strathspey@strathspey.org:28020

res009k3

Re: SCDML project

Nov. 1, 2001, 5:46 p.m. (Message 28020, in reply to message 28003)

I am responding to a quick skim through the SCDML project this morning.

If one wants to do a serious search into the history and or origins of
"our" for of dance, one must first purge oneself of the myths that
have evolved as a result of Milliganism.

The root myth ignores the fact that prior to the 1940's there was no
such thing as "Scottish Country Dancing."

This is a case where inaccurate grammar and semantics serve to cover the facts.

If a house is painted white, it is a white house. But if a particular
house is white it is <<The White House>>. So just because one does a
dance in Scotland, this does not make it Scottish dancing.

When the Society was founded, and up until WWII, its purpose was
promoting "country dances as danced in Scotland". It was only after
the Milligan ascendence that the term was quietly changed to "Scottish
Country Dancing."

In Portugal they speak Portuguise, and in Spain, Spanish (Castillian).
There are many forms of Spanish in Spain, Catala' and Galician for
example. What is now Portuguise has descended from a dialect of
Galician. Still one can accept that Castillian and Portuguise are
distinct languages because there is a national border between them.
While, to some extent they are mutually intelligible, one has only to
see the differences on both sides of the border to conclude that they
are separate languages today.

The same is true of the dances promoted by the RSCDS and the EFDSS
today. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of this when the Society
was founded in 1923, as the present situation is the result of an
evolutionary process that began in 1923 with the Society and ended
with Milligan's final takeover about 1945.

Yes, our RSCDS style is different from the EFDSS today. But to be a
true distinction in the past, one must be able to locate a border
where one can say that one side is Scottish and the other English. I
am not denying that there are steps (as opposed to figures) that were
executed differently in Scotland than in England. The problem is that
most of the EFDSS steps of today had an existance in Scotland,
parallel to those steps we call Scottish.

My denial of a historical RSCDS / EFDSS border can be seen if one
campares Ian Jamieson's research into dancing in the Scottish borders
and the current North of England style of today. There is no
difference. [NB: Jamieson's research is on film, and is the source of
Anderson's "Border Book"].

Since I have seen no evidence of any other dancing style in the
Scottish Borders, does this mean that "Scottish" country dancing has
the Forth-Clyde line as its southern border with the border counties
dancing English dancing? I doubt it.

My interpretation, and I welcome any evidence to the contrary, is that
the early Society, in its need to define its own territory, adopted
what were some local (not general) Scottish dancing styles as their
own. When they published SCD-I, they promoted their adopted style
right along with the dances.

Related myth: none of the dances of SCD-I were in danger of death
since they were already documented, and currently being danced on both
sides of the border. They appear in many dance books both before and
after the foundation of the Society. Many have a local life of their
own with no connection to the work of the societies on either side of
the border.

I am saying this because, even using the McLaughlan bibliography, her
selection of books written without RSCDS imprimatur [Foss, Anderson,
Flett] will back me up. Her problem is that, by association [history
of Scottish Country Dancing], she confuses books on the history of the
RSCDS, and those concerning the history of country dancing in
Scotland.

An example of the devolutionary approach can be seen in the works of
Emmerson. As history, his first book, a twee catalogue of some RSCDS
dances, mixes fact, fiction, and, for dances about which nothing is
known, unrelated trivia. His work becomes scholarly after he separates
himself from RSCDS myth and fairytale and does his his own research
for his books on the music and social history. Still, these work
indicate some ahistorical RSCDS contamination.

Unfortunately, when I began my research, most of the human primary
sources were already dead, inaccessable, or in the process of dying.

Goss
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