As I walked onto the grounds of the sixty-third annual Scottish Gathering and Highland Games in Salado, I was greeted by acres of tartan and a lot of bagpipes. And I mean a lot of bagpipes.
The Scottish Gathering takes place on the second Saturday and Sunday of November and spreads across most of a Salado elementary school. About a dozen bagpipers paced around the playground, practicing and waiting for their turn in front of a judge. At first, the noise was brain-rattling, but I soon found myself charmed by the different songs that formed a plaintive yet somehow upbeat soundtrack to the day.
Each corner of the school grounds hosted a different part of the festivities, which drew about two thousand attendees this year, according to festival cochair and Salado Museum executive director Lynette McCain-Jones. That number doesn’t include the roughly four hundred musicians, dancers, and athletes there to compete, plus an additional four hundred members of Scottish clans. Representatives from 48 families, such as Douglas, Graham, MacLean, and Morrison, occupied tents at the center of the grounds. The dancing happened inside the gym, local and international musicians performed on a stage next to the baseball diamond, and a small, covered amphitheater hosted competitions for the best homemade shortbread, dog costumes, and kilted man with the “bonniest knees.” The knees were judged blind, with a row of (often giggling) volunteer women wearing blindfolds and sleep masks. The men walk in front of each judge, who, well, felt their knees. The criteria for winning was, let’s say, loose, and competitors weren’t above tucking a tiny bottle of Scotch or some chocolate into their knee-high socks to improve their chances.
Along Interstate 35, about an hour north of Austin, Salado has long been associated with Scottish culture. Back when Sam Houston was drawing settlers to Texas with the promise of Mexican land grants, Sterling C. Robertson (an empresario from Tennessee) brought six hundred or so families, mostly of Scottish descent, to the area around Salado. The Robertson family went on to help found the Salado Museum and are still major patrons of the Scottish Gathering. There are other celebrations of Celtic heritage across Texas, but Salado’s festival is one of the longest-running and one of the only events focused solely on Scottish culture and heritage. I attended with my five-year-old daughter, who always enjoys music, eating, and exploring new places. I knew we’d have a great time, even though, unlike many of our fellow attendees, we’re not Scottish. I have about 5 percent Scottish DNA, according to a genealogy test, but I don’t have any connection to Scotland or Scottish culture. I’m a Tejano whose ancestors came from Spain and mixed with the Indigenous populations of Texas and New Mexico.
Left: The gathering begins each year with the Calling of the Clans, a torchlit procession that goes from the Salado Museum to the edge of Salado Creek. Jason Deckman
Top: The table for the Lindsay clan. Richard Santos
However, my daughter is maybe a different story. Even though my wife can’t trace her ancestry back more than a few generations, DNA testing indicates significant percentages of Scottish, Irish, and English ancestry—her freckles and long brown hair are also clues. So should our daughter claim a clan and embrace that part of her heritage? If, according to the science, I’m about 5 percent Scottish and my wife is 25 percent, does that make my daughter . . . anything? I wanted to travel to this gathering because it looked fun, but I also wanted to find out if there was anything there for us.
We met an avid piper named David Alexander, who is an ethnomusicology doctoral student at the University of Sheffield, in England, where he’s writing a dissertation on bagpipe culture. We talked while I pushed my daughter on a swing, raising our voices so we could hear each other over the music. Alexander had competed here previously, but this year he was just watching. “I find the piping to be a really interesting, niche subculture of people that are quirky, interesting, and embrace this bizarre form of music that’s only marginally appealing,” he said with a laugh.
One thing that sets this gathering apart from other cultural celebrations is the sheer number of competitors. While there are plenty of band performances and dance exhibitions, a lot of people are there to win. My daughter took an occasional break from the playground to stare at a kilted piper or ask to hold their instrument. Those who’d already performed smiled or let her hold the body of the instrument, but those still prepping for the competition weren’t interested in any distractions—no matter how cute.
Tartan-clad dancers, mostly girls, performed on a small plywood stage in front of judges while families nervously watched from lawn chairs and blankets set out on the gym floor. Young people roamed the edges of the gym, stretching, taking deep breaths, and readying themselves for their moment. After each performance, the dancers would rejoin the crowd with a mix of pride and disappointment. These kids had been practicing for ages, and while I couldn’t tell a sword dance from a seann triubhas, the older students could tell you each missed step.
I spoke with Mira Vasudevan and her mother, Madhuri, right after Mira finished her sword dance, or ghillie callum, one of the oldest of the Scottish dances. For the Vasudevans, Highland dancing might not be in their genes, but it’s still a tradition. Both mother and daughter attended Saint Thomas’ Episcopal School, in Houston, which has had a Scottish Arts program since the 1950s, and the pair worked with the same dance teachers.
“This is a legacy that we’re so proud to share,” Madhuri said. “[These teachers] taught me from the age of six until I graduated high school.” Both mother and daughter have competed at Salado multiple times, but for Mira, dancing is also just fun. “I love to dance,” Mira said. “And it makes me feel happy in difficult times. I feel like I can just get all my anger and emotion out and just have fun.”
Wandering through the small food court—where the scones and Scotch eggs were particularly tasty–leads you to the roped-off field where the Highland Games take place. These games might seem deceptively simple. All you do is throw a rock, flip a twelve-foot log, or use a pitchfork to fling a twenty-pound bag stuffed with straw over a bar 24 feet in the air. Okay, that last one, sheaf tossing, doesn’t seem so simple. The athletes competing show how much skill and precision are required in these games.
Most of the competitors are massive, their muscles testing the confines of their T-shirts, but brute strength only gets you so far. The first athlete we watched had arms with more ripples than the Gulf of Mexico, but after spearing the sheaf on his pitchfork, he struggled with his aim and couldn’t clear the starting height of 24 feet. A bit later, a much thinner man positioned himself just right, gained some momentum, and cleared the bar easily.
Christian McLellan, a resident of Killeen whose performances have qualified him for professional Highland competitions, emphasizes that despite looking a little rough around the edges, these games really are welcoming. “I’ve competed in boxing, wrestling, strongman, and these are the nicest folks that I’ve met,” McLellan said. “They actually really try to take the time to teach you this sport.”
McLellan also emphasized that Texas women are turning out to compete in huge numbers. In Salado, there were more female athletes than male. Faith Daniel, one of the women competing, encourages folks to just show up. “There’s no club or anything like that. There’s no tryouts,” Daniel said. “Even if you showed up yesterday and it was your first game ever, you could sign up and they would show you how to do it right then and there.”
McLellan and Daniel demonstrated this openness on Sunday during the children’s games. They met with kids and showed them how to do a hammer toss, a stone put, and even an empty keg toss. The event couldn’t have been more kid-friendly, with two playgrounds and highlights such as a fairy tea party, a dog costume contest and parade, and a passport that kids could get stamped at each clan’s tent. Some of the clans also offered activities for children, like coloring pages and button-making. KD Hill, owner of Barrow Brewing Company and a member of the Salado Museum board, believes the festival has an obligation to appeal to young people. “We’ve got to find ways to get the next generation involved,” Hill said. “If the clans aren’t continuing their own traditions and their own membership, then they die.”
But back to the question that brought me to Salado: What if you’re not Scottish? In the end, I don’t think it matters. In Salado I saw mixed-race couples, Asian drummers, a Latino member of the U.S. Border Patrol Pipes and Drum band, and South Asian dancers, among others, happily mingling. I’m not under the delusion that Texas has been a wellspring of racial tolerance over the centuries, but what we do have is a whole lot of people who’ve come here from all over the world. Each group, whether they emigrated recently from Central America or 150 years ago from Scotland, has made this place a little more interesting and, usually, a little more welcoming. Enjoying an event like the Scottish Gathering doesn’t depend on your DNA or how many castles your ancestors still own back in the old country. All you need is some time and an open mind about bagpipes.
