Epping Hunt

Source: Gray (1812), interpreted by Pat Shaw; published in English Dance & Song, Winter 1976. Vol XXXVIII. No. 3
Formation: Longways; Proper

A	Face your Corner: Set (4); Second Corners Left Shoulder Cross Over immediately followed by First Corners Right Shoulder Cross Over (4) Repeat to Home
B	#1s Gallop Down (#2s Move Up)(4); #1s Gallop Up into Second Place (4) [Second Corners Left Shoulder Cross Over immediately followed by First Corners Right Shoulder Cross Over] x2 (4+4)

Music:
16 or 32 bars of suitable tunes.

Notes:
The "right and left at top" may imply that it was originally a Triple Minor; Wilson's diagrams for the moves show three couples.

Wilson complains that some dancers "gallop, or run down a dozen couples" using up twice as many bars as they should. He states that both Lead Down the Middle and Right & Left are Short Figures, i.e. four bars. In Pat Shaw's Long Live London he has Right & Left in four bars.

So I think this is a 16 bar dance; they were quite common in that period. Wilson says that anything longer than 16 bars of figures "is damned at its announcement" as it "appears now, in fashionable life, a crime to attempt anything that requires a capacity beyond what the more sagacious brutes are endowed with".

I call the B2 Right & Left figure "Interlocking Gypsies"; Larry Jennings includes a definition for it in Zesty Contras as a "Double Gyp".

Original page from English Dance & Song, Winter 1976

Original page from English Dance & Song, Summer 1977

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