scottish Country Dance Instruction

Kelley's Aye (R3x32) 3D Triangular set Lewis N Derrick 1988
This is a dance in triangular formation for three dancers in any gender combination

1-8 All set, dance three hands round to the left, and set again
9-16 All dance a reel of three across the bottom of the set; the 1st and 3rd dancers give right shoulders to start the reel and all end back in original places with 1st and 3rd dancers facing one another
17-20 The 1st and 3rd dancers set to one another and change places giving left hands
21-24 The 1st and 2nd dancers set to one another and change places giving right hands. All have now moved one place round the set clockwise
25-32 All dance right hands across and left hands back to new positions

Repeat twice more from new positions each time

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


Dance Notes

1st person at the top, then count around the set clockwise for 2nd, 3rd.

The 1st and 2nd dancers retain right hands on bar 24, the 3rd dancer joining in on bar 25 for the wheel.

(Dance notes by the deviser, Lewis N Derrick)


Keith Rose's Crib Diagrams


Dance Information

This reel, Kelley's Aye, was devised for Rowena and George Kelley.

Suggested tune: Far Frae Hame.

Devised 1988, first published 1992; republished electronically 2020.

Copyright 1988, 1992, 2020 Lewis N. Derrick.

(Dance information reproduced here with the kind permission of the deviser, Lewis N Derrick)


In the 1980s I was asked by Rowena Kelley to devise some dances for odd numbers of people so that she would still be able to start her Maidenhead class on those occasions in the winter when not enough folk had turned up to make full four-couple sets.

I produced several dances for three and five single dancers that contained 'proper' figures, not just exercise routines, in either triangular or 'W' formation sets.
The progressions were clockwise round the triangle or zig-zag up the longwise 'W' set.

How many of these oddball creations ever saw the light of day in Berkshire I don't know and I never saw fit to enquire!

The Triangular Suite Of Scottish Country Dances leaflet contains the three triangular dances;
Jumping Joan (Jig)
Kelley's Aye (Reel)
Sir David Lindsay Of The Mount's Strathspey (Strathspey)

The reel was originally published in print in the fifth McGhie Booklet in 1992. The jig and Strathspey are published here for the first time.



Published in The McGhie Scottish Country Dance Books, Volume 5, The Real McGhie and Other Scottish Country Dances, reproduced here with the kind permission of the deviser, Lewis N Derrick.

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