I was surprised to discover I didn't have this dance in my collection so found it on line as well as Penn's explanation of the folk process that created it. I'm sharing it here because I think it's such a neat story. Author's Notes: "Honor Among Thieves" underlines the borrowing or "stealing" that goes with composing "new" dances. Originally I had been thinking about incorporating old-time square dance moves into contra dancing because of the popularity of squares in the Northwest. In a 1982 visit with Ted Sannella, I asked him about his newest dances. He gave me "New Friendship Reel" which used "lady around two." Feeling somewhat miffed that a New Englander had beaten me to the punch, I wrote a dance using the move more in the context that it was used in Northwest square dancing. Ignoring Ted's sage advice about never calling a new dance without first dancing it, I tried what I called "The G-Note Reel" at Tod Whittemore's Cambridge dance the next night. It met with mixed success. Tod then revised it, with the new version including the circles (see the 1982 version below). Upon hearing the story, Peter Barnes came up with the name "Honor Among Thieves". In 1986, I further revised the dance, borrowing from the popular sequence of the circle into a swing. Ironically, this sequence was the one Ted had used in his dance but that I had changed. The traditional tune, "Wind That Shakes The Barley" (in the book) works well with the dance and can be played ABAB rather than AABB. The dance and a bit more history is here: http://arcserv.astro.washington.edu/dances/FMPro?-db=acdol.db&-format=d…