25th Annual Texas Scottish Festival

[Morris at Heathfield]

The 25th annual Texas Scottish Festival & Highland Games took place on June 3-5, 2011. I was there on Saturday the 4th from about 9:30 AM to about 9:00 PM. This is the second Highland games I have attended kilted, the other being the Salado games in 2009. I attended the Salado games, however, as a drummer in a pipe band. These games I attended on my own, and it's really the first time I've gone out in public kilted and not to a gig—albeit still to a very "safe" venue.

As most of what I had to wear is secondhand pipe band regalia, well, that's what I wore: my Inverness tartan kilt and cheap hunting-style sporran, black Argyll waistcoat, and white piper hose with Inverness tartan flashes. Jock Scot will no doubt be relieved to hear that, although I considered wearing either my diced Glengarry bonnet or tweed flat cap to complete the outfit, I ultimately decided to go bareheaded. Furthermore, although the band wears ghillie brogues, I have never been issued a pair, so I wore black dress shoes. I wore a white T-shirt instead of the collared shirt the band normally wears. The problems I mentioned in this thread have since been solved, more or less. I haven't had any problems with my garters sliding down or coming unclasped since I posted that thread, despite walking around for most of the day on Saturday. Also, on Memorial Day I was issued a pair of Custom LeatherCraft #110 suspenders, which have done the job well. I wear the kilt almost up to my armpits, and the selvage hangs to mid-knee, which looks pretty funny. This is the main reason I wore a waistcoat with it to the games. But now it looks like my kilt has no fell. At least I was able to ditch my belt. I figured with suspenders and a waistcoat, I didn't really need it.



This is the venue: the University of Texas at Arlington's Maverick Stadium. UTA hasn't had a football team since 1985, but it uses the stadium for track & field events, and for hosting high school football games and other events, such as this one. I'm not terribly fond of the venue as a site for Highland games, but I guess it does the job. However, everything related to the Highland games occurs in a ring around the football field. This year there was absolutely nothing on the astroturf except occasional pedestrians taking a shortcut.



And these are (some of) the contestants. They're the reason we have the Highland games, supposedly.

Much more to come. To be continued...

[Morris at Heathfield]

As someone else mentioned on another thread, there wasn't much in the way of vendors of traditional Highland wear. Geoffrey (Tailor) wasn't there this year, and the Celtic Craft Centre is long gone. Scotland Forever was there as usual, as was St. Kilda. However, even Scotland Forever and St. Kilda were letting acrylic kilts take up a fair amount of their booth space. I didn't feel like taking acrylikilt pictures this year, and I hardly saw anything in the way of neckties, so I took relatively few pictures of vendor booths.



This is the St. Kilda vendor booth. It was staffed by a kilted man with a Scottish accent and a (billie) kilted woman with an American accent.



I spent considerable time looking through their swatch books. This is Morris of Wales, from their Welsh Tartan Centre swatch book.



And my frequent favorite, Angus muted, from the House of Edgar's medium weight district tartans collection.



Maybe not a vendor, exactly, but they did have CDs and other stuff for sale. I was initially confused as to the identity of the Ballantyne Memorial Pipe Band, but later found out it's essentially a wholly-owned subsidiary of the North Texas Caledonian Pipes & Drums.

There were also a number of vendors of jewelry, swords, Renaissance-Faire-style clothing, home improvement upgrades—you know, the sort of stuff you'd normally expect to see at the Highland games. One thing I saw very little of was books and CDs. That's probably just as well, though, as I had little money to spend.



I didn't care for most of the swords I saw. I only saw one jian, i.e. "Tai Chi sword", but was not terribly impressed.



I only saw one of this style of sword. No, not the "Link" sword: I saw at least two of those; the one with the brown leather grip. This one was very basic and, of course, not pattern-welded.

Just after I took this last shot, I was spotted by some people I knew from church—a mother and her two sons. I think that's the first time I randomly met someone I knew at the Highland games. (With X Markers the meeting is not so random. )

[Morris at Heathfield]

The Highland dancing was supposed to start at 9:30 AM, but it still hadn't started when I arrived. I believe this was the first dance of the day. Since the last games I attended (2009), I've noticed an increase in, uh, variety of skin tone among the wee lassies.

[Morris at Heathfield]

I didn't stick around the Highland dance tent for long, as I wanted to see the North Texas Caledonian Pipes & Drums perform. They had two performances of the day, one at 10:30 AM and one at 3:00 PM, but I had something else I planned to do at 3:00. So I went over to the "Glengarry Tent". On my way I spotted this fellow in a Kilmarnock bonnet, kilt in a lovely green, blue, and light gray tartan, and red-and-white checked cadadh. I later found out that he was Torf the Kiltmaker, and his kilt is in fact a WWI-vintage military box-pleated Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders kilt. He said that the warp and the weft threads were dyed in two different shades of gray, so I guess their lightness is not due to fading. It produces a very different effect than the standard Black Watch tartan one sees. Unfortunately, this is the best picture I have of the tartan.

[Morris at Heathfield]

I arrived at the Glengarry Tent during the first number. I didn't catch the title of the first number, but I wrote down the titles of the other eleven number on a piece of paper. Unfortunately I later misplaced the paper.



The North Texas Caledonian Pipes & Drums



A close-up of the drummers. I always try to catch the tenor drummers in mid-flourish.



They tune because they care. My band tunes as well, but normally only before performances, as I recall, and they don't use this fancy electronic equipment to do it.



Guest vocalist Lindy (I think her name was) singing "Flower of Scotland", accompanied by pipe major Don Shannon.



"When the Pipers Play", with the addition of Seamus Stout.



The NTCP&D and Seamus Stout perform the Chieftains' "An Dro".

[Morris at Heathfield]

This year I tried to capture a few of the things that give the Texas Scottish Festival its character. I've seen these wooden cutouts before but never bothered to photograph them. For some reason they caught my attention this year. Then again, for all I know they're used to decorate every Highland games in the South-Midwest. I know I've seen the same clan tartan flags used at Salado and the Cowtown Celtic Festival. Beyond the fence is the food court, which I haven't really subjected to my camera yet. Maybe next year.

[Chirs]

Nice. Thanks for the pictures.

[Morris at Heathfield]

The NTCP&D's performance over, I made my way back to the "Heritage Dance Tent" to continue watching the Highland dancing.



The only two adults I saw dancing, and one of them is male. Hmm...slightly tempting, but I don't know that I could withstand the rigors of Highland dance.



Blue and violet.



I believe I recognize the lassie in the Ross Hunting tartan from the 2008 games, but she seemed a lot smaller then.



I know I've seen the lassie in red at various Highland games before as well.



This pair of dancers gave me some nice pleat shots.



Wow. Highland dancing and kilt physics. I wonder if anyone's written a treatise on the subject.



This wee laddie got the loudest applause of all the dancers. What particularly impressed me is that he was wearing an Argyll jacket on such a day.

[mookien]

I enjoyed all the pictures - next best thing to being there.

Thanks for posting so many.

[Morris at Heathfield]

Before noon I made my way to the Lamont tent, where we had agreed to take the group photo. Some of the XMarkers I recognized from previous Highland games: kscaddo, medic78, ShaunMaxwell, and McMathTX. (Or am I only imagining that I've met McMathTX?) But more than half of the group I had never met in real life. I know that more than two cameras were used to take photos of the group while still posed, but mine wasn't among them. At some point Amy asked if anyone had a camera they wanted her to take a picture with, but I reacted too slowly. I compensated by taking this informal group photo.