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Enjoy this curated selection of theme-related dances for celebrations and holidays, or find a dance associated with a special calendar day, or EVEN your own birthday!
The Penny Wedding, David Wilkie, 1818
Feb 12
Lost Penny Day
A Penny Wedding
Other Scottish Country Dances for this Day
Today's Musings, History & Folklore
"A penny for your dancing thoughts?"
Don’t lose your pennies today! Or rather, find one instead for good luck — and for extra good fortune, tuck a coin into the hand (or even the shoe) of a wedding couple as a blessing for prosperity.
Finally, increase your own luck with this lovely strathspey, which offers ample opportunity to display graceful traveling steps, poised turns, and elegant circles worthy of any Penny Wedding, a long-past traditional celebration.
For those who delight in historical glimpses of dance and festivity, The Penny Wedding (1818) by David Wilkie below remains one of Scotland’s best-known genre paintings.
Wilkie depicts a traditional “penny wedding,” a communal custom in which guests each contributed a small sum toward the cost of the feast — ensuring music, dancing, and refreshment for all. Though he had toured the Highlands shortly before painting it, the scene is geographically vague, and the figures wear slightly old-fashioned Lowland dress, suggesting a setting a generation earlier. Fiddler Niel Gow is placed in the scene with his tartan trews, providing the wedding music with the groom leading the tentative bride to the dance floor!
Across 18th- and 19th-century Scotland, wedding customs varied by region. In parts of the Highlands and northeast, friends might “blacken” the bride or groom with soot or flour before the ceremony — a boisterous ritual meant to ward off ill luck and prove the couple could endure life’s trials together. In Lowland parishes, the banns were proclaimed in kirk on three successive Sundays, white ribbons were worn as wedding favours, and in some areas a bannock was broken over the bride’s head as she crossed her new threshold to symbolize abundance.
Superstitions abounded: entering the kirk with the right foot first promised good fortune, rain on the wedding day foretold prosperity, and a coin in the bride’s shoe hinted that the household purse would never be empty!
So keep on eye out for any lost, new, or old pennies today, coins may be a thing of the past soon. And we all need to increase our luck! ❤️ 🤎 ❤️ 💒 💍 👰♂️ 🤵
A Penny Wedding
Penny weddings, a Scottish tradition, were joyous yet frugal celebrations where guests contributed food, drink, and entertainment rather than the couple shouldering the full expense. These gatherings, often lively affairs with music and dancing, provided an opportunity for community participation and goodwill. In literature, penny weddings serve as rich settings that highlight themes of social class, romance, and communal bonds. Sir Walter Scott, for instance, references them in his works to showcase Scottish customs and the blending of different social strata through merrymaking.
Sir Walter Scott references penny weddings in his novel The Fortunes of Nigel (1822). In Chapter 37, a character remarks, "Vera true, vera true—we'll have a' to pay, I doubt, less or mair—a sort of penny-wedding it will prove, where all men contribute to the young folk's maintenance, that they may not have just four bare legs in a bed together." This reflects the communal nature of such events, where guests contribute to support the newlyweds. Scott's inclusion of this tradition underscores his interest in Scottish customs and the social dynamics they entail.
For more Scottish genre paintings, click another famous painting of Scottish dancing at a wedding, David Allan's "A Highland Wedding", 1780!
Click the dance cribs or description below to link to a printable version of the dance!
