Tossing the caber
If you missed the Gatlinburg (TN) Scottish Festival & Games back in May, or can’t wait till November for the Scottish Clans of the South to gather in Hendersonville, NC, don’t panic. The Grandfather Mountain Highland Games in Linville, NC is the largest assembly of Scottish clan society members in the world, and it’s coming up July 12-15.
Scottish-Americans, Scotch-Irish Americans, Scots and would-be Scots converge each year on two rock-strewn pastures, known as MacRae Meadows, in the shadow of the tallest peak in the Blue Ridge chain, the 5,964-ft. Grandfather Mountain.
Dancing, running, throwing large poles and bragging about one's Scottish ancestry-it's all part of a day's work at highland games.
The centuries old Scottish tradition of staging competitions at cattle fairs continued when Scottish immigrants came to North Carolina in the 18th century. The newcomers felt at home in the North Carolina mountains, and descendants of these pioneers continued to speak Gaelic into the early 20th century.
Scottish heavy athletics events include Clachneart (16 lb. stone throw), 22 lb. hammer throw, 28 & 56 lb weight throw, 56 lb toss for height, caber toss, tossing the sheaf (16 lb.) and Highland wrestling.
The caber toss is a contest in which brawny men flip 21-foot (6.4-meter) wooden poles weighing hundreds of pounds end over end. If you imagine that the brawny man is standing in the center of a clock face looking toward the number 12, the objective of the caber toss is to make the pole land so that it's pointing exactly at high noon.
Putting the pole squarely on the imaginary 12 is extremely difficult, however. Sometimes years pass before a contestant nails a caber toss with a perfect landing. More likely, a contestant who can get his caber to point to 11 or 1 on the imaginary clock will win. The first recorded caber toss competition was in 1574.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cocoon/legacies/NC/200002907.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/07/0707_050707_highlandgames_2.html
Originally blogged at Appalachian History
Grandfather+Mountain+Highland+Games caber+toss Scottish+Clans appalachia appalachian+culture appalachian+history history+of+appalachia
5 comments:
This is one of the coolest, most captivating blogs I've dove into. Great to see that there are more people who know that hillbillies are more than a cartoon strip or bad movie. Anyway who's going to survive when the power goes go out,,,lol
Keep up the good work!
I wonder if there will be anyone with an accent there, or just the usual dudes claiming ownership in the country just because their aunt's neighbour's friend saw the first 15 minutes of "Braveheart" on a plane once...
/me, a genuine Scotsman, rolls his eyes.
Love the blog, though. I don't mean to be hatin' yous guys. It's just that after eight years of living here, I'm just plenty sick of those tenuous buffoons who try to regale me with 'tales of the old country' that they've never even visited but claim as their own. Especially when they get stuff wrong. "Hey! I'm Scottish too... and boy do I hate the British!"
Spike,
I won't be there, much to my chagrin, but I understand - - - I have been to Britain (Scotland and England) - though Braveheart does make me a little light-headed (ha). My favorite though is when a friend of mine went to study in Britain for three months - no small amount of time, you'd think this individual would have researched more, this person's voice mail informed callers that they had gone to, ahem, "Wales, in England." I cried a little.
I think that's an old picture of me you have here.
Generic versions of Viagra can be taken 30 minutes before starting any sexually activity and the effect of all the generic versions of Viagra UK lasts up to four to five hours just like Cheap Cialis . There is no food restriction when it comes of using generic viagra, but there is a possibility that it may take a little longer to show its effect if it is taken after a high fat meals like fish, cheeseburger, french-fries etc.
Post a Comment