Category: Ceilidh
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Our Fourth Annual Michaelmas Dance
There we have it! Mrs McLean’s Waltzing Party will be celebrating our Fourth Michaelmas Dance in September. In perhaps another six years, we can claim that it is not just traditional but a tradition. As I am now going to spend the next month trumpeting its delights abroad, I hope my knees improve to such…
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The Children’s Ceilidh
“Come for the [TLM], stay for the dance,” said one of my adverts for yesterday’s event. It was our second ceilidh designed for the under-12s and their parents. This time we attracted fewer out-of-town families, but we still had a big enough crowd to make the Dashing White Sergeant work properly and have a satisfactory…
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The Jesuits’ Ceilidh
“I hate being a wallflower, so I’ll only put up with it for an hour,” I told Mr McLean before departing for the ceilidh at the Jesuits’ hall on Lauriston Place. I was too pessimistic, however. Soon after I arrived, I saw six young Catholic men of our acquaintance. And, to my surprise, another young…
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Things that are of edification
Back home in Canada my father has U.S. Civil War battlefield letters written or preserved by some American ancestor. One epistle is dated July 4, and the writer reminisces about their neighbour’s annual Fourth of July picnic. If I remember correctly, he goes into some detail about this good lady’s event, recalling the watermelons and…
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Hosanna in excelsis!
Our first New Year’s Ceilidh for Parents who love the Traditional Latin Mass (and their Bairns) took place yesterday afternoon in Ravelston. It was for many an all-afternoon event: Noon Mass at St. Andrew’s, then lunch during After-Mass Coffee Hour, and finally the dancing around the corner and down the street. When I arrived at…
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A Year of Social Dancing 2025
In 2025, Mrs McLean’s Waltzing Party hosted seven dance parties and two ticketed dances, attended three outside dances and a ballroom dancing competition, and promoted umpteen dance lessons as well as nights out with the Edinburgh Jazz’n’Jive Club. We were guests at a tea party held in our honour, at which Mr McLean sang a…
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The Lord loved Andrew
For many years—over a century—the simple baldachin over the altar at St. Andrew’s Ravelston in Edinburgh bore the text “Dixit Andream Dominus in ordorem suavitatis.” I worked out that this meant “The Lord loved Andrew as an odour of sweetness”, and here it is in my 1958 Missal as the Alleluia verse for the Feast…
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Culture and connection
I have been reading about an interesting phenomenon: Generation Z’s feelings of nostalgia for times they don’t remember: the 1980s, the 1990s and the year 2000. They are buying flip phones and uttering blasphemies against wokery. It looks as if all that Gen X preening on Facebook—how as children we rode our bicycles around from…
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Winter Events 2025/6
There were 15 cheerful souls at our tea party on Saturday, and I thank the host very much for his hospitality. We feasted on sandwiches, banana bread, chocolate chip cookies and brownies. We supped tea and coffee. The fair assembly patiently listened to my paper (which turned out to be longer than 10 minutes) and…
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The Tea Party, Etc.
The regular crowd at Mrs McLean’s Waltzing Party have been invited to a tea party on October 25, and I will be giving there a brief address on the subject of the history of social dancing in Edinburgh. If you aren’t in the WhatsApp group, but should be, send me a message Père Tabouret For…