Bridge of Nairn

Bridge of Nairn is a Scottish Country Dance. It was published by Robert Bremner in about 1765 in A Collection of Scots Reels or Country Dances, Edinburgh. It was interpreted by RSCDS in 1945 and published in RSCDS Book 13. It is S8×32 3C/4C, a proper Triple Minor dance. St32.

Hugh Thurston's Scotland's Dances, 1954 (on page 96) he quotes Bremner's older work:

Cast off two couples lead up to the top and cast off set cross corners swing corners and swing your partner and lead outsides

Hugh Thurston dates this book to 1769, while RSCDS Book 13 dates it to 1757 (for The Nether Bow and Miss Cahoon's Reel), but ~1765 (for Strathglass House and Bridge of Nairn). Hugh Thurston says this book was published in London, and, according to Wikipedia, he moved to London in 1762, so the 1757 date is probably wrong. That was the date of his first collection, which only contained tunes, without figures. On the other hand in 1769 Bremner published For the Year 1769. A Collection of Scots Reels or Country Dances.

The animation plays at 120 counts per minute normally, but the first time through the set the dance will often be slowed down so people can learn the moves more readily. Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color, however the border of each dancer indicates what role they currently play so the border color may change each time through the minor set.

An online description of the dance may be found here.

The dance contains the following figures: hand turn (allemande), set, cast, lead, cross go below (and probably others).

If you find what you believe to be a mistake in this animation, please leave a comment on youtube explaining what you believe to be wrong. If I agree with you I shall do my best to fix it.

If you wish to link to this animation please see my comments on the perils of youtube. You may freely link to this page, of course, and that should have no problems, but use one of my redirects when linking to the youtube video itself:
https://www.upadouble.info/redirect.php?id=BridgeOfNairn

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1945 by RSCDS. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2020 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This website is copyright © 2021,2022,2023,2024 by George W. Williams V
Creative Commons License My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.