(Anglo-Saxon hreol; Suio-Gothic cognate of rulla: ‘to whirl’; Gael. ruidhle, ruidhleadh).
An indigenous and probably very ancient Scottish dance. The reel contains two basic dance elements: a setting step danced on the spot, and a ‘travelling’ figure, i.e. movement in a particular pattern. One of the earliest specific references to the reel as a dance is in the report of the trial of the witches at North Berwick in 1590 at which Geilles Duncan, a servant girl, was stated to have played the reel Commer goe ye before, ‘upon a small trumpe called a Jewes trumpe’ (jew’s harp), for the witches’ dance. An early Gaelic reference to the reel occurs in a waulking-song:
Reels
around in endless mazes,
With the great reed pipe a-straining
It is possible to establish the approximate date of the song because Gillie Calum, Chief of MacLeod of Raasay from 1648 to 1651 is mentioned in it as contemporary.
The reel has existed in Scotland in a number of forms, with qualifying names such as ‘threesome’, ‘foursome’, ‘sixsome’ and ‘eightsome’; these indicate the number of dancers. Many of these forms are now obsolete. The earliest reel, which may go back to medieval times, was probably the Circular Reel for two couples, of the western Highlands and Isles, in which the travelling figure was a circle. This could well have been performed round the fire, which in ancient times was in the centre of the floor. In the eastern Highlands and the Lowlands the threesome reel was danced, using the figure-of-eight as the travelling figure. It has been supposed that the threesome reel is related to the Hey or hay, a threesome dance that may have spread from the Continent to both Scotland and England in about 1500. The threesome reel was gradually displaced by the foursome reel (see illustration), also known as the Scotch Reel, first mentioned in 1776 by Topham; this remained a popular dance until after World War I.
The two reels most often danced today are the Reel of Tulloch and the eightsome reel. The modern version of the latter appears to have come into popular use in about 1868. The Reel of Tulloch (Gael.: Ruidhleadh Thulachain or Hullachan), as it is now danced, is said to have been devised in about 1880. The original dance, however, must have been older, for the tune The Reel of Tulloch appears in the McFarlan Manuscript (c1740). A folk-tale attributes the original composition of the dance to Iain Dubh MacGregor of Glen Lyon; this would date the dance from the late 16th century or the early 17th.
The first appearance in print of a reel tune with ‘reel’ in the title is in Playford’s A Collection of Original Scotch Tunes (1700). Other early reel tunes appear in the McFarlan Manuscript, the Young Manuscript (1740) and in Walsh’s Country Dances (1773). The music of the reel is of a rapid but smooth-flowing quaver movement in alla breve time, minim = 120 (ex.1). Orkney and Shetland have their own species of reels and reel tunes, some of which are obsolete. The ‘auld reel’ of Shetland, frequently with lines of irregular phrase structure, is thought to have some affinity with the Norwegian halling and other Scandinavian dances; this suggests that the reel may have been of Scandinavian origin. It may equally be, however, that the dance is Celtic, and spread from Scotland to Scandinavia and the Netherlands. The reel flourished in Ireland following its introduction from Scotland during the second half of the 18th century, and it is now a favourite dance-tune type among traditional instrumentalists (see Ireland, §II). In North America the reel is the staple musical fare for square-dances, though in the central and southern USA it is often known by the name Breakdown or Hoedown.
E. Topham: Letters from Edinburgh Written in the Years 1774 and 1775 (London, 1776)
T. Newte: A Tour in England and Scotland, 1785 (London, 1788)
J.G. Atkinson: Scottish National Dances (Edinburgh, 1900)
D.R. MacKenzie: The National Dances of Scotland (Glasgow, 1910)
D.G. MacLennan: Highland and Traditional Scottish Dances (Edinburgh, 1950)
H.A. Thurston: Scotland’s Dances (London, 1954)
J.F. and T.M. Flett: Traditional Dancing in Scotland (London, 1964)
J.L. Campbell and F. Collinson: Hebridean Folksongs, i (Oxford, 1967)
J.F. and T.M. Flett: ‘The Scottish Reel as a Dance-Form’, Scottish Studies, xvi/2 (1972), 91ff
Y. Guillard: ‘Early Scottish Reel Setting Steps and the Influence of the French Quadrille’, Dance Studies, xiii (1989), 14–107
FRANCIS COLLINSON