Failte Oirbh La Mor a' Chlachain

When you're a MacNeil of Barra, they start you young on the music.

Over the hill we came and then across a little cable ferry that could carry just six cars at a time. We passed through villages with their names in the Gaelic, tucked away in the Bras d'Or Lake of Cape Breton. This is Scotland in miniature – and because it it so condensed so is the culture. It's thick with the clans.

We climbed the hill to the 50^th anniversary of Highland Village Days in the village of Iona.

And, oh, what a sight and sound mosaic we found. The Gaelic in the headline of today's blog means “Welcome to Highland Village Days”.

The McLeans were here, as well as the Mackenzies and the MacDonalds, and the Gillises and McLeods of Dunvegan. The MacNeils of Barra, dozens of them, were all there, along with the Campbells and the McKinnons and most of these folks spoke the Gaelic as either a first or second language. An old woman sat beside us on the hill and she only spoke the Gaelic.

We were surrounded, enveloped, in a cocoon of Scottish fiddle music, pipes, piano, supportive guitars as well as Scotland's mouth music, which is known usually as a-capella. What a feast for the ears and for the soul of a Scot. We settled in for four hours of joyous sound and sights.

The presenter of the various groups slid effortlessly between the Gaelic and English as he explained the roots of each group. “Cuirm-chiuil Ghaidhealach bho 1962” which means “a Cape Breton tradition since 1962”. He also had the skills necessary to fill while the sound man re-miked the stage so the different acts could be heard well. The presenter, Joe Murphy was his name, had the skill to launch into Gaelic mouth music – singing in the old language while he maintained repartee between the members of the audience who enjoyed heckling him in the Gaelic.

We watched the MacNeil family – mom and dad and their four daughters – as they sang, fiddled and played the piano. The youngest of the family, perhaps two years old, held a tiny fiddle with her feet and sawed away until she got bored. Then she crawled over to mom on the piano and mom deftly picked her up onto her lap. The kid then placed her hands atop mom's and “played” along with mom to the delight of the crowd.

Iona is the home of a Highland Village re-enactment from the 1840s. It is celebrating 50 years of supporting the culture. Below the Iona Village Center was the Rankin School where children can choose the Gaelic or French as their second language. A group of the kids entertained us with waulking songs in which they imitated the ancestors in sitting around a wooden table, working the wool whiling singing in the old language.

When I watched a Campbell, a MacDonald and a MacNeil take the stage and play together it flashed me back to days in tribal Namibia when I despaired at the tribalism of that country. But I made peace with it in the full knowledge that I had come from just such a tribal society – perhaps we all have - where the clans of Scotland defined lives for hundreds of generations. Back, 320 years ago, the Campbells had betrayed the MacDonald to the English in Glencoe and that resulted in a massacre that still is remembered. But here was a Campbell and a MacDonald playing tunes together. If they can do that, surely the Oshiwambo and the Damara of Namibia can find their way to work together, I thought.

We drove home with the golden sunlight sparkling on the lake. What a day it was.

Now we drive across Cape Breton to the west coast – it's only a short distance – where we will camp on the water's edge and explore more of this rich culture. I feel as though I have come home.