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.
2 comments:
This was King Christian IV of Danmark and Norway. The Swedish king had hired 500 Scottish Mercenaries to attack the Danish troops from behind.
They 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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