Scottish Country Dancing Dictionary

Hallo Hallowe'en

Scottish Country Dance Instruction

HALLO HALLOWEEN (R32) Circle Irene van Maarseveen Dancing Thistles
Circle Dance partner on Man's right

1- 8 All dance Grand Chain passing partner and 3 persons
9-16 All turn new partner RH and ¾ turn LH to face anticlockwise
17-24 All dance anticlockwise 4 steps and back 4 steps and end facing in (Partner on Man's right)
25-32 All Slip-Step to right and back again

(MINICRIB. Dance crib compiled by Charles Upton, Deeside Caledonian Society, and his successors)

Dance Information

Halloween (also spelled Hallowe'en) is an annual holiday observed on October 31, has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holiday All Saints' Day, but is today largely a secular celebration.

"Halloween" is a poem written by the Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1785. First published in 1786, the Halloween - Poem is included in the Kilmarnock volume. It is one of Burns' longer poems, and employs a mixture of Scots and English.

The first of the 26 stanzas takes us straight to the Ayrshire countryside and coast, the setting for the traditional rural Halloween customs described in the poem

Upon that night, when fairies light,
On Cassilis Downans dance,
Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze,
On sprightly coursers prance;
Or for Colean the rout is ta'en,
Beneath the moon's pale beams;
There, up the Cove,to stray an' rove,
Amang the rocks and streams
To sport that night;
Halloween
Illustration To Robert Burns' Poem Halloween By J. M. Wright And Edward Scriven


Dance information licensed under this Creative Commons Licence 3.0.
Text from this original Halloween article on Wikipedia.
Image copyright John Masey Wright (1777-1866, artist) Edward Scriven (1775-1841, engraver) Adam Cuerden (1979-, restorationist) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Back to the top of this Scottish Country Dancing Instructions 'Hallo Hallowe'en' page