Barndances, Germans, Hornpipes, Highlands, Flings, Highland Flings, Schottisches etc.

I started a thread a while ago asking what barndances were. I notice that ceolachan has been posting a lot of info on these in the tunes section, and I’ve been reading with interest in the hope that I might be able to finally sort them all out in my head (I’m not a dancer and know nothing about the dances). I’ve started learning some barndancey tunes recently, and would like to learn more, but I’d like to learn them knowing what’s what.

So, can someone tell me if the following is right or wrong?

1) Barndances and Germans are the same thing.
2) Hornpipes and barndances are similar in that they both have a skippy, swung rhythm, and part endings that contain 3 quarter-notes.
3) Barndances differ from hornpipes in that they have “fewer notes” in them, and the quarter-notes appear at any time during the tune, not just at the end, making the phrasing more laid-back and lyrical and less complicated.
4) Highlands are like slowed down single reels, and have a similar skippy, swung rhythm to hornpipes and barndances, but are half as long.
5) Highlands have reel-type part endings and not hornpipe-type quarter-note endings.
5) Flings and highland flings are the same thing as highlands.

Please correct any of the above statements. But if what I’ve read adds up and they’re true, then:

A) Are half-length hornpipes like Miss Galvin’s really highlands?
B) Do Highlands have to have scotch snaps like strathspeys?
C) What’s a schottische? Is it the same thing as barndances and Germans? Why are they sometimes written in 2/4?
D) The Scottish often call reels what the Irish would call hornpipes, and play them in straight rhythm (I’m thinking of tunes like De’il Amang The Tailors/Devil’s Dream), what’s up with that? And what about reels like “The New Rigged Ship” which have those quarter note endings to the parts? Should these be called “hornpipes that are played like reels”, or “reels that have a hornpipe structure”?

I know that the genre of a tune doesn’t really matter. So please don’t write back saying “stop getting hung up about it and just play the tunes”. I’m posting this because I’m genuinely interested and want to know more.

Incidentally, I’ve also noticed that there’s a movement to start separating these tunes more in the database. I have to say, my initial reaction to this was “what’s the point - they don’t get played that much anyway what with all the jigs and reels”. But then I started mulling it over, and I’m starting to think now that the database has grown heaps since the tune genres were first set out, and there is now a considerable number of this type of tune, but they’re all over the place in the database. Since there seem to be people here who know the differences between these genres, would it be worth sorting out?

I’m not bothered either way, but I thought it would be interesting to bring it up in discussion and see what people think.

I was told that barndances are to hornpipes what hop jigs are to slip jigs and singles jigs are to double/treble jigs.

Ah, so schottische/highland schottische = a highland, and a German schottische = a barndance, and it’s hard to distinguish between the two. Now I know why I was confused 🙂

Thanks for your copy/paste Jim - I wouldn’t have found my way to that webpage.

Barndances have a ‘Quater note, quater note, dotted quater note’ sequence in them & it’s usually in the middle of the tune. They can end with three quater notes but most that I know don’t. Scottisches were written by Germans paying homage to the Scottish - pretty much dead as of 1900. Highlands, Flings & Highland flings are different terms for the same kind of tune. They don’t always have Scotch snaps in them, but they can. A rant is a scottish term for a single reel which can be played like a hornpipe or more like a strathspey, this is the category that Ms Galvin’s falls into.

A single jig has the long-short thing going -- Pop Goes the Weasel is the most famous single jig of all, I’d say. A hop jig is also the long-short thing, only for the slip jig, so it’s three groups of long-short per measure. The barndance, I was told, is also a long short thing, only for the hornpipe, though sounds like Brad’s got more qualifications for it than I was told (although I’m sure I got the Reader’s Digest Condensed version).

So I was told that you can make almost any hornpipe into a barndance, almost any slip jig into a hop jig, and almost any double jig into a slide, and vice versa, just by changing the way you play it.

Is it all true? Who knows? Not me.

Dow says “The Scottish often call reels what the Irish would call hornpipes, and play them in straight rhythm (I’m thinking of tunes like De’il Amang The Tailors/Devil’s Dream), what’s up with that?”

The Scottish are quite right because these are Scottish tunes, ie Scottish reels which they they have every right to call reels because that’s what they are. 🙂 Now, if the Irish choose to play them as hornpipes, that’s fine. If they want to play our strathspeys and scottisches and call them Highlands, that’s ok too.
Sorry, if I’m being a bit pedantic here but I sometimes get the impression that because some tunes have passed into the Irish tradition they are now regarded to be “Irish tunes” and any other style--even if it was the original--is now considered to be wrong by the common consensus here.

Alasdair Fraser apparently says (I’m just full of hearsay today) that the Irish exported reels to Scotland, and the Scottish kept them and biffed ’em up their way, and then when the Irish had lost them, then sent them back, whereupon the Irish changed the way they were played yet again. I’m not sure where he gets this information, though I’d like to know and it makes enough sense to me. (He also says that the old Cape Breton players played reels much more in the old way than the Scottish ended up playing them after the Irish had got hold of them again.)

I dunno, does it really matter? ;)

And, also, I’ve read in Helen Brennan’s History of Irish Dance that before the mid to late 1700’s, hornpipes were played straight, and the syncopated way of playing them came over from England by way of Dublin. I can’t remember what her source was for that information…

Of course, the only type of tune that is unique to Scotland is the strathspey and you can get reels, jigs, hornpipes etc everywhere. There’s also disputes about the ownership of lots of tunes. However, I would be pretty sure that “De’il among the tailors” was originally a Scottish reel and not an Irish hornpipe. 🙂

And. now, I’m going to bed zzzzzzzzzz.

Zina, I thought that the syncopated way of playing hornpipes came from Newcastle.

And no, it doesn’t matter, like I said in my first post. But then, does anything matter? Does it matter about the broken tile in my bathroom? Not in the grand scheme of things I guess 🙂

John J, stop getting your kegs in a twist about the Irish/Scottish thing. I know “De’il Amang The Tailors” is a Scottish reel, and that the Irish chored off with it and started playing it incorrectly, like a hornpipe, and changed its name for no apparent reason. If you ask me, they should have left it where it belongs! 😉

I just found this on a website:

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There follow chapter, verse, chorus and encore on the “Schottische” (for whom it may concern!) from Charles Gore:

The Highland Schottische was introduced in 1855 and was known by the name of “the Balmoral Schottische”
(Robbie Shepherd, who knows all there is to know - and quite a lot besides - about Scottish Dancing)
Scott Skinner published a “Balmoral Schottische” in his Elgin Collection (1884); on the same page of this collection is a tune of his called “Glenlivet” which describes as Strathspey or Highland Schottische.
[From a Dictionary of Music]; “Schottische (English !), Schottisch (German ”Scottish", a misnomer since there is no evidence of Scottish origin); the German Polka, a round dance of the mid-19th cent. Some books confuse it with the Ecossaise, which is a country dance and thus very different. Both are in simple duple time.
[From Caoimhin Mac Aoidh, “Between the Jigs and the Reels”]: The Berlin Polkey was a popular dance in Donegal maybe in the late 19th c. and up to 1930 or so. The Highland is special to Donegal; though universally so called “it appears to have originated from the Schottische, a dance of German origin”. “The Highland as commonly performed throughout Donegal today is a couple dance (ie. a girl and a boy)”, dancing first side by side, then face to face. The term “Highland Schottische” appears to have arisen to differentiate it from a “German Scottische”. “A Barn Dance in Donegal has the unusual title of the ”german". [Are you still with me?]…

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[not really]

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…There is no precise equivalent in Gaelic.
Highland Scottisches seem to have been danced (traditionally) to tunes like “Orange and Blue”, “Lad wi’ the Plaidie”, “Cathkin Braes” and “John MacAlpine” (aka: Oft in thStilly Night). They all look like strathspeys to me!

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and I’ve never even heard of them.

It’s much more simple with USA trad. music… we’ve got fast ones-slow ones-jigs-and waltzes! No not really… actually in the Allegheny Highland region it is/was similar to what we are discussing--- Reels,Hornpipes,Schottisches,Jigs,Waltzes,Polkas, Marches, even Mazurkas… a nice variety thats often lost within the US’s southern old-time scene… reel after reel after reel after reel

Yeah. Maybe I’ve started delving into these cuz I’m going through an I’m-bored-of-reel-after-reel phase.

I’ve been browsing the web today and learnt heaps. When you do a JC’s search for “schottische” you get a whole load of tunes from different countries. Most of them sound like barndances, and they have nice twists in the melody like |d2b2 ^f2a2|g2^c>e d2B>G|^F>GA>B =c…

So I take it that these are barndances, aka German (in Donegal), aka German schottische.

And flings, aka highland (in Donegal), aka highland fling, aka highland schottische are the strathspey-ey single reeley things that sometimes have Scotch snaps.

…both being derived from the strathspey.

I think I understand at last - yay!

Now I’m awake and the drink has worn off, things don’t seem quite as important. 🙂

Later on after I’ve had a few tunes and beers with my mates, the difference beteen a schottische and a hornpipe won’t seem quite as important 🙂

I used to dance barndances as a kid in Australia. At social country dances I mean, not by myself. In Scotland there is also something called a Canadian barndance. My impression has always been that a variety of tune-types were adapted for these dances. You couldn’t always tell by the tune what dance it was for but maybe you could by the set. But I am starting with a memory of the dance, trying to recall the tune and rhythm, and then thinking what it might be called. I’m talking about social dances,that you learned off other folk, not competition or “dancing class” dances. It seems these days we get obsessed with categories, starting with the written word and try to work back the other way and shoehorn things into them.

Could it have been that a lot of players adapted whatever tunes they knew to whatever dances they were asked to play? That’s my impression much of the time.

Some of the older bush fiddlers in Australia used to play things called “Varsovianas”. I was told that came from “Waltz of Vienna” but I’ve heard the term (or perhaps seen it on here) in relation to “ITM”. There were all sorts of traditions at work in Australia of course, even though a lot of the fiddlers were of Irish ancestry, they were just playing dances with the tunes they knew, from whatever source,with no thought of preserving a tradition or anything like that.

Sadly although there were a lot musicians in my grandparents’ generation, (“yer great uncle Dan was a great fiddler etc etc” you would hear) by the 1950s you could hardly find a one of them.

Just a few thoughts triggered by the evocative thread title.

A barndance is it’s own animal, unlike slip jigs/hop jigs - it’s not just a way of playing the tune. Barndances have there own thing going for them which is separate from both reels & hornpipes. Barndances are played with the same rhythm as a hornpipe, but they have different rhythmic features & those earmark barndance cadences which makes them stand out as barndances. The best way to sum it up is that a barndance is a hornpipe, but a hornpipe is not necessarily a barndance.

Thanks Brad, the stuff you’ve said in the past is now starting to make sense to me. I guess it’s a case of: the more of them you play the more obvious the difference becomes.

Dow - I got your tune, thanks - so let’s kiss and make up…erm, well, actually, let’s forget about the kissing bit, if that’s ok with you.

All I have say is that I have 3 Schottisches on the box which are from the Languedoc region of France, where they speak a language I am told is akin to Provencal *and* Catalan - the Langue D‘Oc, or Occidental, or Western Tongue. When I played these in front of John Offord, English Music Supremo, (I’M NOT NAME DROPPING!! - John and I go back several years) he recognised them as Schottisches right away. His comments were along the lines of: No-one knows where Schottisches originated, but it certainly wasn’t Scotland, in fact there are Schottisches from many parts of Europe, ie France (as aforementioned), England, parts of Germany and even some of the Slavic countries, eg Poland - don’t ask me, I’m just paraphrasing what John said.

Interestingly, Beethoven also composed some “Ecossaises” for the piano, regarding which he noted that they had a certain Scottish “snap”. PLayed on the piano they sound a bit like speeded-up Schottisches.

As a Northumbrian, surely you must be aware of the class of tune called a “Rant” - which is somewhere between a Reel and a H’pipe? The Bould Kathryn Tickell plays some of those. I’d be interested in finding out whether there is a Border Scots (a musical form also undergoing a rennaisance at present) equivalent of the Rant.

I hope some this meanderings are of some value to someone out there.

A few web sources say that schottisches were developed in Germany and possibly given the name “schottisches” because they were imitating the style of Scottish country dance tunes.

When I lived in Northumberland, I remember there being a strong cultural connection with Scandinavia. I went over there a couple of times. We used to play tunes from Norway and Sweden as standard repertoire, and these included schottisches. That seems odd to me now, since in Sydney it’s Irish or nothing, pretty much.

I was aware of rants. The most obvious one that springs to mind is the Morpeth Rant, which is also popular in the States I’m told. There are a couple of other really nice rants that I should post sometime, if only so that people have something authentic to play with the Morpeth Rant! I’ve never really understood exactly what a rant was cuz I’m not a dancer, but I’ve known how to play them by ear since I was a kid. It’s all a bit confusing really. I suppose the important distinction is between the dances rather than the tunes themselves. There are some Scottish reels that you can play as rants, like The Flowers Of Edinburgh for example. And I noticed Noel says of “Salmon Tails” that it’s a rant, although I’ve always played it as a sort of 2/4 march, like a polka with a hangover. Perhaps it’s just that rants can be danced to different kinds of tunes.

Oh, and Flings are not just highland, they can be donegal or irish-american. I get the feeling that flings are on the same spectrum as the Highland/strathspey - hornpipe - rant - reel array. Possibly to be slotted in between rant and reel?
:~}

I don’t know, to be honest, I suspect we may be becoming rather anal here in our Linnaean/Darwinian approach to the Origin of the Species of Tunes. I suspect there was much crossover, and concommitant confusion and cross-pollination when there was no OTHER music than that which we play. Maybe we spend too much time (or not enough) thinking of waht music was like before Brittney Madonna and Cristina….personally, I can’t tell one from the other. But they’d say that about our stuff. But do we care?

The most famous of tunes are not always the best examples: “The Morpeth Rant” is barely a rant & “The Pigtown Fling” isn’t a fling either. “he Cameronian”when played as a single, a little slower & with more swing is a way better example of a rant & Ol’ JS Skinner nails it with “John McNeill’s Highland Fling”

Just to confuse things yet further, in the US “Devil’s Dream” is usually played by Old Timers and Bluegrassers as a breakdown, frequently faster than blue blazes and utterly undanceable.

Then there’s a common tune called “The Chorus Jig”, which is actually a reel, or maybe a hornpipe, I don’t know, but it’s anything but a jig.

Okay, Brad, you’ve inspired me to post a couple of rants over the next month. I hope you don’t mind. I know they’re a little bit obscure but they’re worth it just for something a bit different.

PS what you just described with the Cameronian played as a slowed down swung single - that has nothing to do with rants as I know them. I call that a fling. Maybe elsewhere rant means something different.

I’ve been sitting back getting a kick out of this. And, yeah, somewhere I’ve got ‘The Pigtown Fling’ as a fling, with a second ending… Here’s a few links on the topic:

http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3schot.htm

http://www.scotlandsmusic.com/schottische.htm

http://www.fact-index.com/s/sc/schottische.html

The last alcohol induced discussion I had on this of any depth, with a bunch of head cases from different nationalitites, including a Czech, a Pole and a Serbian military officer, placed it by some account as originating in mountains shared by the Czechs, Poles and Slovaks - The Carpathians… Bohemian?

This was about Eire’s involvement and adoption in all this, so let’s step back. With the ‘Highland Fling’, also called ‘Highland’ and ‘Fling’, 16 bars is the norm, two parters. That was supported by the various dances that this music accompanied, which were also 16 bars in length and for two, three or four dancers, had a slew of characteristic steps, starting with the very simple ‘heel and toe’, and shared by other dances, to things distinct to the Irish Highland Fling, as far as I have seen. The Schottische/German/Barndance set of tunes were on the whole 32 bars, though there were some that went ABAC, 64 bars putting it all together, and ABC, 48 bars. The dances that accompanied these forms, and there were differences between them despite the tunes being lumped together, tended to have ‘long’ versions, or what were 8 and 16 bars long, and ‘short’ versions, or 4 and 8 bars in length.

As the association and the rhythmic connection to the dance was severed, sound-vision-tactile, and there was an agreement between what was seen and danced and what came out in the playing of the melody, well, with that gone, things went more ‘standardized’, less varied, with everything decent melody needing to fit a current and surviving norm wherever, session or stage performance, to survive, like falling into being played as a hornpipe or single reel. Even the ‘Ulster 7-Step’ or ‘7-Step’ was stretched out to fit the expected 32 bars, as represented by the playing of Lucy Farr, and recorded on this site as ‘Lucy Farr’s’ (see notes for that tune.) I’ll try to add some short dance descriptions at another time, under a tune, so you can see and maybe even feel some of that difference, the ‘rock and roll’ of it…

But hey, this is great. I’ve sat watching this grow. Great start DOW, seeds of perdition…

from: http://www.twainquotes.com/Schottische.html

18 March 1861 - Letter to Orion Clemens:

“Ma was delighted with her trip, but she was disgusted with the girls for allowing me to embrace and kiss them--and she was horrified at the Schottische as performed by Miss Castle and me. She was perfectly willing for me to dance until 12 o’clock at the imminent peril of my going to sleep on the after watch--but then she would top off with a very inconsistent sermon on dancing in general; ending with a terrific broadside aimed at the heresy of heresies, the Schottische.”

“…..Neither can the dance forms be ignored, for it was these that produced the more extensive rhythmic variety in these days, and it was in their measures that the great composers, Byrd, Robert Johnson, Bull and Farnaby, wrote most of their music. Among the Scottish national dance forms of the 17th century were the hornpipe, jig, reel and lilt. The hornpipe or sean triubhas may have been a relic of an old Celtic dance. In Playford’s Apollo’s Banquet (1687) there is a New Scotch Hornpipe. There is a horn-pyp in the Leyden MS. (c. 1692), whilst an English gentleman, Edward Sadler, composed a Scotch hornpipe in 1693 (British Museum MS. Add. 22098). Scotland was also acquainted with the English variety, since A Lankishire hornpipe appears in the Guthrie MS., (c.1675-80), which might have been Scottish (=Lanarkshire). We also know what the Scottish jig was like at this period since we have Binny’s jigg and Hopton’s jigg in the Blaikie MS. (1683, 1692), and another in the Leyden MS. From English sources we have a Gigue (Scotch) in the British Museum (Add. 15118). Of course the English had long been acquainted with the Scottish jig, and Morley, in his Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke (1597) shows that it was something unique. ”I dare boldly affirm that, look which is he who thinketh himself the best discanter of all his neighbours, enjoin him to make but a Scottish jygge, he will grossly err in the true nature and quality of it.“ Shakespeare appreciated this jig, as we know from Much Ado about Nothing (c.1600), where he makes Beatrice say:—”Wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch jig, a measure and a cinque pace; the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as fantastical."

We read of the reel at the extraordinary trial of witches (1591) with which James VI was acquainted. Here, it was averred “Geilles Duncan did go before them playing a reill.” Its character may be seen in To dance about the Baillzeis dubb in the Skene MS. (c.1616-35), and The bony brow and New Hilland ladie in the Leyden MS., although none is called a reel there. A slower dance was what was then known as the lilt, of which many examples exist in the above named Scottish manuscripts, notably in the Skene MS., in both triple and quadruple time. In the earlier Rowallan lute MS. is one named Gypsyes lilt, which leads us to the reminiscence of those Egyptians that “dansit before the King [James V] in Halyrud House,” the same ruler who favoured, in 1540, Johnne Faw, “Lord and erle of Litill Egipt,” whose name must have prompted the later famous tune of Johny Faa, or the Gipsie Laddie (cf. British Minstrel, 1844). Perhaps it was these people of Yetholm, or those “Saracens or Gipsies” that were in Galloway a century earlier, who were responsible for the Morris dance.

The Morris dance was known quite early, and it runs into a line or two of Christis Kirk on the Grene (15th cent.) where “Auld Lychtfute” did “op the Moreiss danss.” In the Skene MS. there is Ane alman Moreiss, i.e. a German morris dance, in common time. According to the above poem in which it is called “counterfeited Franss,” it would seem to have been borrowed from Scotland’s Gallic partner. Those who know Scott’s Fair Maid of Perth will remember the description of the Morris dancers at the door of Simon the Glover. Today, the Glover’s Incorporation of Perth still dispplays the bell furnishings worn by the Morris dancers when Charles I was greeted by the town in 1633.
….."


---From this website:

http://www.standingstones.com/scotem.html

Well, this discussion could have knocked me over with a feather! I never knew that a “barndance” was a specific kind of tune. My only knowledge of a “barndance” is a group of people gathering in a barn to dance a variety of folk dances - rounds, squares, contras, etc. - to a variety of folk tunes, generally called by a dance master, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the steps of the dances.

If you don’t learn at least one new thing in any given day,then it’s not worth getting up in the morning, now is it?!

Links to some dance descriptions and even online vids:

https://thesession.org/members/11705

While Barndance & Schottische (usually 32 bars - AABB) are pretty much the same and interchangeable, dances and tunes, Germans differ in that the dances include a 7-step. There are classic steps with Highlands / Flings / Highland Flings / Highland Schottisches (16 bars - AABC or AABB or AABA), which are danced pretty much on the spot & side-to-side, with a number of variations. Hornpipes have a solo step dance tradition attached to them, as well as couple & group dances, which can include side-steps, including versions of the 7-step. It’s quite common for barndances and schottisches and rants to be found filed under that general heading of ‘Hornpipes’, including other related dance forms. Things they all share include a basic step, skip-change (hop/heel-1-2-3), and ‘swing’, but they are also often found played straight…

Whats a Rant? I see you have asked

I shall answer my own question -
Rant –
Strong tradition in Northern England –but also done in the rest of England – not thought of as a Scottish dance style (please correct me on that bit if I am wrong).

Popular as a morris dance style (think Rapper/ Longsword) a little less so as a social dance style

Written in 4/4 or rarely 2/4. In 4/4 often will have 8 quavers in the bar, or crotchet on beat one followed by 6 quavers– but not always so

Distinguished different to a reel is all down to how you play the tune – you can play a rant as a reel and reel as a rant.

A reel – stresses (emphasis) on the off beats – beat 2 and 4 – to make you skip (rather than hop as in a hornpipe).

A rant – stress particularly on the first beat of the bar – this reflects the very particular type of step that the dancers use. The dancers “bounce” heavily on the first beat; if in a “standing still” mode – whilst waiting for other dancers to move – this is done by “bouncing” on two feet together on the first beat with one foot “leading” in front of the other, followed by hop, tap hop.
Generally a little slower than an English reel.

From an experienced English player – reading your discussions to try to understand Scottish!