The Threesome Reel (RSCDS Book 6)

Scottish Country Dance Instruction

Strathspey
1- 8 Lady on left dances clockwise round outside, Lady on inside anticlockwise, dancing under arch made by others. Man turns slowly under arch in same direction as Lady on right. All end in place (strathspey travelling steps throughout)
9-16 All set with Highland setting steps
17-48 Repeat twice more

Reel
1-48 Repeat 1-16 3 times with Highland reel setting steps

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

Keith Rose's Crib Diagram

The Threesome Reel (RSCDS Book 6) - Full Size And Key To Symbols

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Dance Information

The Threesome Reel is a Scottish Country Dance, although people were probably dancing threesome reels as early as 1710 or so, no written description of the dance can be found until 1808 when Thomas Wilson published one in London, but the dance was already dying by then.

Atkinson published a version in 1900 but only did so to explain his eightsome reel.

This is a different version which bears little resemblance to Atkinson's. It was published by the RSCDS in Book 6, 1930.

(Dance information copyright, reproduced here with the kind permission of George Williams)

The title is first documented in 1710, making it the earliest specific reel to be securely attested. This establishes the Threesome Reel as a key ancestral form within the group of native Scottish reels that later included the foursome, fivesome, sixsome, crossed foursome, Axum Reel, and others. Unlike the country-dance tradition introduced from outside Scotland, the threesome belongs to a native line of development and shares structural features with the early Scottish social dances noted in historical descriptions.

The first recorded mention of reel-style dancing in Scotland appears in Gavin Douglas's Scots translation of Virgil's Aeneid, known as the Eneados. Completed in 1513, the surviving manuscripts contain the Middle Scots word "reland", interpreted as a verb meaning "to reel" in the context of dancing.

The relevant lines appear in the section describing a festive gathering. In Middle Scots the passage reads:

A literal rendering into modern English is:

This reference provides the earliest firmly verified use of a reel-related term in Scottish records, representing the first documented occurrence of the word that would later be linked to the tradition of Scottish reel dances.

The Threesome Reel follows the characteristic pattern found across this family: a travelling figure for one eight-bar phrase, followed by a setting step for the next eight bars, the sequence then repeating. In the threesome, the travelling section is based on a reel of three, one of the simplest and oldest forms of reeling. This structure links the dance closely to the earliest descriptions of Scottish round and reel-type movements. Its format for three individual dancers gives it a distinctive place within the group, and it provided the model from which The Foursome Reel, The Axum Reel and others later developed.

Although later dances with larger sets became more widespread for social occasions, the Threesome Reel remained recognised as an important traditional form and was eventually standardised in modern teaching.

This version published in RSCDS Book 6 presents one of the best-known modern interpretations and preserves the essential structure of the historical threesome while using a format suitable for contemporary Scottish country dancing.

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