dance barefoot

   obsolete

   to remain unmarried when a younger sister marries

   Probably from the effect on her dowry:

    I must dance barefoot on her wedding day. (Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew)

   If in Yorkshire you remained a bachelor when your younger brother married, you might be said to dance in the half-peck. A peck was a liquid measure of two gallons, of beer or cider normally, but occasionally of spirits, and a peckman was a distributor of smuggled spirits, presumably because that was about all the load he could carry. We can assume that the elder brother was consoling himself at the wedding feast. The economic pressures on unwed females who were not allowed to work to keep themselves, and on brothers who were expected to provide labour for the farm through having children, made it socially desirable that brothers and sisters respectively should marry in descending age order.