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Three Ceilidhs
Happy New Year! My sister Tertia and I went to an Edinburgh ceilidh on New Year’s Eve, feeling a little sorry for those thousands whose outdoor revels were thwarted by the weather warning. It was indeed very windy.
The Parish Christmas After-Party
But we went first to a Christmas ceilidh on Sunday afternoon, which was less crowded but very fun. This was the hour’s dancing I tacked onto the end of our Traditional Latin Mass community’s Christmas party. (I wrote about this earlier.) It was different from all my other dance parties in that three children under the age of 7 took active part. In fact, the under-13 formed over a third of the company. Thus, as you can imagine, waltzing and swing-dancing took a distant second and third to ceilidh dancing.
I have read elsewhere that children can’t cope with ceilidh dancing until they are 11. However, this is not necessarily true. Parents can lead very small children by the hand as their assistants in dancing, and a bright 6-year-old can manage to figure out, for example, a Virginia Reel. At a small, child-friendly, daytime private party at which their parents are present, small children may certainly dance. The enthusiasm of these small children was both heartwarming and inspiring. It makes a Traddie ask, “As children are learning Scottish Country Dancing in the local schools, could we bring SCD to homeschoolers?”
In Scotland, country dancing (or its raffish cousin ceilidh dancing) is still part of a child’s social education. It comes in handy at such traditional events as weddings, charity balls, Robbie Burns evenings, and Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve). Of course these dances are today very often explained and guided by a caller, but practise makes perfect.
Hogmanay 2024
Tertia and I have gone now to two Edinburgh New Year’s Eve ceilidhs. This year’s was in the Counting House, which features a beautiful Georgian room with a glass dome in the ceiling. The room was rather smaller than we thought and, indeed, too small for the crowd which was, to our surprise, largely composed of Scots. The kilts on display were the real, expensive, made-to-measure thing, not tourist-tat from Princes Street or the Royal Mile. There were a few large groups of pals, and this made the two Canadian ladies feel a little lonely–an unexpected side-effect of being at an Edinburgh NYE event actually frequented by Scots. We were each other’s dance partners for the whole evening.
Sadly, there was no real attempt at integrating the groups, which could be easily done–I think–even by the leader of the band just bringing everyone together in laughing at his jokes. The band’s spokesman, a handsome young man, wasn’t one for jokes, and the band played the tunes in a straightforward manner; they weren’t into jokes either. But while the band was good, the dancing became chaotic, and I was stepped on, kicked, and squashed. I was relieved when the piper and then midnight (and thus 2025) arrived, and we could go home.
Night Afore 2023
Last year Tertia and I went to a “night afore” (December 30) ceilidh at an ex-church called Assembly Roxy, which had a big crowd in a big-enough space. There were many more foreigners, and I had bought two spare tickets in case any of my friends or acquaintances wanted to join us: two (fellow foreigners) did. The atmosphere was much friendlier, and the band–The Big Shoogle–was gleefully irreverent. Their leader made jokes, and the band itself mixed rock-and-roll riffs (hooks?) into the ceilidh tunes, which was both brilliant and funny. We took turns dancing with our American gentleman guest (Hi, Chris!), and strangers invited us to the floor, and sometimes Tertia and I danced together. Thus, we had variety and could dance as much as we liked.
Lessons learned
During this last New Year’s Eve dance, I took some time to reflect on what I was learning. An important lesson is that a public dance is always more fun with friends. Ideally there would be people present dedicated to making everyone feel welcome, but this is not always the case. Therefore it would better to go to a big dance aimed at foreign tourists or to have a small private party, or one’s own Hogmanay ceilidh.
A professional ceilidh band starts at ยฃ1,000 or so for a wedding, and I can only imagine what one charges for New Year’s Eve. Therefore, it would make more economic sense to buy a number of tickets to a public Hogmanay dance and sell them to any interested friends (or give them to deserving student acquaintances) than to hold one’s own New Year’s Eve dance—unless, of course, one organized one oneself for profit, which I might do one day.
Another lesson–and I apologize to all Scots, including my husband–is that “authenticity” is not all it’s cracked up to be. The villainess of “Common People” was not just posh, she was a foreigner and, as Pulp sneered, “everybody hates a tourist.” Or, to be less pessimistic, Edinburgh locals form their friendship groups by high school (or university) graduation, or at work, and aren’t necessarily looking for new friends and acquaintances among expats at dances. (Unsurprisingly, the one stranger who struck up a conversation with me at Tuesday night’s dance sounded Polish and was delighted by my tartan display.) Therefore, if someone commenting on an event featured in The Scotsman or Edinburgh Live sneers at it as something Scots don’t attend, that doesn’t mean it won’t be fun for foreign you. In fact, it might actually be tailored for foreign you.
This is something I should have learned from Burns Night Suppers, by the way. In the past I have been shocked by working man humour about the womenfolk, or my mind has been blown by Scottish republicanism. (I got full on culture shock from that last one.)
Looking ahead to 2025
But to end on a cheerful note, I am looking forward to a year of more dancing lessons of all kinds and to promoting traditional social dancing for Catholics, especially Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass.
To buy tickets for the Eastertide Dance 2025, please contact me at info@tradcathsocialdancing.co.uk.
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