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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!
Sep 12
Blackberry Day
Blackberry Bush
Other Scottish Country Dances for this Day
Today's Musings, History & Folklore
"My berries cluster black and thick
For rich and poor alike to pick.
I’ll tear your dress, and cling, and tease,
And scratch your hands and arms and knees.
I’ll stain your fingers and your face,
And then I’ll laugh at your disgrace.
But when the bramble-jelly’s made,
You’ll find your trouble well repaid."
~ The Blackberry Fairy, Cicely Mary Barker, 1927
Yum, yum! September 12th marks Blackberry Day, a traditional berry-picking celebration tied to the time when blackberries typically reach their peak ripeness in the English Midlands.
This 32-bar reel for 4 couples, devised by John W. Mitchell, keeps all couples busy, as if meandering around bramble canes looking for perfectly ripe blackberries!
Modern varieties of blackberries, including many delicious hybrids, add even more flavors to the mix. One such example is the Tayberry, a Scottish cross between a blackberry and a red raspberry. In the U.S., tasty offshoots include the Ollalieberry—a blend of the Black Logan blackberry and the Youngberry (itself a combination of blackberry, raspberry, and dewberry)—and the Marionberry, a cross between the California blackberry, loganberry, and Ollalieberry.
Blackberry brambles have also found their way into British and Celtic fairy lore. Tangled hedgerows, thickets, and wild boundaries were often regarded as liminal places where the everyday world brushed against the supernatural, making them just the sort of places where fairies might be encountered. Some traditions also echo the old countryside custom of not taking every last fruit, but leaving a few berries behind for the fairies, wildlife, and other unseen inhabitants of the hedgerows.
According to British folklore, it’s important to gather your blackberries before Old Michaelmas Day, also known as “Devil’s Spit Day,” on October 10th—the traditional last day for blackberry picking before they’re said to be spoiled (in varying unmentionable ways) by evil spirits! 😈
However, this namesake reel and tune, with its traditional figures, will never spoil!
Bring a basket of berries or a blackberry pie or tart to your next dance class, wear your favorite purples or purple tartan (some lucky dancers are even known by their purple ghillies!), and mind those purple berry stains! 🕺 💃 💜 💜 💜 🖤 🫐 🫐 🫐 🧚♀️ 🧚 😈
Blackberry Bush
Blackberry, Bramble, Bumble-Kite, Bramble-Kite, Bly, Brummel, Brameberry, Scaldhead, and Brambleberry ... whatever name you use for these delicious berries, September 12th is Blackberry Day, a traditional berry picking day.
The name of this dance comes from the traditional tune of the same name.
The Tayberry (see photo below) is a cross between a blackberry and a red raspberry, patented in 1979 by Derek L. Jennings of Dundee, Scotland, and named after the river Tay.
The fruit is sweeter, much larger, and more aromatic than that of the loganberry, itself a blackberry and red raspberry cross. The tayberry is grown for its edible fruits which can be eaten raw or cooked, but the fruit do not pick easily by hand and cannot be machine harvested, so they have not become a commercially grown berry crop.
Tayberries have a naturally high level of pectin, so they're perfect for jam and pie fillings.
So if you are harvesting your blackberries today (or before Devil's Spit Day, reckoned on either Michaelmas (September 29th) or Old Michaelmas (October 10th), when blackberries are no longer deemed to be safe, having been fouled by the Devil), and are looking for recipes, try the perfect late summer desert, Michaelmas Blackberry Dumplings, from Lavender & Lovage.
Folklore in the British Isles suggests that Michaelmas day (or old Michaelmas Day, October 10th or 11th) is the last day that blackberries can be picked. It is said that when St. Michael expelled Lucifer, the devil, from heaven, he fell from the skies and landed in a prickly blackberry bush. Satan cursed the fruit, scorched them with his fiery breath, and stamped and spat on them (or worse), so that they would be unfit for eating. As it is considered ill-advised to eat them after 29 September, a Michaelmas pie is made from the last of the season.
Click the photo below for the recipe.
Click the dance cribs or description below to link to a printable version of the dance!
