One of the great things about the novels of John Galt is the
descriptive names he gives to his characters.
Mr Macskipnish the dancing master in Annals of the Parish (Year 1761) is
a perfect example.
Galt writes –
“Mr Macskipnish, who was, to be sure, a great
curiosity, with long spindle legs, his breast shot out like a duck’s, and his
head powdered and frizzled up like a tappit-hen. He was indeed, the proudest peacock that could
be seen, and he had a ring on his finger, and when he came to drink his tea at
the Breadland, he brought no hat on his head, but a droll cockit thing under
his arm, which, he said, was after the manner of the courtiers at the petty
suppers of one Madam Pompadour, who was at that time the concubine of the
French king.”
In his Literary Life (Vol I) John Galt notes that
“… Macskipnish is a caricature of one [dancing master] that afterwards taught me
to walk minuets at Greenock. His story,
however, is a fiction.”
In Galt’s time, many Greenock youngsters attended dancing
lessons at the Masons Hall at the corner of Hamilton Street and Charles
Street, not far from Galt's home in West Blackhall Street. John Williamson describes, from
personal memory, local dancing master, James Crawford in Old Greenock From the
Earliest times -
“Mr Crawford, senior, was a little, broad man, with grey hair
profusely powdered. His function was to
promenade the hall, and take a general supervision, while his sons showed the
steps, one of them meantime playing the violin.
They were both graceful dancers.
Our masters’ pronunciation of the word “foot” always caused a titter, as
they pronounced it futt. Want of
attention or careless dancing was not unfrequently visited by a whack on the
shins or toes, and in this way the figures of the dances were literally whipped
into us.”
Galt gives Macskipnish and his arrival in Dalmailing, town in which the Annals of the Parish is set, in 1761
a back story -
“But a thing happened in this year, which deserves to be
recorded, as manifesting what effect the smuggling was beginning to take in the
morals of the countryside. On Mr
Macskipnish, of Highland parentage, who had been a valet de chambre with a
major in the campaigns, and taken prisoner with him by the French, he having
come home in a cartel, took up a dancing school at Irville, the which art he
had learnt in the genteelest fashion, in the mode of Paris, at the French
court.”
Dancing proved to be a popular pastime with young boys and girls in Dalmailing -
“For such a thing as a dancing school had never, in the
memory of man, been known in our countryside; and there was such a sound about
the steps and cotillions of Mr Macskipnish, that every lad and lass, that could
spare time and siller, went to him, to the great neglect of their work."
Williamson also explains the
dancing lessons in Greenock and how the Masons Hall –
“When not required
for the business of the Lodge, the Hall was let for lectures, public
exhibitions, or auction sales. It was
also hired for a dancing school, and here for many years Messrs James Crawford
& Sons, the fashionable dancing masters from Paisley, had classes for
instruction in the terpsichorean art, dubbed “heel philosophy” by our sarcastic
grammar school master, Dr Brown. The
classes were largely attended by the pupils of the English, writing, grammar,
and other day schools. They met in the afternoons
of winter and spring. Great attention
was devoted to the pointing of the toes and the carriage of the pupils, the
latter being the chief object of many of the parents in sending their children
to the dancing school, rather than the learning of “steps” and “dances”."
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| Masons Hall, Charles Street, Greenock (later Crawfords Restaurant) |
However, dancing masters were not always popular. Williamson continues -
“At the end of the
season, sometimes before it, the grand gathering for the ball took place in the
new Assembly Rooms, Exchange Buildings, when our positions and partners were
assigned to us – sometimes to our no small disgust, when separated from the partners
of our choice!”
Mr Macskipnish would appear to embody a lot of what John Galt remembered from his boyhood dance teacher in Greenock and provides us with a wonderful, almost visual character strutting about the dancefloor.
