Traveling Step for Reels: the Kemshóole

In Sketches relative to the history and theory, but more especially to the practice of dancing (Aberdeen, 1805), Scottish dancing master Francis Peacock describes the standard traveling step for Scotch reels:

Kemshóole, or Forward Step.-- This is the common step for the promenade, or figure of the Reel. It is done by advancing the right foot forward, the left following it behind: in advancing the same foot a second time, you hop upon it, and one step is finished. You do the same motions after advancing the left foot, and so on alternately with each foot, during the first measure of the tune played twice over...

This should look familiar to anyone familiar with nineteenth-century dance, as it is essentially the standard chassé step with a hop placed at the end.  Step-together-step-hop, with the feet turned.  Later English sources make the distinction explicit: "it is in fact a chassez concluding with a hop."  This is found identically in lists of reel steps in The Ball Room Annual (London, c1844) and Rudolph Radestock's The Royal Ball-Room Guide (London, c1877), which also note that it is a "forward step to perform the Reel figure with."  Peacock provides a Gaelic etymology for the term: "Cèumsiubhail, from Cèum a step, and siubhal, to glide, to move, to go on with rapidity."

At speed, the distinction between the Kemshóole and the chassé step is subtle to the point of invisible.  It is near-impossible for any trained dancer to avoid starting the step with a slight plié and rise, as in the temps levé step that precedes the chassé (as described by fellow Scot Alexander Strathy in Elements of the Art of Dancing, published in Edinburgh in 1822) and when doing a series of steps, the difference between a hop at the end of the step and a hop on the upbeat of the next step -- if Peacock actually made such a distinction, which is unclear -- is a fraction of a second.  At slower speeds, however, such as in strathspey tunes, the difference can be more marked. 

It is worth noting that another early nineteenth-century Scottish source, the 1818 manuscript Contre-Danses à Paris describes the chassé step for both quadrilles and reels with a temps levé of sorts ("rise on the right toe as the left passes") at the end of the step, rather than the beginning.  This is simply a less bouncy version of Peacock's step.

Both Peacock's "promenade" and the English "Reel figure" refer to the hey figure that forms half of a standard reel for three or four dancers.  A single Kemshóole step takes one measure and is counted "1&2&", so eight Kemshóole steps are used for the eight measures of the hey.

A final performance note from Peacock:

To give the step its full effect, you should turn the body a little to the left, when you go forward with the right foot, and the contrary way when you advance the left.

In other words, lead with the shoulder matching the lead foot.  The right foot is the standard starting foot for both men and women for most steps of the Regency era.