Scottish Country Dancing ~ The Irish Jig ~ The Highland Fling ~ Welsh Folk Dancing
So many dances, so little time … Well, how about a Highland fling?… “This is how men should dance”!
If there is anybody with a doubt in his mind about how men should dance – or whether, indeed, they should dance at all – he has only to turn his eyes to the Scottish Highlands for a lusty answer. Of course they should dance, and just this way; though, in all conscience, they have to be Scots to do it.
They must have the feel of the kilt, that most male of all modes of dress, which will give a dash and swagger to any man able to meet it halfway; they must hear the skirl of the Highland pipe, that most rousing of musical instruments; they must have in their bones the tradition of Highland dancing, for it is too nebulous to have it in the head. Given these three qualifications, together with the natural spirit and strength of the doughty Gael, the dance that emerges will all but lift you out of your seat as you watch and set your own tepid spirit and flaccid muscles to vibrating furiously as you sit.
That gamy Scot, James Boswell, recorded in his Hebridean journal that “we danced to the music of the bagpipe, which made us beat the ground with prodigious force.” But the curious thing about Highland dancing is that it is by no means all ground-beating and thistledown, with feet any ballerina might envy for their very daintiness, however masculine, as well as for their command of speed, intricacy and general virtuosity. It is inherently the dance of warriors, stout and hard, but its stance is noble, its surface courtly and its deportment a supremely disciplined elegance.
One of the intriguing things about Highland dancing is that nobody knows, or probably ever will, what its origins are or how it developed. When those consecrated early Christians, St. Ninian and St. Columba and their followers, turned their energies to the wiping out the paganism of the Druids, they failed mightily in one particular instance – the bardic tradition. Indeed, they themselves were infected by it. Under it all, history belonged to the bards exclusively to recount orally in their songs. The Druidic law forbade the making of written records, it is said, and the Scots have followed that proscription with a will. Tangible evidence is according nonexistent; and the bardic memory of a race so romantic of mind and so touched with Celtic magic is far from factual.
If we must have legends, let us choose the best ones. There is one among the many about the origins of the Sword Dance that is at least noble and credible. Back in 1054, it is said a blood duel took place during which Malcolm Canmore, King to be, killed one of Macbeth’s chiefs and, taking the dead man’s claymore, placed it with his own on the ground, making the sign of the cross. Malcolm Canmore danced around and over the swords celebrating his victory, as the pipers played.