Happy St Andrew’s Day 2015

St Andrew’s Ball’s have been celebrated around the world since the nineteenth century, with a few earlier examples pointing to the ball’s roots. I have written about these balls in detail – in fact, an image of a St Andrew’s Ball is on the cover of my last book. It was, therefore, a particular pleasure for me to finally attend a ball, namely that of the Hong Kong St Andrew’s Society. This ball was amongst the largest balls in the world, easily attracting well over 1,000 guests in the late nineteenth century. In 1886, the annual St Andrew’s Day ball was, as the China Mail noted, one of great sociability, with an illustrious round of guests gathered at the City Hall. This had been superbly decorated for the occasion. The exterior of the Hall, for instance, had been illuminated by ‘gas jets arranged in the form of the familiar Gaelic welcome’, lighting up the front of the building. On the staircase, ‘[p]rominent above everything stood the word “Caledonia”‘.  Inside, in the ante-room, a ‘gigantic St Andrew’s cross’ had been created, while the theatre was set up as a supper room for guests. At half-past nine, H.E. the Acting Governor the Hon W.H. Marsh arrived at the ball with his wife, and was welcomed by the Hon. Mr Ryrie, the St Andrew’s Society’s President. As was common at the time, greetings were wired to Scots celebrating St Andrew’s Day elsewhere, including ‘to the Scots in Singapore, where the day was also celebrated by a Ball, and a reply was received during the supper reciprocating the greetings and expressing the hope that the Hongkong Scots were enjoying their haggis.’

1886 St Andrew’s Ball in Hong Kong; cut from a larger print in The Graphic, 26 February 1887.*

• St Andrew’s Day and the Scots in British East Africa
• The global saint: St Andrew’s Day in the Scottish Diaspora
• Celebrating St Andrew’s Day in the Far East