We woke up to the caterwaul of bagpipes being tuned up. What an alarm clock! The picture below shoes the view out of our back window at 7:45 – and there were a few more just out of sight. Oh my! Carm thinks that hell might have bagpipes – one day is fine but I can imagine that at the end of several days one might just go mad. Why don’t they have more than one song?
By 10:30 am I could see the buses carrying the bands start to show up – let’s add some drums to the racket! (I’ll post a separate post with videos of the bands – the massed bands did an excellent version of Amazing Grace – it brought a tear or two to my eyes).
In the early afternoon a woman knocked on the door to see if she and her girls could camp-out under the front of our camper. The whole campground is a muddy mess and she was looking for somewhere high and dry (see Kabira’s legs below – Spike was even worse as the mud hit his belly) . Of course we said yes… and it had the added benefit of keeping the bagpipes from practicing directly under our camper! There was a band practicing not too far away, maybe about 100 feet – all afternoon. I had bagpipes in my head until late into the night – it’s a sound that really sticks in your head after hearing it all day.
I’m not complaining though – the whole thing is a bit fun and certainly makes the rally even more memorable. It’s really so awful that it is funny :-)
In my own family history, on the Norwegian side, a distant ancestor was awarded a large piece of land by the king of the day – I think it was in the early 1600’s but might have been even earlier than that – it seems that he had killed a Scottish dog so that the Norwegians could ambush the Scots who were invading them. Our family name comes from the name of the farm (which still exists) in Norway.
This was King Christian IV of Danmark and Norway. The Swedish king had hired 500 Scottish Mercenaries to attack the Danish troops from behind.
ReplyDeleteThey were stopped at Otta 2-3 km south of your ancestors farm. Only 18 men survived the battle. It is known as the Sinclair-battle after the commander in chief. He was killed during the battle.
Some of the Scotts didn´t return to Scotland but married in Gudbrandsdalen and left their mark on some of the National Costumes from that valley. The Rutastakk with it´s color and design is originally from a Scottish kilt.
Regards Bjorn
"It’s really so awful that it is funny" -- my sister would agree with your jokes about bagpipes. Your descriptions of the music make me laugh :) Unlike you, I LOVE bagpipes and would have been thrilled to hear and see the bands. Some might say that this is because I have a hearing loss so they don't sound quite so raucous to me ;-)
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