of popular understanding of all that pertains to them, the Scotch public is qualified to exercise upon dancing the essential functions of a national academy. Standards are maintained by knowledge on the part of spectators. Indifference of performance or freedom with forms is quickly reproved. Nor, on the other hand, need any performer remain in ignorance as to just what details of his execution are lacking; among his friends there are plenty of capable critics. We noted the same conditions in Aragon, where the general love of the Jota probably would have kept its standards of execution, even without the aid of professional teachers—and certainly do protect it against the subtracting process effected by adding novelties. In Italy the Tarantella is cultivated in the same way, in Little Russia the Cossack Dance, and in Hungary the Czardás. And it is the force of educated public interest behind them that sustains them in a class approached, in requirements of skill, by few other character dances.
The accompanying illustrations from work by Miss Margaret Crawford and partner demonstrate the interesting fact that the Scotch, developing their school of execution along the lines dictated by their own keen discernment, arrive at a conclusion in important respects identical with the creed of the classic ballet. It is possible that the dances of mountain and heather were influenced by the Pavane and the Minuet in their day—for Queen Mary had her masques and balls and pageants, like other monarchs of her time. But even that will not account for the clean, sharp brilliancy of a Highlander’s battement or balloné. In so many essentials his dances are at variance with those of the seventeenth-century courts that their excellence must be attributed to a national instinct for true quality of beauty. The splendidly erect carriage of the body, the straight knee of the supporting leg during a step, as well as the crisp, straight-knee execution of a grand battement (the Scotch and other dancers do not use the French designation of steps, but the general observer may well do so for the sake of clearness), might have come direct from the French Academy. This identity is in manner, it will be understood, more than in matter. Like all character dancing, the Scotch includes in its vocabulary positions and steps that the ballet ignores. Placing the hands on the hips; the heel on the ground and the toe up; and a “rocking” step, consisting of rolling from side to side on the sides of the feet—these and other devices are of the dances of outdoors. In the case of the Scotch they are so admirably incorporated into the scheme of sharp line and movement that go to make a staccato unit that—through the sheer magic worked by cohesion of theme—they avoid the plebeian appearance into which such movements fall when not artfully combined.
The Scotch Reel has a good deal in common with the Fling, and is of the same general character. It is customarily performed by two couples. Its distinguishing feature is a figure eight, traced by a little promenade, each of the performers winding in and out among the other three. Even this promenade is performed in a sharp skipping step, that the dance may lose none of its national flavour. A variation of this dance is the Reel of Tulloch, popular in all parts of Scotland, and distinguished principally by its history. Legend places its origin in a country church, in winter; while the congregation waited for the belated minister, they danced to keep warm, and in the course of the dancing evolved a choreographic composition that made their village famous. The Strathspey alluded to in literature appears also to have been a variety of the Reel.
The Shean Treuse, a rollicking dance that covers a good deal of ground, is—according to legend—the representation of a small boy’s delight with his first pair of trousers. Naturally, it is based on a series of prancing steps, in each of which the leg is brought to horizontal to keep the trousers in evidence.
This concludes the list of the well-known dances of Scotland. Of the number the most representative, or one may say classic, are the Sword Dance and the Fling.
England has to her credit one dance, notwithstanding all that has been said and written to the disparagement of her originality in the arts; and, with execution to help it, a very respectable dance it is, as well as a monument to a social element that has contributed powerfully to England’s rank among the nations. The dance is the Sailor’s Hornpipe.