I've just taken delivery of an Ebay purchase: European Folk Dance by Joan Lawson first published in 1953. I've not had a chance to sit down and get into it but have seen that Wales has only been given about a page and a half. Here are some of the things she has written.

"The Welsh are a nation of singers, whose tunes are echoed by Breton, Scot and Irishman. Yet few Welsh tunes have a dancing rhythm, for they are predominantly solemn and sad, and today there are in Wales few traces of the dances that were once shared with other Celtic peoples. This solemnity and lack of dance tradition is explained bye the religious influences that have always dominated the lives of the Welsh."

"The most important of these occurred in the eighteenth century when certain Welshmen promoted an educational and religious mission among the illiterate peasants, their aim being to teach them to read the Bible and thereby save their souls. These leaders had a particularly strong influence where dance is concerned, for they gave the Welsh such a puritanical outlook that many old people, whose memory of the dances might have helped research workers, firmly believed that, should they show any dance steps to the outside world, they would be condemned to eternal damnation. This attitude to the dance has so far prevented any attempts at a revival of Welsh Folk dance from being successful."

So was traditional dancing in Wales dealt a death blow by religious fundamentalism? Has any Welsh dance style survived (Joan Lawson mentions Llanover Reel and Rhif Wyth as being preserved by Lady Llanover)? Is there much attempt at reviving old Welsh dances?

Interested to hear your thoughts.