I first came across the term ceilidh when I was living in the far North of Scotland. It was pretty much as Jim Carroll described, an evening's entertainment with singing, piping and other music, dialect recitations (It was an English Speaking area) etc. There was no general dancing but there was some display dancing by individuals or small groups. In effect it was the local community entertaining itself with people getting up on stage and doing their "party piece". A friend of my who was elsewhere in Scotland at the same time said his experience was of sitting round the room and everyone taking a turn doing some performance - a bit like a singaround. Again dancing was not a major feature, it was mostly singing and instrumental music.

I then came across the term in England 20 years later and was confused because what I saw was a social dance. In fact it was about the time I moved to Teesside and at that time similar events were as likely to be called "Barn Dances" and on a number of occasions ones I went to were actually held in barns.

Over the subsequent years, the term "ceilidh" seems to have taken over from "barn dance" to describe a social dance based on English Traditional dance forms.

I got this from the home page of forum devoted to "English Ceilidh": http://www.compulink.co.uk/~net-services/ec/

"English Ceilidh" is a dance type derived from traditional English dance, with emphasis on stepping and style rather than complexity. It is always danced rather than walked and should be be distinguished from "Social Dances", "Playford" and "Dancers Dances" where complexity of figure is more important than the step.

Another website that describes the English version is: http://www.webfeet.org/eceilidh/Overview.html

A website that seems to describe the Scottish meaning of the term is: www.siliconglen.com/Scotland/10_2.html. Unfortunately I could not persuade it to load. The server seems to be down at the moment.

Geoff