The Highland Reel

Scottish Country Dance Instruction

1- 8 All advance and retire twice
9-16 Men reel of 3 across with Lady on right and opposite Lady starting by passing opposite Lady LSh
17-24 Men with same Ladies 3H round and back
25-32 All advance and retire and lead through passing opposite person RSh

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

Keith Rose's Crib Diagram

The Highland Reel - Full Size And Key To Symbols

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Dance Information

The book carries a copyright entry dated 1848 and is commonly catalogued and digitised as the Appleton handbook of 1849; a scanned copy of the book (showing the Highland Reel entry) is available online (see 'Published in' below).

Several dance indexes and crib-collections note that this Appleton entry describes the Highland Reel as a three-part tune danced in threes (a lady between two gentlemen facing three opposite), and credit Appleton with the printed description now used as a principal nineteenth-century source.

There are earlier nineteenth-century publications that use the same or similar formations. In particular, an 1844 London source, Eugene Coulon's Ball-Room handbook (The Ball-Room Polka, Polka Cotillon, and Valse à Deux Tems), contains a related description (and is cited by modern indexes as an antecedent). Several dance-reconstruction sites and indexes place Coulon (c.1844) and Appleton (1848/1849) as the earliest close printed descriptions of the Highland Reel formation.

There are also much earlier eighteenth-century items that use the name or variations of 'Highland Reel' or 'Reel', but those earlier occurrences, (e.g., Foursome Reel) describe different formations or figures. Indexing projects and dance bibliographies note dance items from the mid-1700s that share names, yet their steps and set structures are not the same as the Appleton/Coulon description. For this reason, Appleton (1848/9) and Coulon (c.1844) are treated by many modern compilers as the primary nineteenth-century sources for the specific three-in-a-line Highland Reel formation now familiar to Scottish country dancers.

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