Ancient Traditions Preserved in Nova Scotia Spur Scotland's Step Dance Revival

The damage done to Scots Gaelic culture by the Highland Clearances in the 1700’s and the efforts to reclaim what has been lost continues into modern times. Part of this renewal is a revival of traditional Scottish Step Dancing.

The website "Positively Scottish" in an article entitled "Stepping Out - Keeping a Traditional Scottish Dance Alive", features a group who are working to bring back the glories of Scottish Step dancing to Scotland: " Elizabeth Lumsden and the Traditional Kinfauns Step Dancers, a group of traditional Scottish Step Dancers, have been reviving the past by performing dances and steps wearing hard-soled shoes picking out the rhythms of jigs, strathspeys, reels and hornpipes to the music of the fiddle, pipes and Puirt-a-beul (tunes of the mouth)."

Elizabeth Lumsden is quoted on the history of the preservation of Step Dancing traditions: “People should know about our past. During the Highland Clearances people from Scotland went to Canada, and some settled in places like Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, taking the steps with them. Over the last 25 years or so, Cape Bretoners have come over to Scotland to teach the dance around the Highlands and Islands, starting classes in Skye and performing at the Gaelic Ceòlas festival in South Uist. It’s got really popular, with people travelling from all across the world to learn about Gaelic culture.”

Scottish immigrants to Cape Breton in Canada’s province of Nova Scotia fleeing the brutality of the Highland Clearances brought with them the Step Dancing traditions of the Highlands. Arriving at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century their areas of settlement were in the isolated northern sections of the Province.  This isolation led to the preservation of musical and cultural tradions such as Step Dancing: “Between 1817 and 1838 alone, the population in Cape Breton grew from approximately 7000 people to 38,000 people. Almost all these people were Gaelic-speaking Scots from the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. They came from Barra, Lewis, North and South Uist and settled in groups together. Those from Barra settled around the Iona area; those from Lewis, around the St. Ann's Bay; North Uist, around Mira Ferry; and South Uist, around Grand Mira. Within each of these settlements, the Gaelic-speaking people usually preserved the particular dialect of Gaelic that they brought from the old country…many events took place regularly that used the medium of the Gaelic language. "Ceilidhs" were held weekly. These ceilidhs included Gaelic songs, dancing, music and the like....” – Cape Breton Regional Library

" Some of the traditions that migrated to Nova Scotia, however, are not recorded in Scotland. Their existence supports the documentable pattern that archaic survivals are found at the periphery of a given cultural area." - James MacKillop from Myths and Legends of the Celts

Photo Compliments of the website "Poistively Scottish" which is linked below

Original Article: http://positivelyscottish.scot/2016/09/08/stepping-out-keeping-a-traditional-scottish-dance-alive/

https://www.facebook.com/kinfaunsstepdancers/

http://transceltic.com/scottish/nova-scotia-edge-of-celtic-world

http://www.sandymacintyre.com/sandy_macintyre___stepdancin.htm

http://www.cbrl.ca/leughseo/history_english.asp