According to a book about Irish music I've been reading recently there is no native Irish word for 'dance' and a word meaning 'dance' has never been found in any Irish manuscript.
'Damhsa' is (clearly) a borrowing from French or English and 'rinnce' (which I had assumed was a native word) is apparently actually from the English 'rink'.

It's difficult to believe that the ancient Irish either (a)were completely unfamiliar with the act of dancing, or (b) simply had no word for it.


The Calvanists in Scotland discouraged dancing for some time, perhaps the early Christians in Ireland had similar feelings about it and actually succeeded in completely banishing it! Just an idea that occurred to me.

It is altogether possible that the original Irish words have been replaced by words of foreign derivation. That has certainly happened a lot in English.
"Póg", Irish for kiss, is said to have been derived from Latin "osculum pacis" ("kiss of peace".) I'm sure that the Irish kissed before they adopted Christianity. I have been assured by a fluent Gaeilgeoir that there is no straightforward word in Irish for sexual intercourse, but we can be sure they did that too.
I think I've read the same book.

I have a vague recollection of reading somewhere that dance was not originally considered a separate activity, being part of a ritual, or music or whatever.

The DIL entry on dán has it also meaning music and dance.

http://www.dil.ie/results-list.asp?mode=BAS&Fuzzy=0&searchtext=dance&findlet=+&f indcol=&sortField=ID&sortDIR=65602&respage=0&resperpage=10&bhcp=1

That may be the reason.

Rinnce is only used in some places in Ireland - the derivation from rink seems a little strained though.

Of course, both Dance and Rink came from French into English...