22nd Annual Texas Scottish Festival

[Morris at Heathfield]

The 22nd Annual Texas Scottish Festival was held on June 6-8, 2008. I attended on Saturday the 7th from about 11am to nearly 10pm. This is the first Highland games I had been to since I attended the games in Campbell, California, some time around 1990. I came armed with a digital camera, and I ended up taking quite a few pictures.

Disclaimers: It's my intent to post the photos in chronological order, more or less. If a picture is out of order, I may or may not note the fact. If you really want to know, you can tell where it fits by the first four numerals in the image's filename (which you can find by right-clicking and selecting "Properties"). Any caption that includes quotation marks may not be an actual quote of something I overheard. It may not even be an actual paraphrase. In some cases I may name people according to the tartan they're wearing. Of course, that does not necessarily mean it's their actual surname.



This is where the games took place: Maverick Stadium on the University of Texas, Arlington campus. I took this photo in the late afternoon. I wondered why the football field was left pretty much empty, but I suppose they wanted to keep the other entertainment away from this tent so as not to distract the Highland dancers, the solo pipers, and the Scottish country dancers.



One of the first things I saw on entering the stadium. The Celtic Craft Centre offers this bit of helpful advice from the January 2007 Tartan Herald: If you're ever on Edinburgh's Royal Mile you can obtain a 100% genuine Pakistani acrylikilt for a very low price. These kilts are easily identifiable by the tags with the Celtic knotwork border which read "Scottish Highland Kilt - Authentic Woven Tartan - Designed in Scotland". Acrylic is a fabric that is superior to wool in almost every respect. The only drawback is its unfortunate tendency to spontaneously burst into flames. (Okay, so I'm just "paraphrasing" here. )



The North Texas Caledonians holding up traffic near the the vendors' tents. I first saw them perform at a firefighter piper symposium in Lewisville a month or so back. I thought they were wearing the Mackenzie tartan at the time, but I soon learned better: it's the Robertson Hunting. (Actually, one of the Caledonians was wearing the Ulster [not red] tartan, and one was wearing the Campell [ancient] at the time, but I didn't see any Caledonians out of uniform on Saturday.)

These aren't all the pictures I have, by any means. I will post more as time permits.