Irish dancing question?

Question:Someone toold me that the Irish dance where they look like theyre bodies are motion less but theyre legs are flying over the place came from a time when the English Kings had out lawed dancing in Ireland?? Apparently the cunning Irish would stand at their windows with their body showing from the waist up, and their legs were dancing like crazy out of sight.....is this true or just a silly urban legend?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Someone toold me that the Irish dance where they look like theyre bodies are motion less but theyre legs are flying over the place came from a time when the English Kings had out lawed dancing in Ireland?? Apparently the cunning Irish would stand at their windows with their body showing from the waist up, and their legs were dancing like crazy out of sight.....is this true or just a silly urban legend?

I've never heard that before, but I have been reading about 18th and 19th Century Ireland (Ulster region). The Catholics were under tight control and the English were doing their best to supress their political and social aspirations. I have been reading a history that says that the hard shoe developed as a way to notify others that someone was approaching their meeting place. The gist is that a young boy would be stationed as a look out while a meeting was going on in a basement or outbuilding and the young man would start dancing a loud jig in a particular cadence to alert the men that soldiers were approaching. The "Blackbird" of which there is an Irish Set Dance is a code for Bonnie Prince Charles that was doing his best to upset the British rule in Scotland. I'm working on the determining if that dance came before (as a way of notifying the faithful) or afterwards to tell the story.

Although it makes a good story, I'm going to say that the arms became rigid as the dance progressed to show control rather than as a way to thumb the collective nose at the British. Although the arms are rigid, it is very obvious that the dancer is moving.

i dont think dancing has ever been outlawed in ireland but they are clever the irish

Part legend, part true. So, it is true that the Irish would use hardshoe dancing as a code and it is true that at one point, Irish dancing was illegal (but it wasn't always enforced, because the people enforcing it went through periods of indulging in Celtic Culture themselves). The British tried to de-Irish-ize the Irish as much as possible. Some of it was plain traditional. The reason that they don't use arms has two explanations that have passed through oral traditions, and some believe that it depends on which region of Ireland some say it's a combination. If you watch Scottish highland dancers, they use their arms in very specific ways. Irish dancing USED to do that. However, when the Irish became Catholic instead of Druidist, things changed. The Irish wouldn't use their arms because it was a form of worship. God would be their arms, so they didn't need them. Catholic Irish dancing was originally a Sabbath activity--glorying in that the English couldn't get at them on the Sabbath. The reason that Irish dancers are so stiff above the waist is because the parish priests forbade them from dancing above the waist. That was suggestive dancing. It was only pure if it was the waist and lower. So there you go.