Category: Uncategorised
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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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‘Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day’
Three days until Christmas! To drum up the late Advent excitement, I decided to write a blogpost about that wonderful English carol ‘Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day.’ However, as I did my research, I decided that without a library I could not do better than Michael De Sapio at The Imaginative Conservative, so please…
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Welcome, FIUV!
Hello to all readers of Gregorius Magnus magazine who have followed the link to the Mrs McLean Waltzing Party website! I hope to make the comments feature easier to access soon, but in the meantime I’ll be delighted to read your emails. One of the reasons for publishing this blog is to encourage you to…
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A short digression about fruitcake
The most traditional Christmas pudding in Scotland is, of course, the clootie dumpling, which is boiled in a cloth (the cloot). There there is its English cousin, the Christmas pudding, which is steamed. And then there are Dundee Cake and Black Bun. But there is also a dark cake stuffed with a large variety of…
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Nearly Irish in nature
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…
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“The Fair Assembly”: Social Dancing in Edinburgh from 1705
The best general history of social dancing in Scotland I have found so far is called Oh, How We Danced: The History of Ballroom Dancing in Scotland by Elizabeth Casciani (1994), and you will be able to find it in the Music department of the Edinburgh Central Library (GV1619) after I return it. Most, but…
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A Very Merry Michaelmas!
Happy Feast Day! It’s a beautiful day in Edinburgh, the sun having burned away the mist. There are crunchy yellow leaves huddled up in the corners of the streets, and there’s a bracing chill in the air. Yes, it’s certainly autumn, with all the coziness – “coorie” in Scotland – that implies to enjoy. “Coorie…
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Lively Night Out
Dr Peter Kwasniewski directed his readers to this interesting article in The European Conservative about the decline in continental night life. “The Death of the Night Out” blames poverty and fear among the normally club-aged generation for this. “Rising crime and mass migration mean that young people no longer feel safe on Western Europe’s streets,”…
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Planning the Michaelmas Dance
I have survived a series of misadventures—including spraining my poor knee—and now it is time to plan this year’s Michaelmas Dance! It will be on Saturday, September 27, 2025 from 7:30 PM until 11:00 PM at Edinburgh’s Dean Hall. Dean Hall is the former church on the corner of Ravelston Terrace and Dean Path. We…
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Three Days of Dancing
I try not to get distracted from my dancing goal, which is to make or secure safe spaces for traditional Catholics to dance. Reminding myself of this goal has saved me from many an impulse purchase or unwieldy plan (e.g. “Let’s all go to Vienna, take a waltzing class there, and then go to the…