For the first 60 years or so of the 20th century, parish hall dances were a staple of Catholic social life in Canada and the USA. They could be nightly affairs in Ireland, where the parish hall was the most common type of community building (after the church) and dancing a highly popular social and cultural activity.
I’m curious about Catholic social dancing in Scotland, particularly in Edinburgh. However, what little reading I have done so far about Catholics in Edinburgh suggests that by 1931 we made up only 9% of the population (i.e. fewer than 40,000) and were generally poor and downtrodden. The available archives of the Glasgow Observer and Catholic Herald have revealed information only about Glaswegian Catholics, who in 1931 made up about 20% of the city’s population (i.e. 240,000 people). Unsurprisingly to anyone born in the British Isles, Irish migration was a big factor there.
My researches have only just begun, but I thought I would share a Glasgow Observer news clip to illustrate the kinds of social dancing that took place in Glasgow. This one is from Saturday, November 19, 1921. It reports on both a university students’ dance and an “Old Girls” association’s event. I was edified to see that Father Bullen, S.J. dropped by the first and thus “favoured the committee with his presence.” And I was interested to read that at Glasgow Catholic functions “there always pervades a states of cheeriness, friendliness and bonhomie, nearly Irish in nature.”
[Update: Mr McLean, who should know, said that I can’t reproduce the image of the clip without permission, so I took it down and will eventually laboriously type the articles out.]
These are both very happy articles, and I was struck by the hope and pride in the notice about the Glasgow University Catholic students. Meanwhile, the reports contain a few tantalising details about the dancing itself: the students danced to the music of “Mr Barrett and his merry trio,” and the alumnae of Notre Dame High School, their husbands, and their friends danced “only two reels” and plentiful “one-steps, fox trots and waltzes.”