Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

In Rhoda’s 1962 Diary, talks about Highland Dancing and the wedding of Gavin and Fiona.

Highland dancing (Scottish Gaelic: dannsa Gàidhealach)

When living in Culcheth, Lancashire, England, my mother still held on to her Scottish roots. She used to attend ‘Scottish Highland Dancing’. I can’t remember her wearing a kilt, but I remember her black leather dancing shoes. Moreover, as far as I can remember, she encouraged her sons to learn ‘highland dancing’ – at least Stuart. I think Stuart also attended Highland dancing lessons. 

The photo of Stuart in a kilt suggests it may be in Mirehouse, Cumberland (according to my mother). However, I think we have already moved from there before that date. Of course, I may be wrong; after all I was only four or five at the time, so my memory is not clear concerning every detail. 

I can also remember that when my brother Stuart outgrew his kilt, my mother had the ‘marvellous’ idea to dress me in it and bring me to dancing lessons. Her scheme ended up being a fiasco. My legs have always had a life of their own, and refuse to obey orders of military coordination sent by my brain; in other words, they are what you might call ‘anarchist legs’. To cut a long story short, my female dancing teacher didn’t appreciate my ‘anarchist legs’ and blurted out: “You can’t even skip dance (which is something all children can supposedly do naturally)!” 

To make things worse, on the way home from the dancing lesson, the ‘English’ boys laughed at me, because I was wearing a ‘skirt’ and tried to lift up ‘my skirt’ to see what was ‘underneath’. It wasn’t easy being a Scottish boy of five or six years old and being told by your mother to ‘invade England’. So that was my first and last dancing lesson. Since that day, I have hated ‘dancing’, and refuse to ‘dance’ with anybody. 

Sword dance

I can even remember that my mother came home one day with two swords, and placed them on the kitchen floor in a cross, and told me to dance around them, without touching the swords, or I might cut my feet! This sounded like great fun to me, so I had a try, while flaying my arms up in the air like a Highland dancer! 

There were some other dance steps she showed me such as kicking the calf of your leg with the heel of your foot of your other leg, as many times as possible, while you were ‘off the ground’. But this ‘kitchen practice’ was as far as I got with Scottish country dancing!

Weddings and kilts in the wider family

None of the men of my mother’s generation got married wearing a kilt as far as I can remember. However, many of my cousins and nephews wore kilts at their weddings – but none of my brothers. Even my ‘American’ nephew, Alexander Whitecross Harkness, got married wearing a kilt (unfortunately, I didn’t attend his wedding). But many Americans are proud of their Scottish and Irish ancestry, as is evident from the recent visit of President Biden to Ireland (2023).

Wedding of Gavin Gibson and Fiona Wylie

My mother kept many wedding photos of her family in her photo album, and newspaper clips of weddings in her scrapbook. As a ‘keeper of the flame’ , all are now in my possession. I included one of these wedding photos here showing my cousin, Gavin Gibson, wearing a kilt at his wedding. Amongst the ‘inserts’ in my mother’s scrapbooks are various ‘Highland dances’ such as “Jessie’s Hornpipe.” In other words, this was the sort of dance she danced when she attended ‘Scottish country dancing’ in Culcheth (see the link in the footnote for a video illustration).