North British Sword DAncers

Not just a hobby, but a lifestyle choice.

The Dances

It all began with rapper.  The Saddleworth dance is a fairly simple routine of the figure-and-chorus variety, first danced at the Saddleworth Rushcart festival.  The dance has varied over the years: in its early days it was danced to the bourée ‘Les Cahiers’; a favourite figure involved balancing the Betty on the lock and throwing him over into a back somersault, but a combination of injuries and claims for damaged fixtures and fittings put a stop to this.

Best-known of the NB longsword dances is the Elgin, a five-man dance which was reconstructed by Glasgow’s Clydeside Rapper from records of a dance which dates from 1623 and was performed and subsequently banned in the Scottish burgh of Elgin.  Variations of this dance are performed by at least five different teams.

The Saddleworth Sword Dance

From the Isle of Man comes a six-man dance commonly known as the White Boys’ Dance, although there is no guarantee that our version would be recognized there (you should have heard what Clydeside said about the Elgin).

North British currently operate a repertoire of four longsword and two rapper dances.

 

Information is given about each one below, and if you click the links to the right you can even see us dancing some of them.

 

From time to time we teach workshops, and some of our dances seem to have escaped into the wild, which is fine by us.

The Maryport dance is rapper like no other: short, brisk, and with absolutely no margin for error, it is performed to a version of the traditional song ‘Byker Hill’, and is so rapid  than no film of it exists.

The Elgin Sword Dance (performed in Elgin)

Link to the Saddleworth Morris Men

The White Boys’ Dance

For seven men we have a version of the Papa Stour sword dance that was passed down by a Papa Stour man to Manchester’s Duffy Men; they taught it to the Carlisle Sword Dancers, four of whom subsequently danced with North British.  How’s that for pedigree?

The Papa Stour sword dance

Finally, and new for the coming season, is the Rose, our eight-man version of a dance from Sunderland which was surely meant to be a sword dance.