Highland Games – A Brief History
When celebrating in times of peace, one of the Highlanders’ favorite pastimes was the tainchel. This “great hunt” often included several clans that would venture out into the mountains and begin driving the red deer and other animals into a gradually tightening circle. Soon the animals were driven off the mountains and through the passes where the waiting armed huntsmen would make the kills.
After such a successful hunt, a great feast and celebration would follow. The rival clansmen would relax by testing each other’s prowess at various sports — such as running, jumping, wrestling or primitive forms of weight putting with stones — and enjoy piping and dancing to demonstrate their agility. These relaxations were, in effect, the forerunners of the modern Highland games.
Are you Scottish? – Try the Official Scottish Genealogy Search.
Do you have an Scottish name? Here are the most common Scottish last names:BoothBurnsCampbellFraserRobertsonMacGregorMcDonaldMacPhersonMcEwanWallace
Famous Poems
Wha’s Like Us, Damn Few an’ they’re a’ Died
The average Englishman in the home he call his castle slips into his national costume, a shabby raincoat, patented by Chemist Charles Macintosh from Glasgow, Scotland.
En-route to his office he strides along the English lane, surfaced by John Macadam of Ayr, Scotland.
He drives an English car fitted with tyres invented by John Boyd Dunlop, Veterinary Surgeon of Dreghorn, Scotland.
At the office he receives the mail bearing adhesive stamps invented by John Chalmers, Bookseller and Printer of Dundee, Scotland.
During the day he uses the telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland. At home in the evening his daughter pedals her bicycle invented by Kirkpatrick Macmillan, Blacksmith of Thornhill, Dumfriesshire, Scotland.
He watches the news on television, an invention of John Logie Baird of Helensburgh, Scotland, and hears an item about the U.S. Navy founded by John Paul Jones of Kirkbean, Scotland.
Nowhere can an Englishman turn to escape the ingenuity of the Scots.He has by now been reminded too much of Scotland and in desperation he picks up the Bible, only to find that the first man mentioned in the good book is a Scot, King James VI, who authorized its translation.
He could take to drink but the Scots make the best in the world.
He could take a rifle and end it all, but the breech-loading rifle was invented by Captain Patrick Ferguson of Pitfours, Scotland.
If he escaped death, he could find himself on an operating table injected with penicillin, discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming of Darvel, Scotland, and given chloroform, an anesthetic discovered by Sir James Young Simpson, Obstetrician and Gynecologist of Bathgate, Scotland.
Out of the anesthetic he would find no comfort in learning that he was as safe as the Bank of England founded by William Paterson of Dumfries, Scotland.
Perhaps his only remaining hope would be to get a transfusion of guid Scottish blood which would entitle him to ask:
“Wha’s Like Us?”
