Talk:List of Scottish country dances

Dynamic list
There are more than 12.000 Scottish country dances around, and their number is growing almost daily. Adding them all here would be an exercise in futility; it would be a much more worthwhile effort to improve the DanceData database instead, which brings dance information together with information on music, recordings, publications, dance devisers and musicians, and is freely available in various forms.

As this list stands, it is a completely arbitrary collection of a few dances, most of which are in no way exceptional or indeed link to elsewhere in Wikipedia. &mdash; Anselm 23:50, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I just had a quick flip through an old copy of the wee green book, and added some dances that jumped off the page at me, either exceptional or well-known, I don't know. Naturally, from that source, not all dances are RSCDS ones. Mostly more red links... __Just plain Bill 15:00, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Dances or dance tunes?
The list is a mixture of dances and dance tunes, mainly the latter, which makes the title misleading. Mutt Lunker 22:26, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I've just taken out a bunch of dances that are not country dances (mostly ceilidh dances). As of now, all the names in the list actually refer to country dances. (It turns out that many dances take their name from their recommended music, so to a musician without a background in Scottish country dancing the list may seem like a list of tunes.) Anselm 13:17, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Country dances only, please
This is a list of Scottish country dances, not ceilidh dances. Please refrain from adding dances that aren't country dances, such as The Gay Gordons. Country dances usually involve more than one couple in a longwise set (other shapes like squares and circles do exist but are much rarer). If you are in doubt whether a dance is a country dance, check the DanceData database mentioned elsewhere on the page, or ask. Anselm 13:17, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

OK - I am in doubt. What are the defining characteristics of a Scottish country dance? The Captain's Caper, deleted from this list a while back, is danced each year at the Skye Gathering. 45ossington (talk) 15:46, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

A selection of core dances
I think I'll chop down the list to those that either are notable and point somewhere or else are in 'A selection of core dances' from the RSCDS. Dmcq (talk) 23:02, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I also left any which have been in at least 1 in 100 dances out of a database of 500 of dance programmes in the London area (about 20 dances per programme), this came to about 300 dances. I'll have a look at the top 60, these have occurred in 1 in 10 programmes and so are very frequently danced. Dmcq (talk) 00:21, 1 January 2010 (UTC)