strathspey@strathspey.org:52648

John Chambers

Re: No more sword dances?

June 3, 2008, 2:27 p.m. (Message 52648, in reply to message 52611)

Pia commented:
| Well it matters in a legal argument - up here in Scotland I would argue tha=
| t it is a human right to be allowed to execute an ethnic and indigenous tra=
| dition without dilution - the same argument cannot be used in the rest of U=
| K (well for Morris dancers it could) - so one would have to find another ar=
| gument for participants of a foreign art form there.

Actually, the familiar Scottish sword dance, and also the longsword/Rapper
type sword dance, are really just part of a tradition that was once common
all over Europe, and still exists in lots of  areas.   I  recently  got  a
notice of another Sword Spectacular event this summer, in Whitby. I was at
the one in 2004, also in Whitby, and they had European teams from  as  far
away  as  Italy  (plus a few American teams).  It's interesting to see the
similarities and differences that developed in various areas.  It's fairly
obvious  that  they  are  all variants of the same ideas, probably because
people see each others' dances and steal ideas.  This has  been  going  on
probably  since  swords  were invented, and there's really no way to trace
the history of it all.



--
What if the Hokey Pokey really IS what it's all about?