The tradition & historical record
1 min read · 2 sourcesThe Gay Gordons is a Scottish country dance. The usual tune was written by James Scott Skinner. It was also known as The Gordon Highlanders' March, first printed in the collection "Monikie Series no 3" in c 1890. Jimmy Shand made a recording of it in 1942. 1
Dance instructions
A standard ceilidh instruction: 1
Formation: couples in a circle around the room facing anti-clockwise, ladies on the right. Music: 2/4 or 4/4 march. E.g. "Scotland the Brave", "The Gay Gordons". 1
Repeat ad lib. In order to make the dance progressive, the ladies may leave their partners between bars 12-13 and move to the partner before them in the circle. For Scottish country dancers, the grip in the first eight bars is allemande hold. A live demonstration was performed by the Royal Scottish Country Dancing Society [1] in 2007. 1
The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Gay Gordons (dance)”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. 1
Gay Gordons is Scottish country dance, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. 2
The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. 2