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Ceilidh

In Scotland the same word gets applied to quite a range of different events - which is perfectly reasonable since the sort of social events that are possible in a Hebridean island or a major city are themselves different. I've never been to an Irish one (usually spelled "ceili") so I'm not going to speculate on how they work.

What does get my goat is that there is a perfectly good Scots word for the same institution, which was in use for hundreds of years before anybody in this part of the country thought to use a Gaelic name for it.

The word is "rocking". Originally a "rock" was a distaff (maybe an actual rock tied on the end of a piece of yarn and whirled round, but the word was also applied to a wooden spindle). In rural parts of Lowland Scotland, women would often go to each other's homes to spin and talk together, so "I'll bring my rock" came to mean "I'll make a social call". The word "rocking" started out meaning a spinning bee, gradually came to be applied to larger social gatherings involving both sexes, and finally to those where nobody pretended there was any spinning going on at all. "Rock" as "distaff" is what the title of the jig "A Rock and a Wee Pickle Tow" refers to (the song was probably pretty good once, but got gentrified beyond singability in the 18th century). It's good bet that at least some of the dance tunes of the Scottish Lowlands are spinning songs that were adapted during these events. "Rocking" could also mean a lovers' assignation, and "rock" had an independent sense meaning to stagger with drink, and these doubtless added to the semantic richness of the term.

[The following mail was received on New year's Day, 2002 from a reader: "I think there is some confusion in your web page about the difference between a distaff and a spindle and which one is a rock. A spindle is a rod with a whorl used for spinning yarn. A distaff is a device on which flax or other fiber is dressed ready to be spun, but has no part in the spinning. The spindle may have been called a rock but that's not certain. The dressed distaff is sometimes refered to as a rock but that may be the same confusion in operation."]

Since the Gaelic content of most traditional-Scottish-dance gatherings in present-day Edinburgh or Glasgow is still about as close to zero as it always has been, the Scots word fits better. And as well as being more locally apt, the Scots encodes the history of these gatherings in a way that the Gaelic doesn't. Some chance of me persuading the Celtic- bullshit industry over that one, though.

I would like to think that this has something to do with the origin of the phrase "rock and roll" (for occasions where food was provided?) but I kinda doubt it, though hand jive movements always did remind me of people winding skeins of wool.

Presumably there are English regional words from the places Dom and George come from that were created to describe mostly-DIY singing-and- dancing events in predominantly rural communities, but I can't for the life of me remember what they are. Anybody? I really cannot believe that England actually needs to borrow a word from another country and another language to name such a thing.

From: Jack Campin
Newsgroups: soc.culture.scottish
Subject: Kaylees and What They Ought to be Called
Date: 9 Apr 1998
Organization: The Fluffiest Flat in Edinburgh

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