Highland Games
Highland games are festivals held throughout the year in Scotland and many other countries of the world as a way of celebrating Scottish and Celtic culture and heritage, especially that of the Scottish Highlands. Certain aspects of the games are so well known as to have become emblematic of Scotland, such as the bagpipes, the kilt, and the heavy events, especially the caber toss. While centered around competitions in piping and drumming, dancing, and Scottish heavy athletics, the games also include entertainment and exhibits related to other aspects of Scottish and Gaelic culture.
History
Games in the Highlands of Scotland
It is reported in numerous books and Highland games programs, that King Malcolm Canmore, in the 11th century, summoned contestants to a foot race to the summit of Craig Choinnich (overlooking Braemar)[1]. Some have seen in this alleged event the origin of today's modern Highland games[2].
Revival . . . or invention?
Following the repeal of the Act of Proscription, various Highland Societies, beginning in the 1780s, began to organize around attempts to retain or revive Highland traditions. It was these early efforts that eventually led to the Highland Games as we know them today.
This modern revival of the Highland games received an enormous boost with the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822, although events were held in the years just prior to that. In 1819, for example, the St. Fillans Society organized a full scale Highland games with piping, dancing, and athletics and the Northern Meeting Society's Highland Games - the forerunner of The City of Inverness Highland Games - was first held in 1822.
In the 1840s, in Braemar, Games began as a fund raising effort by local artisans to support a "Friendly Society" and their charitable activities. Soon thereafter, Queen Victoria who, together with her consort Prince Albert, had made Balmoral Castle their special retreat, began to patronize the Games. The Queen first attended the Braemar Games in 1848 and the following year, they were moved to the grounds of the Castle itself. Later, in 1868, the first in a series of "Highland Memoirs" excerpted from Victoria's Journals, would be published.
Together with the earlier 1822 event, Queen Victoria's patronage of the Games constituted one of the most significant factors in the popularization of the Games and what some have called the Highlandification of Scotland.
Among better-known games in Scotland are the ones held at Braemar, Inverness, Cowal, Lonach, Ballater and Aboyne. The Aboyne games have been running since 1867 without a break apart from the two world wars.
In the latter part of the 19th century, the Highland games played a role in the development of the Olympic movement. As part of his efforts to organize the first games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin visited a number of athletic competitions in order to determine which sports should be included in the forthcoming Olympic Games, to standardize rules, and to examine the technical aspects of running such a competition. Among the events he visited for this purpose were a Highland Games event organized in conjunction with the Paris Exhibition of 1889. That event, in addition to what we today would call track and field events, also contained wrestling, tug-of-war, cycling, as well as competition in piping and dancing.[3]
Notes
- ↑ For a modern day fictional account of this event, see The origins of the Braemar Games Hill Race, by Les Wheeler
- ↑ The interested reader can consult any number of Highland games web sites, many of which contain a brief sketch on the history of the Highland games themselves. Most will mention this hill climb, some referring to it as a story or legend, others as if it were an established fact and going from there to state just as matter-of-factly that the Highland games as we know them today can be traced back to or owe their origins to this hill climb event. As just one example (among many), the program (and web site) of the Pacific Northwest Highland Games states: "One of the first Highland games was held towards the end of the eleventh century, when King Malcolm Canmore . . ." going on from there to recount the story of the hill climb. Webster, in Scottish Highland Games, is not so certain. He recounts the story, labelling it as story, or legend only. Thomas Owen Clancy and Barbara E. Crawford, in the Bibliographical essay to chapter 2 (The Formation of the Scottish Kingdom) of The New Penguin History of Scotland state: "Little of significance has been written about the eleventh century kingdom otherwise, except on the dispute over the reliability of the early documentary sources. . .".
- ↑ The web site of the International Wrestling Association reports rather more expansively on the role of the 1889 Paris event and its effect on the development of the Olympics, considering it to have had a "huge impact" on world sport. An article published in 2004 in the Christian Science Monitor points to two other events, including that of Much Wenlock, a small English village in Shropshire, as being of major importance.