An Exhaltation of Scotsmen

Mar is in Aberdeenshire on the northeast side of Scotland. Blue face is an option.

They came by the hundreds...men in blue faces, beautiful women with tartan and silk and white cotton dresses. And the skirling of the pipes and whirring drummers, swinging their drumsticks around their heads before bringing them down sharply and in syncopation. Brrrrrrrrr-uppppp!

Ah, it was a wondrous thing to step on the field in Dunedin and be enveloped in the sounds of Scotland.

This was the 48th Highland Games held in this town that has deep Scottish roots.

The kids are decked out in lion rampant flags. The Scottie dogs are wearing the kilt! Madness is all about. Many of the male participants are wearing the kilt. Some, tragically, are wearing tartan skirts. But they are not aware of this faux pas, I think. And a few hundred have taken to wearing the utility kilt, a khaki or black number that, I think , they think - mistakenly -  is more masculine.

Before Jo and I left our motorhome and drove the two miles to the gathering, I debated whether or not to wear my grandfather's kilt which he wore when he fought in World War I. But it is awesomely heavy - the kilt is triple-pleated and it takes 24 feet of material to build it. I thought I would melt in the 80-degree heat. So I wore shorts instead.

After making our way around the park and visiting the tents in the Clan Village (about 45 tents that lured you in to find your roots), we stopped by one of the food vans and I ordered my haggis and chips. Jo went for just fish and chips. Even after all these years, she still has not come around to an appreciation of the beauty that is haggis!

We sat with another couple and exchanged stories with them about our and their travels, since they, too, own a motorhome. I tried to explain a few of the more obscure points regarding the wearing of the kilt. Unless someone has issued a memo on decorum in the past 54 years, women NEVER wore the kilt in Scotland. It would be considered totally inappropriate for a woman to wear such a masculine piece of clothing. She would be encouraged to wear a tartan skirt - which would be pleated all around its circumference.

Alas, that distinction seems not to matter in 2014 in Dunedin!

And don't get me started about putting a dog into a kilt. My lord, what are we coming to. This clearly is a marker for the end of civilization as we know it!

It was a first, for me, to watch strapping women lift a 12-foot-high pine tree trunk and toss the caber. The object it to get the top part of the pole to hit the ground and then do a 180 degree spin. Very difficult. Only one of the ladies managed to pull off that feat.

Down the hill a ways, brawny men were throwing a sheaf of hay 79-80 feet into the air to get it over a bar. Astonishing to see these guys hoist that bale that high into the air. Alongside them, other men were throwing an iron weight (112 pounds, I believe) over a bar about 12 or 13 feet above their heads.

We stepped into the cool and air-conditioned building that housed the Scottish Country Dancers. A lone piper played as the young women and girls whirled and danced on the lightest of feet. It was a thing of beauty to watch these young people. As I  absorbed the sound and sight, my neurons fired up and I began recalling parts of an overly long poem, written by Scotland's beloved bard, Robbie Burns. In Tam O'Shanter, Burns tells the story of a drunken Scotsman who spends too much time drinking at the pub while his wife Jean sits at home "gathering her brows like the gathering storm, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm." Anyway, Tom heads off home on his grey mare Meg and he comes to the churchyard at Alloway Kirk. 

The sight he sees is ablaze with light, where a weird hallucinatory dance involving witches and warlocks, open coffins and even the Devil himself is in full swing. 

Tam manages to watch silently until, the dancing witches having cast off most of their clothes, he is beguiled by one particularly comely female witch, Nannie, whose shirt (cutty-sark) is too small for her. He cannot help shouting out in passion:

Weel done, Cutty-sark!

And in an instant all was dark:

 A hell-raising chase ensues and Tam escape with his life, but Nannie pulls the tail off his long-suffering Meg. And, strangely, this imagery came to my mind as I sat and watched and photographed the dancing girls.

Maybe it was the haggis playing games with my mind and body. But I could see Nannie in this picture that I grabbed: