Scottish Country Dancing Dictionary

Toss Your Head

Scottish Country Dance Instruction

Toss Your Head
Maggie and Duncan Keppie Haliburton School Of Arts SCD Book 2: Let's dance
4x32 bar strathspey
4-couple dance in square set Rotating Interlocking Reel of 4
Promenade

  1-8   TURN PARTNER AND MEN WHEEL: All turn partner with right hands (4 bars), then men dance left hands across in the middle ending back-to-back in the middle facing partner;

  9-20 ROTATING INTERLOCKING REEL OF 4 (12 BARS): All dance partial reels of 4 through the center (Bar 9: pass partner by the right shoulder; Bars 10-11: women dance ¾ left hands across AS men dance ¼ round the periphery of the set; Bar 12: pass partner by the right shoulder; Bars 13-14: men dance ¾ left hands across AS women dance ¼ around the periphery of the set; REPEAT Bars 9-14 (all end as at the end of Bar 8, men back-to-back in center);

21-24 1½ TURN: All turn partner 1½ with right hands and end facing clockwise in promenade hold;

25-30 ¾ PROMENADE: All promenade ¾ around the square to end one place anticlockwise of original places;

31-32 SET TO PARTNER.

Repeat 3 times.

(Dance crib compiled by the devisers, Maggie and Duncan Keppie)


Dance Information

The title of this dance, Toss Your Head, comes from the penultimate verse of To A Louse - Poem written by Robert Burns in 1786.

O Jeany, dinna toss your head,
An' set your beauties a' abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
The blastie's makin:
Thae winks an' finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin.

To A Louse Poem - Information Video

Gie Us The Gift
Inscription Of The Temple Of Delphi
"Know Yourself, Youth Between Vice And Vertu" Jacob Jordaens (1593-1678), Oil On Canvas, c. 1613-1678


Image from Attributed to Jacob Jordaens, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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