SCOTLAND’S GLORIES.

Franklin Times, Volume 10, Issue 797, 5 January 1923, Page 5

SCOTLAND’S GLORIES.

A KILTED FESTIVAL, (From a Home Correspondent). Nearly a hundred! and fifty years ago a band of Scottish lairds ordained “that an annual meeting of Indies and gentlemen shall be held within the Royal burgh of Inverness not earlier, than Thursday and. Friday of the third week.in September.” To-day the Landed proprietors ol the counties of Banff, Caithness, Inverness and- Sutherland, and their wives,, sons and! daughters, as. weU as some of the ifolk north o. Spey, «ancl visiting celebrities are enjoying the balls and the Highland games instituted in I<BB. & Run down the list of members and you will find many of the mos. fam ous names in all broad Scotland. Lord Lovat, chief of the Erasers; Lochiel, chief of the Camerons ; and and Macintosh of Macintosh, chief of Clan head the list ot Highland gentlemen, which includes Brodies and Davidsons, Duffs *■ Grants, Munros and Sinclairs, and Macdonalds, Mackenzies, Macleod . and Macphersons who have wn.ten their names large m the his..oiy ot Caledonia. . .. , For a few days the .ancien- capital of the Highlands lifts its head as royally as in the days when i- sheltered Scottish kings. But not so picturesque the visitor s. More than a hunder.d years ago the Highland gentlemen foregathered m buff and grass-green coats with black velvet capes and black silken breeches. Now they make menry in kilted bravery. - By day they sit in the shade of the Hill of the Fairies, fir-clad fomnahurich, and listen to the wailing of the bagpipes in lament and piorochv, By night they “hooch t and “sweet” in the tangles of the eightsome ” in the local assembly rooms, as their fathers and father’s fathers did before them. By day Flora Macdonald with her faithful dog gazes wistfully from her perch on the Castle Hill cross the meeting ground to distant Skye. By night Jane Duchess of Gordon* who inaugurated the dances, popularly called “the Cock o’ the North,” smile down from their frames on the ballroom wall, I do not know a fairer sight by day and night ■ than the meetings. Framed in homespun and tartan, set in burnished trees with the mists curling hazily cross from Loch Ness, and the%altarnate sob and skirl of the bag-pipes, and the soft-voiced burr qf the Highlanders, the games play out the days: Studied with jewels and silken raiment, and checked with tartan, the dances occupy the night.. So once a year, does Inverness recapture the glory that was hers. only during the date war c|id she let the past suffice;/ With the Camerons and the Seaforths and the Argyll and Sutherlands were her kilted braves. The Inverness gathering is nothing without them.