The Gathering

This weekend was The Gathering 2009 in Edinburgh (pronounced Ed-in-burr-a). This is a part of an event called Homecoming 2009, where all people of Scottish heritage are invited to come home. The event launched in June and will finish at the end of November. The Gathering 2009 is just one of the events being held. For Saturday (today) and Sunday, the highland games are held in Edinburgh, along with Highland dancing, pipe bands, traditional food and a clan village. I visited the clan village and found the Stewarts, but was a little disappointed. There were no actual Scottish Stewarts at my tent, it was a bunch of people working for the Stewart Society. These people make the royal line of the Stewarts their life and manned the tent. No one was even wearing our tartan. The man I spoke to was very helpful when it came to tips in looking up the genealogy of my family. Do I actually descend from the royal Stewart line? Probably not. Stewart was a common name and my people were probably goat farmers for all I know. But the man, from Seattle no less, pointed me in the right direction if I ever wanted to really get serious about finding my roots.

We watched some of the highland dancing, but after a while it all looks the same. There isn't a whole lot of room for creativity in highland dancing. But I do have to say that I could never jump and kick the way these girls did. The Highland games was probably my favorite part. We only saw a few events, but they were the caber toss, weight throw, tug o war, and the stones of strength. The Caber toss is where a long log is to be picked up and thrown. And by long, I mean a telephone pole has to be picked up and thrown into the air. Weight throw is like the shot put, but not quite. A weight is attached to a handle and short chain, which is to be swung around a few times then thrown. Tug o war is pretty self explanatory. The stones of strength is not. Basically the way its set up is you have five whiskey barrels, which are about four feet high give or take, and then in front of them on the ground are huge round boulders. The task is to pick up the stones and carry them to the barrel and place it on top. The history behind this particular event is that in order for a boy to become a man of his clan he had to complete this task and then he would be given a feather to place in his cap signifying his manhood. Only a few of the competitors were able to complete all five stones. Most could only do four.

At the beginning of this week I will be writing papers, so nothing of interest there, but after Wednesday, it will be busy. I hope to keep updating regularly.