A KILTED FESTIVAL.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17611, 14 November 1922, Page 10

A KILTED FESTIVAL.

Nearly a hundred and fifty years ago a band of Scottish lairds ordained "that an annual meeting of ladifes and gentlemen Bhall be held within the Eoyal Burgh of Inverness not earlier than Thursday and Friday of the third week in September." To-day the landed proprietors of the counties of Banff, Caithness, Inverness, Moray, Boss arid Cromarty, arid Sutherland, and their wives, sons, and daughters, as well as some of the folk north of the Spey, and visiting celebrities, are enjoying the balls and the Highland games instituted away back in 1788 (writes a correspondent in a London paper of September 22nd).: ;,,. Kun down the list of members and you will find many of the amous nariies in braid Scotia. Lord Lbvat, Chief of the Frasers; Lochiel,, Chief of Ithe Camerons; and The Mackintosh of Mackintosh, Chief of Clan Cattan, head the list of Highland gentlemen which includes Brodies and Davidsons, Dttffs and < Grants, Munroes and Sinclairs, and Macdonalds, Mackenzie*, Macleods, and Macphersons who have written their'names large in the history of Caledonia.' j. For a few days the ancient capital 'of the Highlarids lifts its head as royally as in the days when it sheltered Scottish kings. But not so picturesque the visitors. More than a hundred years ago the Highland 1 geritlerrien foregathered in "buff and griss r -green coats with black velvet caps and black silken! breeches. Now they make merry in kilted bravery. ■ ■ "' By day they sit in the shado of the Hill of the Fairies, fir-clad Tomnahurich, and listen to the wailing of the bagpipes in Lament and Pibroch. By night they "Hooch!" and "Sweel" in the tangles of the '' Eightsome, "in the local assembly rooms, as their fathers arid fathers' fathers did before them. By day Flora Macdonald, with her faithful dog, gazes wistfully from her perch, on the Castle Hill across the meeting ground to distant Skye. By night Jane Duchess of. Gordon, who inaugurated the dances, and her son, the last duke, popularly called "The Cock o' the North," smile: down from their frames on the balloon., wall. I do not know a fairer sight by day and night than the meetings. Framed ill homespun and tartan, set in burnished trees with the mists curling hazily across from Loch Ness, arid the alternate sob and skirl of the bagpipes, and the soft-voiced" burr of the Hielantmen, the games play out the days. Studded with jewels and silken raiment, arid checked with tartan, the dances occupy the nights. So once a year "does Inverness recapture the glory that was hers. Only during the late war did she let the past suffice. With the Camerons and the Seaforths and the Argyll and Sutherland* were her kilted braves." The Inverness gathering is nothing without them.