I don't think I agree with a rigadoo being a dance. To me, it seems to make a lot more sense as a backpack. My choir is singing "The Little Beggarman", which is why I'm interested in this.

One of the lines is "So all along the road with my bag upon my back/over the fields with my bulging heavy sack/with holes in my shoes and my toes a-peeping through/singing skin-a-ma-rink-a-doodle with my auld rigadoo." To me it seems as if he's focusing exclusively on his backpack, and singing as he travels. It would make sense to me that he would tie in his memories of homelessness with a material object, instead of of a dance.

Another quote is "...but to slip around the corner with his auld rigadoo." To slip around a corner while dancing doesn't seem very easy to do, and it would be easier if he just had a knapsack upon his back.

Also, on urbandictionary.com, a rigadoo is the shopping cart that a lot of homeless people push around. This could be a modern form of a poor man's knapsack back then.

Any part of the song where the word 'rigadoo' is mentioned, it just seems to make more sense as a backpack then as a dance. Hope I've convinced some of you guys.

Fsh