of convincing us onlookers that this everyday world is made up of nothing but happiness, the music of tapping shoe flatters our senses without shame, chloroforms reason and shows us the truth—that our minds at least will float in the air like dancers’ bodies, if we but abandon them to the rhythmic charm that coaxes them to forget their sluggishness. Irish dancing has too often been the victim of caricature. In all truth, its refined intricacy makes it cousin rather to the Book of Kells, whose ancient decoration of rich yet simple interlacement gives it place among the masterpieces of the book-designer’s art.
The intent of the art of Irish dancing is the sooner understood by a word of negative description to begin with: namely, it is at the opposite pole from dancing of posture, broad movement, or pantomime. All its resources, on the contrary, are concentrated in making music of the feet. Happy music it is, with lightness of execution as a part of it. That no incident may distract attention from foot-work, the body is held almost undeviatingly erect, and the arms passive at the sides; and this is in accordance with unquestioned usage.
Among the dancers represented in the accompanying photographs is Mr. Thomas Hill, four times winner of the championship of Ireland. “The thing of greatest importance in Irish dancing,” Mr. Hill says, “is the music of the shoes. In the eleven years that I have been dancing, the greater part of my attention has been spent on the development and control of the variety of tones that can be produced by taps of heels and soles on the floor and against each other. Style is necessary, of course, as in any other dancing, and so is exactness in ‘tricky’ time. But control of a good variety of sounds, which is the most difficult part of Irish dancing, is the most important because it is the most Irish.”
Once in a great while coincidence puts one in the way of hearing the work of a virtuoso on the snare-drum. Within a minute the effect is found to be nothing less than hypnotic. Every one within hearing is patting time, swaying with the time, restraining the most urgent impulse to do something that will bring every fibre of his body into unison with that inebriating rhythm. Now, the feet of a fine Irish dancer are drumsticks as amenable to control as the drummer’s; notes long and short, dull and sharp—he has all the drum’s variety. No resource of syncopation, emphasis, or change is unknown to the Irish dances; the rhythm gets into the blood—with double the seductiveness of sound alone, since every tap on the tympanum is reinforced by the same metric beating on the vision. Joined to the resulting exhilaration is the peculiar excitement always felt in the presence of suspended gravitation; for no less than suspended gravitation it is when the foot of a man taps the ground like the paw of a kitten, and the body floats in the air like a bird that has paused but will not alight. The good Saint Basil was not only eloquent when he asked what could be more blessed than to imitate on earth the dancing of the angels. His question carries with it the important indication that he had seen an Irish Reel in his day. Because, among all the dances that are stepped on this mortal earth, what other is so light that the saint could see in it the pastime of angels?
For the sake of accuracy, let it not be thought that the steps of the Reel and the Jig, and the Hornpipe as well, were not old while Christianity was new. Mr. Patrick J. Long, himself at once a dancer of pronounced ability and a well-read scholar on Irish history, writes for this chapter: “In the days of Druidism, the Irish nation celebrated an annual feast lasting six days; three days before the first of November, and three days after. Coming after the season of harvest, it probably was like a Thanksgiving. The celebration was called in Gaelic a Feis (pronounced ‘fesh’). Now it was the custom, at the time of the Feis for the nobles of Ireland, and their ladies, and bards and harpists from far and near, to gather at the castle of the king; and there for six days there were competitions in all kinds of music and dancing.