I



ANCE



.ycLlllUIIlla

jgional
cility



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At AC







iipe toreros







A HANDBOOK OF IRISH
DANCES, WITH AN ESSAY
ON THEIR ORIGIN AND
HISTORY, BY J. C . O'KEE
AND ART O'BRIEN.



F "






DUBLIN: O'DONOCHUE & CO.,
31 SOUTH ANNE STREET.



CONTENTS.



PAGE.

Part I. ESSAY ON THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY
OF IRISH DANCES WITH SOME OBSER-
VATIONS ON MODERN METHODS Hi.



Part II. GENERAL REMARKS ON IRISH
DANCES :

Introduction
Steps ....
Classification of dances
Division of round dances
Grace and style .
Technical terms .
Precedence of couples .

Part III. DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS OF
TERMS :

Lead round

Body

Figures

Finish .



Part IV . DESCRIPTION OF DANCES :
16 hand reel
12 hand reel
8 hand reels and jigs
6 hand reels
4 hand reels and jigs
Long, and country dances . ,

Part Y. OTHER DANCES AND DANCE Music: -
Step dances . ...
Figure or " set " dances
Pantomimic or symbolic dances .
Other round and long dances
Dance music ....

GLOSSARY

SOURCES FROM WHICH THE DANCES WERE
OBTAINED .



20C1C49



PART I.

$sap on toe Origin ana fiistorp or

Irisb Dances, ufitb some
Observations on modern metbods.



THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY
OF IRISH DANCES.

IT is with a feeling of anything
but satisfaction that one arises
from a perusal of extant accessible
Gaelic literature for any assistance
in tracing tjhe origin of Irish dances.
It may be candidly said that there
are no allusions whatever to danc-
ing either in old or mediaeval Irish
literature. The one text to which
an enquirer would naturally first
turn, with some degree of confi-
dence, for information on the sub-
ject is that entitled the Fair of Loc
Carman, which deals with an an-
cient festival held at Loc Carman,
the Wexford of to-day. In this
very old and interesting text there
are to be found some vivid descrip-
tions of a number of entertainers,
and of musicians in particular, who
frequented the Fair, but there is no
mention made of the man of dance.

IT is true that the name Fer Cen-
gal, occurring in that text, has been
interpreted by some as a dancer,
and his dance has even been com-
pared to the German Springen-
dantz, which was a song and dance
combined. The name, however,
suggests an acrobat rather than a
dancer, but as it does not appear
elsewhere in Irish literature it



Early
Irish
Litera-
ture.



Fer

Cengal-



would be unwise to build any
theories on it.

IT has been suggested that the word
Cronan, which is mentioned in the
sixth century by St. Cohnan of
Cloyne, originally meant a kind of
singing accompaniment for dancing.
There is no evidence, however, in
support of this suggestion. It is
now generally accepted that the
word originally meant a musical
bass, and, later, a curious kind of
nasal singing accomplished with the
mouth shut. To the latter may
possibly be ascribed the origin of
what is known as the traditional
style of Irish singing.

IT has been inferred from the ab-
sence of allusions to dancing in
early Irish literature that the an-
cient Irish never danced. This
theory, besides being at variance
with the history of most peoples in
their primitive state, would be es-
pecially strange applied to a race
so renowned for music as the ancient
Irish ; for it is scarcely any more
possible to dissociate Irish dance
from Irish music in early times than
it is to-day. O'Curry, in his " Man-
ners and Customs," describes some
fourteen musical instruments, and
as many musicians, mentioned in
early Irish manuscripts ; and the
native historian of Wales, Caradoc



of Llanarvan, who died about the
year 1136, writes as follows about
Irish musicians :

Another class of minstrels were such as
played upon musical instruments, chiefly
the harp and crowd (emit), which
Griffyth ap Conan first brought over into
Wales, who. having been born in Ireland
and descended on his mother's side of
Irish parents, brought with him from
thence several skilful musicians who in-
vented all the instruments as were played
in Wales.

John of Salisbury, writing in the
twelfth century, says :

The attention of this people to musical
instruments I find worthy of commenda-
tion, in which their skill is beyond
comparison superior to that of any nation



Galileo, in his dialogue on ancient
and modern music (1582), writes of
the harp :

This very ancient instrument was brought
to us from Ireland (as Dante has re-
corded) where they are excellently made
and in great number, and the inhabit-
ants of which island have practised on
it for centuries.

Many other writers, from Giraldus
Cambrensis in the twelfth century
to Stanihurst in the sixteenth cen-
tury, speak with equal warmth of
the fame of Irish music and music-
ians. In face of testimony of this
kind to the renown of early Irish
music it is difficult to believe that
the ancient Irish never practised
the kindred art of dance.



Early
Irish
Music.



THE names which have come to sig-
nify the titles of our dances do not
help materially in tracing the
origin of the dances themselves.
The word jig has been derived from
the Italian Giga, a musical measure
which was very popular in Ireland
in the eighteenth century. It is
also found applied to a light metrical
composition ; thus in the " Passion-
ate Pilgrim " we read :

All my merry jigs are quite forgot.
And in a tragedy by Chapman the
word occurs with the same mean-
ing :

'Tis one of the best jigs that ever
was acted.

The derivation of the word reel has
been the subject of some conjecture,
but in no instance has it been traced
to an Irish origin. In a book, en-
titled " News from Scotland " (1598)
it is found mentioned as a dance :

Silas Duncan did go before them playing
this reill or dance upon a small trump.
THE Irish words for jig and reel,
namely Port and Cor respectively,
signified the tunes merely, and do
not appear to have been applied to
the dances until comparatively re-
cent times. O'Curry quotes the
phrase :

" To funneA-o puipc ] coifi -0616,"
that is, ports and cors were played for
them. The word port is also found



in the names of many airs, gener-
ally assigned to Scotland, such as
Port Gordon, Port Lennox. These
were, however, composed by the
Irish harpers, O'Cahan and the two
O'Connellans, during their wander-
ings in Scotland in the seventeenth
century. But whatever may have
been the signification of these words
in the past, they have come to-day
to mean the dances as well as the
tunes ; and whatever may have
been the origin of the jig and reel
dances, we have made them our own
by love, and we have given to them
a character and a colour which are
wholly our own. There is certainly
no evidence to show that the jig, as
it has been danced in Ireland for the
past century, is of great antiquity ;
on the contrary, all evidence points
rather to the fact that it is com-
paratively modern, and that in its
earliest form it was a Round, or
Long dance, a Hey de Gigue in fact,
as it is termed in literature.

THE question may well be asked :
if our jig step dance in its present
form is modern, are our jig tunes
of modern growth also ? This ques-
tion has been answered in Grove's
Dictionary of Music in an article on
Irish Music. We are there in-
formed with the air of authority
that " the jig was, as its name im-
plies, an imitation of the Giga of



Corelli and Geminiani, both very
popular in Ireland in the eighteenth
century " ; in other words, that the
immense body of jig measures exist-
ing to-day in Ireland, both published
and unpublished, owe their origin
to the Italian Giga. In the same
article a list of important collec-
tions of Irish music is given, the
earliest of which Burke Thumoth's
collection is assigned by the writer
of the article to the year 1720, that
is before the influence of the modes
of Corelli and Geminiani. In this
collection of twenty-four Irish tunes
there are some jig tunes, and there
are many more in the editions of
Playford's " Dancing Master " which
appeared between the years 1650
and 1700. But apart from the
mass of evidence which can be ad-
duced to prove that the jig existed
in Ireland long before the eighteenth
century, the distinctive character of
our jig tunes is the strongest refu-
tation of the theory that they are
of Italian origin. For it may be
truly said that there is not in one
of them an echo of the school of
Corelli and Geminiani.

THERE is no suggestion that Irish
reel tunes, though almost as numer-
ous as Irish jig tunes, owe their
origin to the Italian or, indeed, to
any other school of music. Never-
theless it would bo as reasonable to



assign to them an Italian origin as
it is to assign to the Irish jig an
Italian origin. Students of Irish
traditional music will rather incline
to the view of Dr. Petrie, that our
jig tunes and he might have added
our reel tunes were originally
clan marches.

IT is when we come to Anglo-Irish
and to English literature that we
come into the region of fact, from
which certain deductions may be
drawn regarding our early dances.
There are three Irish dances fre-
quently mentioned in sixteenth cen-
tury writings ; the Irish Hey, the
Trenchmore, and the Rinnce Fada.
Nash, in his "Shepherd's Holi-
day," published in 1598, speaks of

Roundelayg and Irish Hays ;
and in Martin's Month's Mind (1589)
we read of

Hay?, jiggs, and roundelays.
Spencer speaks of the Hey de Gie,
and in " A West Country Jig," pub-
lished in the Roxburghe collection,
we read :

The piper he struck up
And merrily be did play
The shaking of the sheets
And eke the Irish Hey.
Allusions to Irish Heys are frequent
in many of the well-known plays of
the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies, plays by Middleton, Marston,



Massinger, Heywood, Dekker, and
Shirley.

In Sir John Davies' " Orchestra "
we read, " He taught them rounds
and winding heys to tread " in the
margin he explains these measures
as country dances.

What was this Hey so frequently
referred to ? In a book, entitled the
" Complainte of Scotland " (1549) we
are told that a certain dance was led
off in a Hey or circle, and of another
dance it is stated that "the men
stand still, the women going the
Hey between them " ; that is, wind-
ing in and out. At least that is the
way in which the Hey is described
in an old French work on dancing,
entitled, " Orchesographie," written
by one Thoinot Arbeay, and pub-
lished at Langres in 1588.

These references point to the exist-
ence in Ireland at a very early date,
as early, at any rate, as the year
1550, of a round dance in which a
number of men and women took part.
Taking this evidence side by side
with the fact that in some of our
present Round dances we find the
word Hey applied to a certain sec-
tion of the dance, it may reasonably
be inferred that the old Irish Hey
was the earliest and simplest form of
our modern Round dances, such as
those described in Part IV, of this
work.



ALLUSIONS to the dance called
Trenchmore are quite as numerous
as they are to the Hey in sixteenth
century literature. In a morality
by William Bulleyn we read of per-
sons dancing Trenchmore and Hey
de Gie. Burton, in his Anatomy of
Melancholy, says : " We must dance
Trenchmore over tables, chairs, and
stools," from which it may be in-
ferred that it was a somewhat lively
measure. Sometimes it is referred
to as a tune. In one play the earth,
sun, and moon are made to dance
the Hey to the tune of Trenchmore.
Having regard to the fact that we
find the word Rinnce in such forms
as Ring, Trink, Trenk, etc., it is not
unreasonable to assume that the
word Trenchmore is simply Rinnce
Mor, a term which, even to the pre-
sent time, is applied to certain Irish
country dances.

OP the antiquity of the celebrated
Rinnce Fada there is no longer any
doubt. One of the earliest if not,
indeed, the very earliest references
bearing on it, dates back to the year
1549. It is found in a work, to
which allusion has been already made
in connection with the Hey, entitled
the " Complainte of Scotland."

The Ring danoe, it is there stated, was
formerly a favourite in the South of
Scotland, though now fallen into desue-
tude. It was the common dance at
the Kirn, a feast of cutting down the.



XII



grain, and was always danced with pe-
culiar glee by the reapers of that farm
where the harvest was first finished in
any district. On such occasions they
danced on an eminence in view of the
reapers in their vicinity to the music
of the Lowland pipe, commencing the
dance with three loud shouts of triumph,
and thrice tossing up their hooks in the
air. The intervals of labour during
harvest were often occupied by dancing
the Ring to the music of the piper who
attended the reapers. This dance is
still retained among the Highlanders
who frequently dance the Ring in the
open fields when they visit the South
of Scotland, as reapers, during the
autumnal months. Similar seems to be
the Rinnce Fada, Rinky, or Field dance
of the Irish.

Here we have positive evidence of
the existence in Ireland of the
Rinnce Fada as far back as 1549,
and that its name and its repute had
spread to Scotland at that date. It
will be seen that the writer surmises
that the Irish and Scottish dances
were similar. What is more likely
than that the Irish dance was taken
to Scotland in the early migrations
of the Gael ^from the North of
Ireland to Scotland?

In a work, entitled, " A Voyage
through the Kingdom of Ireland,"
written in the year 1681 by a tra-
veller named Dineley, there is the
following reference to the Rinnco
Fada :

They (the Irish) are much addicted, on
holidays, with the bagpipe, Irish harps,



xin

and Jews harps, to dance after their
country fashion, that is the long dance,
one after another, of all conditions,
masters, mistresses, and servants.

The Kinnce Facia, like the Hey,
panetrated to England. We find it
referred to by Beaumont and
Fletcher :

Fading is a fine jig I assure you
gentlemen.

Allusion is also made to it in Shir-
ley's play, a "Bird in the Cage,"
and Shakespeare in the " Winter's
Tale" has

Their dildos and fadings.
Irish literature of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries abounds
with references to the Rinnce Fada,
and Lady Morgan, writing in the
beginning of the nineteenth century,
says that it was danced everywhere
through the County Limerick, and in
other parts of Ireland, on the eve of
May, that is, the feast of Bealtaine.
In her book, " The Wild Irish Girl,"
she writes as follows of this dance :

Besides the Irish jig, tradition has
rescued from that oblivion which time
has hung over Irish dance, the Rinnce
Fada, which answers to the festal dance
of the Greeks; and the Rkmceadn or
war dance which seems, says Walker,
to have been of the nature of the armed
dance which is so ancient, and with
which the Grecian youth amused them-
selves during the siege of Troy.

In this dance, as performed to-day,
and for the past century, the men



Rinnce : all stand in a row, their partners
Fad a. i'acing them, forming another row.
The dancing begins at one end, and
gradually works along through the
whole line until all are stepping. In
its earliest form, however, it was
somewhat different, as will appear
from the following very early descrip-
tion of it :

Th-ree persons abreast holding the ends
of white handkerchiefs, moved forward
a few paces to the sound of slow music,
the rest of the dancers following in
couples, also holding white handker-
chiefs between them. The music then
changed to a quicker time and the dance
proper began, the performers passing suc-
cessively under the handkerchiefs of the
three in front, then wheeling round in
semi-circles, they formed a variety of
figures interspersed with various entre-
chats, finally uniting and resuming their
original places. This dance was accom-
panied by the Cuisle-ciuil.



On the arrival of James II. at
Kinsale his adherents received the
unfortunate prince on the shore with
this dance, which is said to have
given him infinite delight. There is
abundant testimony, too, to show
that up to the beginning of the nine-
teenth century both private and
public balls always concluded with
the Rinnce Fada ; and John
O'Keeffe, the dramatist, in his
" Recollections " dating back to the
year 1750, says that in his time
every comedy and comic opera per-



XV

formed in Ireland ended with a
country dance by the characters
which had, he observes, " a most ex-
hilarating effect on both the per-
formers and onlookers."

Patrick Kennedy, in his book,
" The Banks of the Boro," speaks of
the Rinnce Fada as he saw it danced
in the year 1812, and though he does
not describe the dance itself, he
gives an account of the dress worn
by the men and women who took
part in it.

They were in their shirt sleeves, waist-
coats, knee breeches, white Btock'iigs and
turn pumps, all bright colours around
their waists and ribbons of bright hue
encircling heads, shirt sleeves, knees, and
boota, the shoulders getting more than
was their due. The girls had their
hair decked with ribbons and were in
their Sunday garb.

It is difficult to-day to realise the
extent to which Irish dance and
Irish music permeated English life
in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies. In a book, well-known anc
very valuable to students of ancient
Irish music, Playford's " Dancing
Master," successive editions of which
appeared between the years 1650 anc
1725, there is a considerable number
of Irish danoe tunes given with
key now scarcely intelligible t
the dance which was performed to
each tune. The following are some



Rinnce
ada.



of the Irish tunes which appear in
the early editions :

Ballinamore.

Kerry Reel.

Moll in the Wad.

Bantry Bay.

Humours of Cork.

Nora Crionna.

Th Irishman in Spain.

Drops of Brandy.

High Road to Dublin.

The Lakes of Wicklow.

The Irish Trot

Lillibulero.

The Irish Boree.

The Irish Ground.

The Rinnce Fada extended even to
Cornwall, where it became a great
festal dance, which is still performed
every year in the village of HeLston.
It is there known as the Fade, and
sometimes as the Furry dance.
From the numerous descriptions
given of it, however, there is little
doubt that it is the Irish Rinnce
Fada.

WITH the single exception of the
hornpipe, about the origin of which
there is considerable doubt, all the
evidence that can be adduced on tbe
subject goes to show that the Round
and Long dances are older than the
step or single dances. It has been
already suggested that the old Irish
Hey is the earliest and simplest form
of our present round dances. This
theory is supported by historical and
traditional evidence. Vallancey, in



his " Collectanea," dating back to
the year 1680, mentions the Rinnce
Timcioll, or Round Dance, being
danced in a circle by the " vulgar
Irish," and Arthur Young, whose
work on Ireland covers the years
1776 to 1779, mentions country
dances being danced everywhere in
addition to jigs and reels. More-
over, many of the Round dances des-
cribed in detail in Part IV. of this
book were seen sixty years ago being
taught by dancing-masters who were
then sixty or seventy years of age,
and generally in places the most re-
mote from outside influence, cer-
tainly from the influence of the
dancing-master of the old French
court, whose modes spread to Eng-
land. Notwithstanding evidence of
this character it has been advanced
from time to time that these Round
dances are not Irish dances at all,
but English or French dances, some-
what altered in the process of years.
Even if this were the case, no reason-
able person would advance it as the
sole cause for rejecting them any
more than he would reject from the
Irish language the many Latin
words which have crept into it since
the days of St. Patrick. Apart from
any question of their origin, they
differ to-day in so many essentials
from any other dances, and they
have been so long a portion of us
that they have surely a claim to be



called Irish. But what are the
grounds on which they are assumed
o be of foreign origin? It is diffi-
jult to say, unless it is because some
of them are danced by four couples
standing in a circle just as in a set
of quadrilles, or because there are
one or two movements, of a very sub-
sidiary kind, which bear a resem-
3lance to movements in the quad-
rilles. Many of the Irish round
dances are certainly danced by four
couples standing in a circle, but what
of the other Irish round dances, in
hich only two couple.? dance ? And
what of the six, twelve, and sixteen
hand reels P To what English or
French dances are we to look for
their origin? Again, in quadrilles
and kindred dances, the musical time
changes for each section of the
dance ; not so in the Irish dances ;
they are danced in one time from be-
ginning to end. Moreover, the fun-
damental movement throughout in
the Irish round "dances is the side-
step, which is not found in any dance
outside Ireland.

The theory that Irish Round
lances are derived from, or even
have been influenced by dances such
as the Quadrilles, cannot be sus-
tained. Their origin must be sought
far back in the history of the Irish
race. In this connection it may be
observed that no enquiry into the
origin and growth of Irish dances



can be regarded as complete until a
number of questions regarding the
origin and growth of Irish music
have been settled ; for it is almost
beyond doubt that each re-acted on
the other to a very considerable
degree.

But when all is said for and
against the Irish Round dances,
their strongest recommendation to-
day is that they furnish the best sub-
stitute for Quadrilles and kindred
dances. Jigs and reels and horn-
pipes can, we know, become monoto-
nous, by much repetition, to the on-
lookers, and both monotonous and
fatiguing to the dancers ; but the
Round dances, with the ever changing
positions of the dancers, and the oc-
casional rests afforded by the figures,
possess all the variety of Quadrilles,
and far more sprightliness.

IN addition to the Round and Long
dances, which have just been referred
to, and to which this book is chiefly
devoted, there were a number of
peculiar dances existing in Ireland
some of them down even to the
middle of the nineteenth century.
These were mostly pantomimic
dances ; imitations, as it were, in
measured and rhythmical mov<
ments of certain occupations. Some
of these dances are described in Parl
V. of this work. Most of them bear
the stamp of considerable antiquity ;



ntlqulty
of

Round
and
Long
Dances.



Panto-
mimic
Dances.



they appear, in fact, to have been,
with the Hey and Rinnce Fada, the
earliest forms of Irish dances. It is
with feelings of regret that one has
to chronicle their disappearance from
Irish life. Apart from their quaint-
ness and the colour they lent to rural
life, they must, in their very nature,
have possessed a grace and dignity
which, in most of our modern dances,
are conspicuous by their absence, at
least as they are usually danced to-
day.

THE four principal Irish step-dances,
that is, the jig, reel, hornpipe, and
hop-jig, are so familiar a feature in
modern Irish life that they call for
little comment here. No attempt is
made in this book to describe the
many steps of these dances, but in
the section devoted to " Other
Dances " a brief account is given of
the positions to be occupied by the
dancers, and the " figure " move-
ments which are usual between the
dancing of the actual steps.

One of the most extraordinary
features in connection with these
dances is the number of steps which
pertain to them. Numerous as are
the Irish dance tunes, the steps are
even more numerous. And just as
the tunes differ, one from another
(though in the one time and of the
one character) to a considerable de-
gree, so do the steps differ one from



another in almost every feature ex-
cept character. Another remark- |
able feature in connection with these
dances is the manner in which the
steps have been diffused throughout
the whole country. The same steps
may be seen danced to-day from
Kerry to Donegal, with but slender
differences here and there ; and even
the order in which they are danced
is often as it should be always the
same. In the jig, for example, the
traditional dancer invariably begins
with the " rising-step," and worka
up from that simple form through
easy gradations to the most intri-
cate steps. In the reel the beautiful
"side-step" should be the initial
movement.

IT is of some interest to speculate on