Page 45 - What's In A Name - The Barry Pipes Canon

WHAT’S IN A NAME? The Barry Pipes Canon • 2005 - 2018 Currie Mountain 083-2016-April-Set&Link
If you were able to attend our March Monthly Dance, did you have the
chance to sample that very nice and smooth flowing reel called Currie
Mountain? It was devised quite a while ago by Mary Pugh, a Fredericton dancer, and was one of her submissions to The New Brunswick Collection. This bicentennial
From Set&Link, newsletter of RSCDS Toronto
Currie Mountain
February : Currie Mountain in the background with the Saint John River in the foreground
collection of reels, jigs, and strathspeys was created to celebrate the
Mentioning rare plants, could that mean plants
like cumin or coriander? Well no, as tropical plants, they refer to
curry (the food dish). Currie (the mountain) is named for one of the original owners who
bequeathed this piece of property to the University of
Mary Pugh
New Brunswick at least 50
years ago. But let’s not forget
that in itself, Currie is a well established Scots name, which stems from the Gaelic MacMhuirich, which perhaps gives this whole review a little extra panache.
I had the pleasure of chatting with Mary Pugh by phone recently in which she not only provided me with helpful information about Currie Mountain, but told me about her dancing opportunities in Boston, an SCD Branch that I believe has an equivalent annual event to our Tartan Ball, and attracts numerous Canadian dancers from the Maritime Provinces. It turns out that Mary had also had the opportunity to visit Toronto for a Tartan Ball some years ago.
In closing, I would like to thank not only Mary Pugh for her support of this submission, but also Connie Moore, who was my initial contact at RSCDS Fredericton and enabled me to reach Mary. ◼︎
Most of us will probably remember one of the most famous of Lady Susan’s (now the Duchess of Marlborough) descendants. That would be Winston Churchill,
Prime Minister of Great Britain during the Second World War. He was the great, great, grandson of Lady Susan and her husband George Spencer-Churchill,
through their first child.
Now, some readers may perhaps need a little memory prompt about the
Spencer half of Lady Susan’s family tree. Well, it so happens that in 1981, a certain Lady Diana Spencer married Charles, the Prince of Wales. Remember her? Her father was the 8th Earl Spencer, and if we go back to where we started in Lady Susan Stewart’s day, there was a family merger,
through the complexities of inheritance. It involved a branch of the Spencer family merging with the Dukes of Marlborough a.k.a. the Churchills.
Many of whom through the passage of time, seemed to have lived “happily ever after” (more or less) at either a monumental country estate called
200th anniversary of the province’s founding in 1784.
While you may never have heard of such a place as Currie
Mountain, it looms over the city of Fredericton, in a manner
of speaking, and originated as a volcano eons ago. Any likelihood of an imminent eruption? Hardly! In fact, if they were to think about any form of local catastrophe, the citizens of Fredericton would be far more likely in the short term to be inundated by flooding from the Saint John River (Yes! that Saint John River!) which flows through the city and actually runs quite close to the base of this mountain.
Truth be known, even though the volcanic origin of Currie Mountain and its environs goes back around 100 million years, there still exists visible evidence of what were once flowing lava beds which in turn have been responsible for the growth of any number of quite rare plants, found nowhere else in the area.
Here is another anomaly! Currie Mountain has a height of about 87 metres, and for those of us metrically challenged folks who are several decades away from school learning, 87 metres tops out at say, a little under 300 feet. But there again, as I am sure that you will agree, to give this non-alpine eminence the appellation Currie Hill does not have quite the same cachet.
Lady Susan Stewart’s Reel 084-2016-May-Set&Link
What’s this? Yet another dance named for one of the Scottish aristocracy? For sure, there has been no shortage of blue-blooded Stewarts from which to choose, whichever way it is spelled. The Bonny Prince for example!
But let’s start with Lady Susan’s father, John Stewart. He was a Scottish
peer, the 7th Earl of Galloway, and quite infamous in his day which was the mid to late 1700s. James Boswell, an eminent Scottish biographer of that
era, once wrote of John Stewart that he had “a petulant forwardness that cannot fail to disgust people of sense and delicacy.” Even Robbie Burns targeted Lady Susan’s father with an epigram that started “What dost thou
in that mansion fair? Flit, Galloway, and find some narrow, dirty dungeon
cave, the picture of thy mind.” Perhaps this had something to do with the
fact that John Stewart was in the process of siring sixteen children, of whom Lady Susan was the third. Perhaps Burns was somewhat envious, being himself no slouch with the ladies.
A red trillium on Currie Mountain
So enough about John Stewart, the 7th Earl of Galloway, except to say that for the last 23 years of his life, he was appointed Lord of the Bedchamber to King George III, a position for which John seemed to be eminently suited.
At the age of 24, Lady Susan entered into wedlock with the Duke of Marlborough, the 5th in fact. By family name, he was George Spencer-Churchill. Whoa! Spencer? Churchill? Ah! Now we seem to have some added significance as to why someone devised an SCD reel celebrating Lady Susan Stewart. She went on to have four children, all boys, during which time the Duke, Spencer-Churchill himself, added a further 9 illegitimate offspring elsewhere.
Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, or the Spencer family mansion in Northamptonshire called Althorp, where Lady Diana Spencer is buried.
All of which seems to indicate quite clearly a blood relationship between Winston Churchill, the late Princess of Wales, and the focus of our story, Lady Susan Stewart. Although I am by no means a Royalist, I am moved to believe that she deserves a celebratory reel in her name.
Lady Susan Stewart’s Reel was included in the program of RSCDS Toronto’s Volunteer Appreciation Night just two or three weeks back. The dance came to light back in 1928 when it was published in RSCDS Book 5, but may have been devised much earlier. The deviser remains anonymous. ◼︎
Lady Susan Stewart (1767-1841)