The instructions for bars 9-16 have changed more than once over the years
(details courtesy of the MiniCrib team)
.
The original publication and some revised editions of Book 9 say the three couples cross “passing right shoulder”.
The publication “101 Scottish Country Dances” and a number of subsequent editions of Book 9 changed that to cross “giving right hands”.
In the latest RSCDS edition of Book 9 (published in 2009) they just cross “passing by the right”.
The 2013 edition of the RSCDS manual is more explicit, saying that while the original specified no hands, these days usually hands are given.
Madge Wildfire's Strathspey
The most colourful character in Sir Walter Scott’s
The Heart of Midlothian
is the mad woman,
Madge Wildfire.
I glance like the wildfire through country and town;
I’m seen on the causeway – I’m seen on the down;
The lightning that flashes so bright and so free,
Is scarcely so blithe or so bonny as me.
Madge, born Murdockson, was described by Scott as
“a tall, strapping wench of eighteen or twenty, dressed fantastically,
in a sort of blue riding-jacket, with tarnished lace, her hair clubbed like that of a man,
a Highland bonnet, and a bunch of broken feathers,
a riding-skirt (or petticoat) of scarlet camlet, embroidered with tarnished flowers.”
This young woman had been seduced, as had Effie Deans,
by George Staunton, alias Geordie Robertson, the minister’s son turned smuggler and highwayman,
and had, as had Effie, borne him a child.
Odl Meg Murdockson, known as Mother Blood, had arranged a marriage for her daughter
with an elderly, but rich, gentleman
and since the discovery of the child might prevent the match,
Mother Blood killed the child.
As a result, Madge lost both her suitor and her sanity.
It was Mother Blood and Madge who held Jeanie Deans prisoner at Newark
on her way to London to petition the Duke of Argyll for Effie’s life and freedom.
On her return journey Jeanie is witness to the hanging of Mother Blood for witchcraft
and to the attack on Madge Wildfire by an angry mob.
Jeanie was with Madge when she died at the hospital in Carlisle,
the mad woman still singing her snatches of songs in her dying moments.
Scott based the character of Madge Wildfire on Feckless Fanny,
a demented woman who wandered with her flock of sheep over the Borders between 1767 and 1775
and who was stoned to death by a mob of youths in Glasgow.
From “Scotland Dances”, by Eugenia (Jeannie) Callander Sharp
(Used by permission.)