OUTSIDE MANY A Scottish village, where the crossroads meet, there will be a level bit of ground lying in one of the triangles made by the intersection of the roads.
In the old days folk would be calling such a spot the dancing place, because it was the custom of the young lads and lasses of the neighborhood to gather there, to dance away the hours of a moonlit night. Generations of lively young feet trod down and packed the soil in these places, until the surface was as hard and smooth as stone. No fine laird and his lady could ever have found a grander floor to dance upon than a dancing place.
It was once in the summer twilight, a long, long time ago, that a company of young folk gathered at such a dancing place to foot it gaily, by the light of the moon.
They came from all directions; those from the village on foot, and those who lived farther away on crofts or farmsteads, riding their shaggy wee Highland ponies or upon their workaday mares. Some of the lads came riding with their lasses perched on their saddles behind them, and some of them came walking with their sweethearts on their arms. Their gay voices rose sweetly on the fresh breeze of the summer evening, and the sound of talk and laughter filled the air as the young folk met.
Those who came alone soon found partners, except for one lass who came stealing along from the village, at the end of the merry line. She did not join the others but sat herself down in the shadows cast by a hedge along the road.
The voices of the dancers provided the music for their dancing. Having neither pipe nor fiddle to mark the measures, they moved to the tunes of the songs they sang, and if the breath of some of them failed in the exertion of the dance, there were always enough of the singers to keep the song going until the laggards could take up the tune again.
The lass who sat under the hedge made no move to join in the fun. Word had been brought to her in the early springtime, some months before, that her lover had been drowned in the sea during the herring fishing, and she had made a vow never to sing or dance again all her whole life long.
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