The Scotch folk-dances, which surpass the English by their more rigorous movement and spirited steps, picture graphically the simple, industrious traits of a thrifty race. The most characteristic of the Scotch folk-dances are the Highland Fling, the Scotch Reel, and the Shean Treuse. All the Scotch dances are more or less variants of the previously described English ones. They have the same strong, sporty rhythm and jaunty bearing as the others. Their choreographic figures are so closely related to the English, and the English to theirs, that it were superfluous to give a detailed description of them on this occasion. Perhaps the Scotch Reel shows most typical traits of the Scottish race. This dance requires four ladies and four gentlemen, who all join hands, forming a circle. Then the gentlemen and ladies cross their hands and move eight steps forward and eight steps back in the style of a promenade. The gentleman balances his partner, swinging his right and left arms alternately and proceeds through the chain, the ladies separating left, the gentlemen right, until all arrive at their previous positions. The first lady goes into the centre of the ring while others hop around her until they reach their original position, after which the lady in the centre balances to her partner and back to the opposite gentleman in a half-swing, forming occasionally a chain of three. Thus it goes on until all the four ladies have done, after which the gentlemen follow the same figures and steps. All their steps are of a sharp, skipping nature and the lines of their poses remind one of the designs on their checked decorations and on the patterns of their bright and plain dresses. Noteworthy among the Scotch folk-dances is the Hornpipe, which has been a favored dance of the sailors and peasants. Its lively, rapid measure, so far as the feet are concerned, the folded arms, the firm and stiff body are typical characteristics of a Scotchman’s manners. The dance owes its name to the fact that it is performed to the music of a pipe with a horn rim at the open end. There are an infinite variety of Hornpipes and of music to which they can be danced, either in common or triple time, the final note having a special stress laid on it.
Of somewhat different character than the English and Scotch folk-dances are those of Ireland. The Irish Jig enjoys a popularity throughout the world. Already the name suggests a light, frolicking and airy movement. Since the days of Charles II and Queen Anne, this dance has been associated with humorous verses. The Jigs were already in vogue at the time of Shakespeare, who speaks of them as leading pieces in the theatrical repertoires. A dancing or singing Jig was the real climax of a piece, often being given as an entertainment during the intermissions. Audiences were accustomed to call for a Jig as a happy ending to a show. The Irish people, possessing a natural love for music and dancing, have put their soul into the Jig. It mirrors best the semi-sentimental, the semi-adventurous racial traits of an Irishman.
There are single and double Jigs; the distinction rests on the number of beats in the bar and they have often enough been danced to the strains of the bagpipe. As a rule, the foot should strike six times to a bar, and it needs a certain amount of enthusiasm to get into the spirit of the thing, the music thereof being most exhilarating. It adds to the charm if the dancers appear as Paddy in a brown coat, green breeches, and the soft hat with the pipe in it, and his partner in emerald green stockings and skirt, with a red kerchief about her head. The music of a Jig is usually an old Irish ditty, and anything more spirited or more in tune to the step could not be found. The first sixteen bars of the dance are occupied with the pitch in which the leg is thrown out. Sixteen bars are given to the toe and heel step. Thirty-two bars are occupied with the diagonal cock-step, supposed to represent the strutting of a cock. Sixteen bars are danced to a rocking-step, in which the legs are crossed. Eight bars are given to pointing; sixteen to stamping firmly with both feet, then the dancers advance and pivot. Finally, sixteen bars are given to a round and round movement. It requires a great deal of hand movement and body vivacity. It has been said by certain Irishmen that a Jig is in its apparent fun and fury a short symbolic drama of Irish life. The first figures mean love making, wooing, wedding and marriage. Then come the troubles of married life, the repentance and sinking into the grave.
To old Irish, Scotch and English folk-dances belong the ‘All in a Garden Green,’ ‘Buckingham House,’ ‘Dargason,’ ‘Heartsease,’ and ‘Oranges and Lemons.’ They are all graceful and dignified, but depict more the English middle class or nobility than the people. Thus in the ‘All in a Garden Green’ the man begins by shaking the hand of his lady partner and kissing her twice, which was rather the custom of the fashionable ballroom than of a puritan people. They all give the impression of a refinement of manners that belongs more to the early French social dances than to the folk-dances of a heavy and realistic race. We know how the English high society and court imitated the French in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so it is only natural that it accepted with certain modifications the French social dances.
IV
It seems like a paradox that a country which gave to the world the classic ballet in the modern sense, Noverre, Blasis and Vestris, never produced any folk-dances of such racial flavor as we find in many other nations. The old French Rustic Dances, ‘Rounds,’ Bourrées, the Breton Dances, and the Farandole, betray only in certain figures the characteristics of the French race; otherwise they make the impression of a pleasing and polished bourgeois art. The Ronde, considered as the first form of French folk-dances, being performed in circles by taking each other by the hand, is to be found among races like the Finns, Esthonians, Letts and Lithuanians, as we read from the old epics of these nations. Thus we read in the Kalewipoeg that ring dances—ringi tants—of eleventh-century Esthonians were practically of the same order as the French Rondes. The Greeks had ‘Rounds,’ so had other ancient civilized races.
An old French dance is the Bourrée of Auvergne. It is said to be a shepherd dance originally; but Catherine de Medici introduced it at court and polished out all the heavy, simple and characteristic traits of the people. From that time it has figured as a semi-fashionable dance danced in the society. Bach, Gluck, Handel, and many others since have either composed Bourrées or treated Bourrée themes in their orchestral compositions. Originally the Bourrée was a simple mimic dance of the peasants. The woman moved round the man as if to tease him. He advanced and returned, glanced at her and ignored her. In the meanwhile she continued her flirting. Then the man snapped his finger, stamped his foot and gave an expression of his masculinity. That induced her to yield, and the dance stopped—only to begin anew.
Like the Bourrée, the Farandole, which originated in Southern France, was concocted into a dance of the Beaux Monde and deprived of its racial language. The Farandole that one sees danced in Provence is only a pretty social dance and has little of the old flavor. The dancers performing it stand in a long line, holding the ends of each other’s handkerchiefs and winding rapidly under each other’s arms or gyrating around a single couple in a long spiral. The modern ‘Cotillions’ and ‘Quadrilles’ are based on the old French Farandole.
It is likely that the idolized French ballet killed the interest of the people in their simple and idyllic folk-dances. The peasant going to the town felt the contempt that a patrician had for the country art and naturally grew to dislike his traditional old-fashioned village dance. The music that he heard in the city cafés cast its spell upon him, as did the city dances. Urban ideals have been of great influence upon the French country people, upon their traditional folk-dances and folk-songs, and this has deprived the race of valuable ethnographic reserve capital, in which many other nations excel. The French, like the English, have been strong in cosmic tendencies but weak in ethnic. While science grows out of the cosmic principles, art’s vigor lies in those of ethnographic nature. An average Frenchman is a great connoisseur of dancing and indulges in it with a particular pleasure. But his love of the refined and most accomplished impressions puts him naturally outside a simple and coarse peasant art.
The Italian is less pretentious in his taste than the former. But an average Italian, regardless of whether he be a peasant from the most secluded corner of the country or a citizen of Naples, lives and dies in music, particularly in song. The predilection that a Frenchman shows for the ballet transforms itself in the case of an Italian into a love for the opera. Italy has produced great composers, great musicians and singers, but only a few great dancers. An Italian dancer is either acrobatic or blunt. She seems to lack the more subtle qualities of plastic expression, the ability to speak in gestures and mimic forms. This is best illustrated in the celebrated folk-dance, the Tarantella.