Scottish Country Dancing Dictionary

Shine On Scotland

Scottish Country Dance Instruction

Shine On Scotland (S4x32) 4C set Lewis N Derrick 2008

1-4 Giving right hands, the 1st couple cross over and cast off one place while the 4th couple cross over and cast up one place; 2nd and 3rd couples step up and down respectively on bars 3-4
5-8 The 1st and 4th couples, on opposite sides, dance four hands once round to the left
9-12 Giving right hands, the 1st couple cross up between the 2nd couple and cast off one place on own sides while, giving left hands, the 4th couple cross down between the 3rd couple and cast up one place on own sides
13-16 The 1st and 4th couples dance half rights and lefts with no polite turns to end facing standing couples on sidelines
17-24 Reels of four on the sidelines. To begin, 4th woman and 2nd man, 4th man and 2nd woman, 1st woman and 3rd man, and 1st man and 3rd woman pass right shoulders and all end facing the same people
25-26 Giving right hands, the 4th woman and 2nd man, 4th man and 2nd woman, 1st woman and 3rd man, and 1st man and 3rd woman change places on sidelines
27-28 Retaining right hands the 4th and 2nd couples and 3rd and 1st couples dance right hands across halfway
29-32 While the 4th and 1st couples, in the centre, dance left hands across once round the 2nd and 3rd couples, at the ends, set to partners and cross over giving left hands to finish 2413 all on own sides

Repeat three more times from new positions each time

(Dance Crib compiled by the deviser, Lewis N Derrick 2020)


Dance Information

This strathspey, Shine On Scotland, was devised to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Marie Curie Cancer Care (1948-2008).

Suggested tune: The Laburnum Arch at Airlie (Angus Cameron).

Devised 2008, first published electronically 2020.

Copyright 2008, 2020 Lewis N. Derrick.

(Dance information from The Marie Curie Suite Of Scottish Country Dances, reproduced here with the kind permission of the deviser, Lewis N Derrick)


Marie Curie is a registered charitable organisation in the United Kingdom which provides care and support to people with terminal illnesses and their families.

It was established in 1948, the same year as the National Health Service.


Marie Skłodowska Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska (1867-1934), was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity.

She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields. She was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.

Marie Curie was born in Warsaw, in what was then the Kingdom of Poland, part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Flying University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and physicist Henri Becquerel. She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Her achievements include the development of the theory of radioactivity (a term she coined), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today. During World War I she developed mobile radiography units to provide X-ray services to field hospitals.

Marie Curie - Information Video

Marie Curie
Marie Curie, c. 1911


Dance information licensed under this Creative Commons Licence 3.0.
Text from this original Marie Curie - Charity article on Wikipedia.
Text from this original Marie Curie article on Wikipedia.
Image copyright Fotograv. - Generalstabens Litografiska Anstalt Stockholm / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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