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Strip the Willow for Soldiers
There are dances traditionally for women, dances traditionally for men, and dances traditionally danced by both sexes together.
Then there is Scottish Highland dancing.
“Friday night was always dancing night,” begins George MacDonald Fraser’s unforgettable story “The General Danced at Dawn.” After a long preamble about dancing, the narrator unfolds the story of the inspection of a British–well, Scottish–military camp in North Africa in the 1940s. But the dancing of the Gordon Highlanders’ officers is the star of this narrative show.
By the way, I don’t recommend George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman novels for Christian households, but if memory serves all his McAuslan stories are fine. (The soldiers, rough men from various villages and urban centres in 20th century Scotland, use words for people of other cultures you will want to ask your children not to repeat.)
Dancing was part of Scottish military life. There was nothing prissy about it, as you can glean at once by Fraser’s descriptions:
We would take off our tunics, and the pipers would make preparatory whines, and the Colonel would perch on a table, swinging his game leg which the Japanese had broken for him on the railway, and would say:
“Now, gentlemen, as you know there is Highland dancing as performed when ladies are present, and there is Highland dancing. We will have Highland dancing. In Valetta in ’21 I saw a Strip the Willow performed in eighty-nine seconds, and an Eightsome reel in two minutes twenty-two seconds. These are our targets. All right, pipey.”
…Strip the Willow at speed is lethal; there is much swinging round, and when fifteen stone [210 lbs] of heughing [hooching] humanity is whirled at you at close range you have to be wide awake to sidestep, scoop him in, and hurl him back again. I have gone up the line many times, and it is like being bounced from wall to wall of a long corridor which heavy weights attached to your arms. You just have to relax and concentrate on keeping upright.
Occasionally there would be an accident, as when the padre, his Hebridean paganism surging up through his Calvinistic crust, swung into the M.O. [Medical Officer], and the latter, his constitution undermined by drink and peering through microscopes, mistimed him and received him heavily amidships. The padre simply cried: “The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!” and danced on, but the M.O. had to be carried to the rear and his place taken by the second-in-command, who was six-feet-four and a danger in traffic.”
The Eightsome reel was even faster, but not so hazardous…
Fraser underscores the genial violence of this military dancing by contrasting the artistic sensibilities of the Pipe Sergeant, the second-in-command of the regiment’s pipe band, with the Colonel’s love of speed.
…[T]he pipe-sergeant disliked ‘wild’ dancing of the Strip the Willow variety, and while we were on the floor he would stand with his mouth primly pursed and his glengarry pulled down, glancing occasionally at the Colonel and sniffing.
“What’s up, pipe-sarnt,” the Colonel would say, “too slow for you?”
“Slow?” the pipe-sergeant would say. “Fine you know, sir, it’s not too slow for me. It’s a godless stramash is what it is, and shouldn’t be allowed. Look at the unfortunate Mr Cameron, the condition of him: he doesn’t know whether it’s Tuesday or breakfast.”
“They love it; anyway, you don’t want them dancing like a bunch of old women.”
“Not, not like old women, but chust like proper Highlandmen. There is a form, and a time, and a one-two-three, and a one-two-three, and thank God it’s done and here’s the lovely Adjutant.”
“Well, don’t worry,” said the Colonel, clapping him on the shoulder. “You get ’em twice a week in the mornings to show them how it ought to be done.”
And sure enough, on Tuesdays and Thursdays the unfortunate officers are roused at 5:30 AM and put through their paces by the pipe-sergeant, who is clearly a fanatic. Sometimes the Colonel comes to their lessons with his greatcoat over his pyjamas and watches while smoking his pipe, for he too is a fanatic. They are both outdone in mania, however, by the General who comes to inspect the place … and now off you go to buy a copy of The General Danced at Dawn.
How much of Fraser’s depiction of Scottish regimental life is accurate and how much is sheer romanticism, I cannot guess. It is certainly next-to-extinct. All the Highland infantry regiments have been reduced to battalions or companies (or disbanded) and amalgamated into The Royal Regiment of Scotland. However, Highland dancing certainly remains. The Strip the Willow at last month’s Michaelmas Dance was so vigorous that my brother took the piano cloth and hung it over the edge of the stage to cushion the blow for any dancer who fell into it.
Fortunately this precaution was unnecessary, but I think next time I will take the microphone and reverse the Colonel’s instructions: “Now, gentlemen, as you know there is Highland dancing as performed when ladies are present, and there is Highland dancing. We will have Highland dancing when ladies are present.“
Here the iconic Robbie Shepherd repeats the word “control” over and over again in his attempt to make Strip the Willow safe for civilian life:
Thank you to those who came to the Michaelmas Dance 2024! For information on upcoming events, please contact me at info@tradcathsocialdancing.co.uk.