Page 19 - What's In A Name - The Barry Pipes Canon

WHAT’S IN A NAME? The Barry Pipes Canon • 2005 - 2018 The Corian Strathspey 037-2010-November-Set&Link
There it is, towards the end of the November Monthly Dance programme — The Corian Strathspey? Hmm! Never heard of it! Corian must be a place in Scotland, but does not appear anywhere in my Caledonian road maps. Okay, let’s Google it!
Aha! What have we here? Corian — a brand name owned by Dupont? Can this be it? A synthetic material made of acrylic polymer and alumina trihydrate? It’s used for kitchen countertops, vanities, etc. Hard to visualize, say, “dancing on the countertops”! Nah! That can’t be it! Not even for The Dancing Bells! So where did it come from?
The dance brief says it surfaced in RSCDS Book 43, which was issued in 2003. Obviously, that is where I should have looked first. This enables me to take tongue out of cheek and find out who devised The Corian Strathspey. And here is where I learn of a Montreal dancer named Maurice Whitby, who devised the dance in 1995 to celebrate the forthcoming marriage of Miss Corie Duque, a young Scottish country dancer, and her swain, Mr. Brian Prentice. CORie and BrIAN, get it?
I’ll bet that all this probably happened under the aegis of RSCDS Montreal. After all, in that locale, Maurice Whitby was well known as a dancer and dance devisor. Who remembers another of Maurice’s strathspeys by name of My Trusty Fiere (a small portion
Airie Bennan 038-2010-December-Set&Link
Spotting the name of this dance in the December Family Night program, I was sufficently intrigued to decide on a search. It turned out to be a bit of a challenge.
Apparently located in the old Stewartry of Kirkcudbrightshire, I first thought that Airie Bennan was a hill. But I find that it is two hills, Airie and Bennan. A stewartry is an archaic name for a Shire or Sherriffdom. Anyway, that area is now part of the region of Dumfries & Galloway in the southwest of Scotland. Come what may, one or both of the hills are significant enough to attract the attention of an august body named the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. . . and that maybe is enough to justify someone devising a Scottish country dance accordingly.
“Someone?” In this case, the “someone” happened to be a gentleman by name of Hugh Foss, and he was indeed quite a “someone”. A British cryptographer of great note, Hugh Foss achieved much success in World War II working for the British Government at its Bletchley Park Code and Cipher School. Very tall, red-bearded, and usually walking around in sandals, he was seconded to Washington, D.C., to work with Americans on breaking Japanese ciphers. The Americans called him “Lend-Lease Jesus”!
To date I have not been able to find any clarification of his Scottish credentials, but Hugh Foss did become known as a devisor of Scottish country dances. Among notable
From Set&Link, newsletter of RSCDS Toronto
of Auld Lang Syne no less)? Moreover, as the Strathspey Server website tells me, he was also blessed with a wicked sense of humour. There are anecdotes galore, often involved with Maurice’s frequent visits over the years to RSCDS Boston’s well-known events at Pinewoods, in the company of other Montreal dancers. As a memorial to the late Maurice Whitby, a dance was devised by Gary Thomas, a San Francisco SCDer, with music written by the
ubiquitous Ron Wallace, another The Corian Strathspey was devised to mark the wedding of the
SCD Californian. The dance is called, simply, Maurice. ◼︎
dances he devised are the currently popular 5-couple reel Polharrow Burn, John McAlpin, and The Wee Cooper of Fife. Well, I thought all this was very intriguing, because it sometimes seems that one has to break the cipher to figure out the formations of the more complicated SCD dances.
Airie Bennan is a 5-couple jig that Hugh Foss devised in 1966. He died in 1971 at the age of 69. If you make it to the December Family Night, you’ll probably enjoy dancing Mr. Foss’ jig. ◼︎
lovely couple shown here: Corrie and Brian Prentice — who were encountered, serendipitously, at the Kingston Weekend.
The summit ridge of Bennan is not jig-friendly!