|
|
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2008) |
Scottish sword dances are ritualistic and combative dances that imitated epic deeds and martial skills and are a familiar feature in Scottish tradition and folklore. Notwithstanding Welsh and English Morris dance, related dances are known in Austria, Germany, Flanders,France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Romania. Moreover, some ezpatadantza (Basque sword dances) seem strikingly similar to their Scottish cousins what makes some scholars suspect a common low-medieval or Renaissance ancestry. More fanciful writers do not hesitate to point a Roman origin.
Contents |
The earliest reference to these dances in Scotland is mentioned in the 'Scotichronicon' which was compiled in Scotland by Walter Bower in the 1440s. The passage regards Alexander III and his second marriage to the French noblewoman Yolande de Dreux at Jedburgh in Roxburghshire on 14 October 1285.
In 1573 Scottish mercenaries are said to have performed a Scottish Sword dance before the Swedish King, John III, at a banquet held in Stockholm Castle. The dance, "a natural feature of the festivities" was used as part of a plot to assassinate the King, where the conspirators were able to bare their weapons without arising suspicion. Fortunately for the King at the decisive moment the agreed signal was never given.
"Sword dance and Hieland Danses" were included at a reception for Anne of Denmark at Edinburgh in 1589 and a mixture of sword dance and acrobatics was performed before James VI in 1617 [1] and again for Charles I in 1633, by the Incorporation of Skinners and Glovers of Perth,
Many of the Highland dances now lost were once performed with traditional weapons that included the Lochaber axe, the broadsword, a combination of targe and dirk, and the flail, the old Skye dancing song, Bualidh mi u an sa chean ("I will break your head"), indicate some form of weapon play to music, 'breaking the head' was the winning blow in cudgelling matches throughout Britain, "for the moment that blood runs an inch anywhere above the eyebrow, the old gamester to whom it belongs is beaten, and has to stop."
A combative sword dance called the Highland Dirk Dance still exists and is often linked to the sword dance or dances called "Macinorsair," the "Broad Sword Exercise" or the "Bruicheath" (Battle Dance). These dances are mentioned in a number of sources, and may have been performed in a variety of different forms, by two performers in a duelling form and as a solo routine.