65. Blacktown Arms

Forget about the Dark Town Strutters’ Ball, if you want to have a ball, The Blacktown, halfway between Ederney and Castlederg, is just the place. Now you won’t find Blacktown on a map, nor will you find it at all if you are looking for a small town or village, because Blacktown is nothing more than the pub and its car park.

Indeed, once you have tracked it down, you’ll find it looks very ordinary from the outside, and you may wonder what can be so special about the bar, midway between here and there. Well, the fact that half of its generous floor space is taken up by a dance floor is the first clue, and for the rest of the answer you could go down there on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday evening.

The secret of the Blacktown Arms is that here you’ll find all the old-time dances, and a few more besides, going on as healthily as at the height of their popularity in the heyday of your grandfather or even great grandfather.

Highlands, kick polkas, corn rigs, set dances, and the now almost extinct clap dance are the order of the day, danced by young and old, male and female, Protestant and Catholic, locals and visitors. It’s not in the least unusual here to find a teenage girl dancing with a seventy-year-old grandfather, or two sprightly male pensioners executing to perfection together the complicated clap dance.

The Blacktown Arms is the meeting place of the entire area for miles around for a social evening.
You may take time off from wondering at the skill and expertise of the dancers to admire the Killarney trap wheels, suspended from the ceiling, or the collection of antique dinner plates including valuable willow-pattern ones, or the strange-looking stoneware bottles dug up from a bog by a digger-driver and presented to the owner or even the display of hunting and carriage horns. chances are, though, that once you get involved in the music and dancing, your surroundings will cease to matter.

There’s no friendlier place so if you are interested at all in old, rare unusual dancing strut along to the Blacktown Arms, and dance the night away or just sit and enjoy seeing it done by those half or perhaps twice your age.