Dance The Triumph 6748

“The Triumph” is another dance title about which, from the distance of time, one can only theorise. There are few clues and even the dates given could be considered suspect. However, two ideas may be put forward as totally original thinking.

As to the date of the dance itself, it has been said that “The Triumph” was introduced in 1808 by Nathaniel Gow, son of the composer-fiddler Niel Gow. In 1818 it appeared in a Parisian ballroom guide along with four other popular Scottish dances. This does not mean that the dance was French, but, rather, that it had been brought to Paris prior to 1818. J. P. Boulogne, a French dancing master working in Glasgow, included it in his 1827 collection called The Ballroom. The actual music of the dance is somewhat older, known perhaps in the latter half of the 18th century, for the tune was to be found in a collection by James Aird which was published in Glasgow in six volumes between 1782 and 1803. This serves to emphasise the fact that, as a rule, the music came before the dances.

The first theory to be advanced is that the dance celebrates an historic event. Chambers New Compact Dictionary gives as one definition of “triumph”, “in ancient Rome, a procession in honour of a victorious general”. That definition plus the earliest dates of “The Triumph” would seem to indicate that the dance celebrated a victory or an event during the Napoleonic Wars. After all, Bars 13–16 of the dance specify that “All three lead up the middle in triumph”, certainly a triumphal arch having been formed. The earliest date, 1808, would point to an observance of the battle of Trafalgar on 21 October, 1805, in which the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Nelson, from his flagship Victory, defeated the French naval force. It was a great victory, indeed, but unhappily an engagement in which Lord Nelson lost his life. (See “Admiral Nelson”) If the later date, 1818, is more acceptable, the dance would seem to celebrate any triumph of the British and their allies over Napoleon Bonaparte. This would stretch the period from Trafalgar to the crossing of the Pyrenees in 1813 by Lieutenant General Viscount Wellington at the successful conclusion of the Peninsular War, to the triumphant entry into Paris by the allies on 30 March, 1814, and the exile of Napoleon to Elba or, even, to the terminal defeat of the French at Waterloo on 18 June, 1815, under the leadership of the then Duke of Wellington and the Prussian Field Marshal General Prince von Blücher. The Iron Duke commanded the army of occupation in Paris from 1815 to 1818 and “The Triumph” could indeed have been brought to Paris by the British posted there at the time.

The second theory is based entirely upon a physical aspect of the dance, a position, chiefly, of the arms of the dancers. On Bars 13–16 the two men with the lady between them have joined hands with her, the lady having crossed her arms to give her left hand to her partner and her right hand to the second man, both men having raised their free arms to form an arch “as high as possible over the lady’s head”. They then “lead up the middle in triumph”. This positioning, the design formed by the dancers, is the same as a head-on view of a “crown steeple”. In Scotland this feature of Gothic architecture can be seen atop St. Giles’ Church in Edinburgh, King’s College Chapel in Aberdeen and the Tolbooth in Glasgow. There was formerly such Gothic ornamentation on the top of St. Michael’s Church at Linlithgow but it was removed in 1820. A crown steeple or lantern tower is found in England only on St. Nicholas’ Church at Newcastle-upon-Tyne and there it has been referred to as “a triumph”.