Scotland's Finest: The Story of the Highland Games

The Highland Games.

A tradition almost as old as the country that gave it life.

Born from Scotland's battling clans,

from epic trials of strength

and raised on a royal passion for the Highlands.

The colours and emblems of a culture that almost disappeared

but fought back to emerge stronger than ever.

The Highland games have been reinvented for each new generation.

As a meeting place of strength,

of speed,

of celebration.

Today, on sports grounds, farmers fields and city parks,

across this country and others,

The Highland Games are Scotland's Olympics.

The village of Ceres,

at the very centre of the ancient Kingdom of Fife.

Home to what might just be Scotland's oldest Highland Games.

For centuries, the whole village has come together

for this annual summer celebration.

For the people of Ceres,

it's said to be a day as important as Hogmanay or Christmas.

A day described in the Victorian verse of a local poet, John W Wood.

This is my own, my native place

And these the kinsmen of my race

With careless, free, yet noble mien

All bounding now on Ceres Green.

The spot where met the Ceres clan

Spot dear to every Ceres man.

And the importance of the games has changed little

in the century and a half since Wood composed his poem.

It definitely brought the community together,

very much as it does here today.

You can see all the folk, all the way around here,

cheering away, shouting for their own people.

I don't think that's changed very much over time at all.

The sports were the same, foot races, putting the shot,

tossing the caber, tossing the wheatsheaf.

And I'm sure that 600 years ago the guys came out with their shirts off

and showed off, exactly the same way as they do now.

They proved that they were going to be strong men.

Strong fathers, especially, you know? Good for breeding purposes.

Good warriors, good for defending the community.

And then the parents and the relations and everybody else

would all take pride in their achievement.

Most Highland Games have a chieftain,

the honorary patron.

In older times, the land-owner or clan chief.

At Ceres it's the local MP, Sir Menzies Campbell -

former leader of the Liberal Democrat Party.

Sir Menzies once competed at Highland Games.

In the 1960s he was, for a time, Britain's fastest man.

Now, as chieftain, he's the custodian of an ancient tradition.

The Ceres games are said to date back to 1314,

the year that Scotland's great warrior King Robert the Bruce

defeated the English army.

Having beaten the English at Bannockburn,

the young men of the village came back here

and they had trials of strength and foot races on the village green.

And that's why where we hold these games is so important.

It's right at the very heart of the village of Ceres.

This is June's great gala day

When men rin wud and youngsters play

The day that marks the grand return

Of Ceres men frae Bannockburn.

It's an appealing story - a Highland Games established by royal command.

And it might even be true!

But there's not one word of written evidence.

The modern games are a Highland blend of fact, folklore and fantasy.

A unique and essentially Scottish concoction of sport and culture.

There's Highland dancing,

the pipes and drums,

all judged in meticulous competition.

And a succession of sports

usually athletics, sometimes cycling, sometimes wrestling,

but always, always, the heavies.

The shot, the hammer, the caber.

And, just like the history of the Ceres games,

the origins of these individual events are hidden

behind centuries of highest quality Scotch mist.

One of the daftest theories I've ever heard

is that this is how the Scots used to fight.

They used to run around with a pole

and it had to land at exactly 12 noon, on the enemy.

And that's how we lost so many battles. We kept missing them!

Another one is the pole vault was invented by the Scots.

They used it as a way of vaulting into castles and vaulting out again.

It's quite simple, really.

Sport had to be universal in these days.

Nobody had money for special kit,

unless you were a knight at a tournament.

It had to be cheap so as many people could participate as possible.

That's the secret of them.

That's why they were so important to the community.

At most games the caber is top of the bill.

The final event, the worldwide trademark of the Highland Games.

18 feet long, more or less, and around 55 kilos.

120 pounds of pure Scottish tree.

The art of a good caber tosser

is to hit the caber so quick.

Plant your feet,

jump through the air,

plant your feet and just hit it as fast as you can.

We normally have a judge that runs behind us.

When we're running, we'll throw it, it'll land,

flip over and land flat.

And it's done on a clock face.

If you get it on 12 o'clock, that's a perfect throw.

Anything between five-to and five-past, is a good throw.

At Ceres, they take wicked pride

in making things as difficult as possible.

In the days leading up to the games,

the heaviest caber is soaked in the burn

to make it that bit heavier, that bit harder to throw.

And, for a time, it looked like the caber would win the day.

After a parade of illustrious failure,

Neil Elliot prepared for the final throw of the day.

CHEERING

You really feel the crowd on top of you.

You know, I think the crowd come to see the caber.

It's the most exciting event to watch. It's dramatic.

You're putting 110% behind this. You have to.

This is the hardest event in the Highland games.

It takes a lot of years to perfect.

The games at Ceres, like the games all across Scotland,

came to life in medieval farming communities.

Young men threw metal hammers and heavy stones.

Over time, these competitions were attached

to local festivals and holy days.

They became part of a wider community event.

But why did these gatherings come to be known as Highland Games,

even in this most lowland of villages?

Why does rule 49E of the Scottish Highland Games Association

insist all competitors in heavy events

must compete in Highland Dress?

The story of why and how that happened

encompasses more than the history of the games.

It's at the heart of the history of Scotland.

How one version of Highland culture was put to the sword.

And how a new version - of untamed glens and noble warriors -

was embraced across Britain and the world.

Lochcarron, Wester Ross.

60 or so miles west of Inverness,

en route to the Isle of Skye.

The Highland Games here

are amongst the most remote on mainland Scotland.

And certainly amongst the most picturesque.

Scotland hosts around 90 Highland Games every year.

The numbers have been in decline since the 1940s.

These small community events, run entirely by volunteers,

have to work hard to stay in business.

GUNSHOT

Lochcarron prides itself on its Highland hospitality,

it calls itself The Friendly Games.

But in medieval times,

these Highland glens were far from friendly.

From the earliest written histories up to the 1700s

the Scottish Highlands were home to ferocious warring clans.

The King was in Edinburgh,

but ultimate power lay with the clan chiefs.

Ah!

To some extent, law and order had broken down.

People were competing with each other for resources,

they were fighting, basically.

-TANNOY:

-'Could we also have competitors for the 800 metres?

'That's 800 metres. Four laps of the track, 800 metres.'

There was mayhem in many parts of the Highlands,

because of this, martial virtues, heroic prowess,

became very important to the clan system.

In a sense, this is what we're seeing - a very formal,

and a very stylised remnant of this in the Highland Games today.

From the 13th to the 16th centuries, mercenary Highlanders,

the Galloglass, fought for Irish lords.

In France, Gaels were recruited into the Garde Ecossaise,

formed in the 15th century as elite bodyguards to the French King.

Over the years, the Highlanders built a formidable reputation -

dangerous, untamed.

In the early 1700s across much of Britain,

Gaels had the name for being barbarous people,

for being rebels, disaffected to the crown.

In many cases, at least as far as the disaffected bit goes,

this was true.

Many Highlanders rose up with the exiled Stuart kings

trying in an attempt for coup d'etats to put them back on the throne.

The final rising of 1745

saw Bonnie Prince Charlie raise a predominately Highland army

and march on London.

His subsequent defeat,

his army massacred at the Battle Of Culloden,

threatened every aspect of Highland society and identity.

After the victory of the British army at Culloden

the British government tried to make sure

that these risings would never take place again.

If you like, they were trying to forcibly incorporate the Highlands

into the rest of the British state.

The precious symbols of the Highlands

were threatened by a new British law -

the 1746 Act Of Proscription.

A blow to the heart of Highland identity.

No man or boy, within that part of Great Britain called Scotland,

shall on any pretence whatsoever,

wear or put on the clothes commonly called Highland clothes.

Tartan was banned. Kilt was banned. Bearing arms was banned.

All these things which differentiated the Highlands from the rest of Britain.

Homes were burned to the ground. The land fell silent.

And so did the games.

Highlanders looked for a new life overseas.

Some to farm, some to fight.

Prime Minister William Pitt pioneered the recruitment

of Highland soldiers into the British army.

I sought for merit wherever it could be found,

and found it in the mountains of the north.

A hardy and intrepid race of men,

they served with fidelity as they fought with valour.

Highlanders became the good guys.

They were loyal now to the crown,

they displayed their martial virtues across the planet.

It's an amazing turnaround from being traitors

to being patriots in the space of one generation.

The colours of Highland identity

were saved by the Highland regiments.

The Act Of Proscription was repealed in 1782.

Only 36 years after being branded as kilted outlaws,

the Highland soldier was now the poster-child of the British Empire.

But at the same time, their homeland fell into deeper danger.

The Highland economy collapsed. Crofters starved.

They were forced from their homes.

And as their world changed,

Highland chiefs looked to preserve their feudal authority

in the customs of the past.

They looked back, back to the Games.

Places where they could show

that they were still the ones in charge,

where they could, if you like, pretend

that the awful, terrible changes taking place across the Highlands

were not actually taking place at all,

that Highlanders still remained in the clan society of old.

In reality, we were living in the midst of the Industrial Revolution,

as far as the clan chiefs were concerned,

well, they wanted us to be back in the Middle Ages.

Now the ancient clan-society games

were rebranded as The Highland Games.

The most celebrated of these new tartan pageants began in 1819...

..in the Perthshire village of St Fillans,

organised by an eminent southern nobleman,

a man more accustomed to the salons of Paris

than the fields of Perthshire.

His name was Lord Gwydyr.

Quite a dandy, an Anglo-Welsh aristocrat,

clearly, he was someone who would quite like the idea

of Highlanders arrayed in tartan being loyal their clan chief.

An advertisement for the 1828 St Fillans Games

betrays a romantic fascination for the Highlands of old.

"Prizes offered for competition..."

Genuine Highland culture was on the verge of extinction.

But now a queue of Southern aristocrats

fancied that they could preserve it

in the glorious tartan Technicolor of the reborn Highland Games.

At the head of the queue stood a most unlikely saviour,

indeed a recent enemy...

..the British Royal Family.

Every year, for as long as anyone can remember,

the Royal Family comes here to Braemar.

The Queen is chieftain of the Highland Gathering.

The special relationship between British Royalty

and the romantic reinvention of the Highlands

began in the August of 1822

when the Queen's Great-great-great-great uncle,

George IV, arrived in Edinburgh.

This was the first visit to Scotland by a British monarch since 1651.

In charge of the spectacle, the tartan pageantry,

was Britain's most celebrated novelist, Sir Walter Scott.

The days were a series of events

which were all based around Highland images,

all based around tartan, all based around uniforms,

it was a militaristic image of Scotland.

What Scott had done was

taken an essentially very rebellious image of Scotland,

you know, the tartan of the Jacobites, of the clans

that had been in rebellion, an image which had actually been banned,

and he changed that into something which was loyal.

The King was the great chief of the clan,

and Scotland was of course the family, the clan, the nation.

Scotland's foremost artist, David Wilkie,

presented a flattering portrait of Britain's King

in the guise of a noble Highland chief.

Contemporary satirists were less forgiving.

James Stuart of Dunearn, a politician, wrote...

Sir Walter had made us ridiculously appear

as a nation of Highlanders

and the bagpipe and tartan was the order of the day.

Scott crystallised the very idea of Scotland as Highland,

as essentially an ancient Celtic nation.

And he made that into a kind of sort of archetype

which has run and run and run and run.

And it was due to that fantasy that he created in 1822 at the visit.

Those summer celebrations in the Edinburgh of 1822

marked the beginning of a royal love affair,

a love affair consummated two decades later

when the 23-year-old Queen Victoria first set foot in the Highlands.

This was an adventure, it was a bold place to go in a certain way,

to come this far north to the wilds of Scotland.

And Queen Victoria came here and she loved it,

she loved the wilderness, she loved the loyal nature of the people,

and she was really re-enacting a sort of Scott fantasy

of what the Highlands were.

Such was Victoria's love for the Highlands

that she and her husband Albert

took the lease on Balmoral Castle in 1848,

buying it outright three years later.

In the summer of 1850

she travelled the short distance from the castle

to the village of Braemar.

"We lunched early, and then went at 2.30pm to the Gathering."

"Racing up the hill of Craig Cheunnich is a fearful exertion.

"18 or 19 started,

"and it looked very pretty to see them run off

"and scramble up through the wood,

"emerging gradually at the edge of it and climbing the hill."

"We were all much pleased to see our gillie Duncan,

"who is an active, good-looking young man, win.

"Mr Farquharson brought him up to me afterwards."

The descendant of that same Mr Farquharson

is the present-day Chief of Clan Farquharson.

His family have welcomed British monarchs

to Braemar for a century and a half.

-NEWSREEL:

-'Neighbours of the King,

'the Laird of Invercauld and his American wife.'

And he understands Queen Victoria's initial attraction.

She fell in love with the country, with its people.

Um, it was magnificent, uplifting scenery

and, um, a very healthy climate here too.

And I think, very understandably, she was allowed...

she was very good with her paints and her pencil and sketching

and I think she just took to it like a duck to water, so to speak.

In addition to her own paintings,

Queen Victoria's patronage brought established international artists

to the Highlands.

Time and again they fashioned a world

of steadfast Highland loyalty to Britain and to her Royal Family.

The Swedish artist Egron Lundgren

spent three weeks at Balmoral in the September of 1859.

His visit coincided with the Braemar Gathering,

held that year in front of the top-hatted members

of the British Association For The Promotion Of Science.

This metropolitan fashion for the Highlands

and the Royal patronage had changed the Games forever.

It was not long after all the troubles,

the Battle Of Waterloo and this kind of thing.

Times were hard and they needed a bit of finance

and that sort of thing to help.

I imagine that the actual athletics and competition

was very limited in those days,

And gradually it grew and then it received Royal patronage

and it got bigger still.

And because the Queen was doing it,

other people felt that they had to join in,

and of course the locals were more than happy

to actually join in this fantasy, this tartan fantasy for the Queen.

Because, you know, there was employment in this,

there's money in this.

It became an industry.

"Mama, Charles and Ernest joined us at Braemar.

"Mama enjoys it all very much.

"It is her first visit to Scotland."

"There were the usual games of putting the stone,

"throwing the hammer and caber. We also saw some dancing,

"the prettiest was a reel

"by Mr Farquharson's children and some other children,

"and the Ghillie Callum beautifully danced by John Athole Farquharson."

He would have been my great grandfather's...

one of his many children, and he was a very good young dancer I believe.

Highland dancing was once the most masculine of pursuits.

Recorded in the histories of the Highlands as, "A manly exercise,

"fit for polishing and refining youth."

It was a test of virility and bravery.

Indeed for the 16th-century Lord Lovat,

dancing was part of his clan's military training.

But that changed.

In the early years of the 20th century the gender balance shifted.

Young men were lost to the carnage of the Great War,

increasingly, women became dance teachers.

Highland dancing was resurrected as something a little less raw,

a little more ordered, more suited to the female form.

And every year at Braemar

a young dancer is selected for a very special assignment.

'I'm giving over the bouquet to the Queen.'

I have to walk up slowly and then I have to curtsy

and then I have to give over the bouquet.

I have to wait,

the Queen might speak to me

and then I have to curtsy again when she's finished.

And then that's it.

What had begun as a Royal love affair

had developed into a very public infatuation.

Queen Victoria's loyal subjects

took these re-invented Highland Games to their hearts.

The appeal of the Highland regiments,

the Queen's passion for Highland romance,

both had conspired to create something new and fashionable -

a burlesque extravaganza in tartan

that was set to spread all across Scotland.

The Victorian Games were the height of fashion.

They attracted huge crowds, and attractive prizes.

A new generation of athletes rose to the challenge.

Most famously, the son of a stone mason,

born in the village of Birse, just a few miles from Braemar.

His name was Donald Dinnie.

To some, he was the greatest sportsman of the 19th century.

Scotland has given many things to the world of sport

it's given curling, it's given golf, it's given Highland Games,

but it's also given Donald Dinnie,

one of the very first professional athletes.

He dominated the Highland Games scene in Scotland

from the late 1850s through to the 1870s.

In his lifetime he competed in something like 11,000 contests.

He won something like 1,800 prizes.

Dinnie made his fortune not just in prize money,

but also in endorsements.

One very Scottish soft drinks company

were keen to profit from Dinnie's image.

His athletic physique, his iron strength,

you know, you can see the marketing heaven in the 19th century.

Dinnie's timing was perfect.

He arrived just as the Victorian Highland Games

were developing into a circuit with events all across Scotland,

increasingly connected by the new railways.

You've got the emergence of crowds,

you've got the emergence of gate money,

you've got heavy weight championships,

you've got real competition between a wide range of athletes

because of the emergence of a circuit.

Across the world, the sporting landscape was changing.

New leagues, standardised rules, big new events.

And it's long been rumoured that the Highland Games had an influence

on the biggest sporting event of all.

The modern Olympics, the invention of Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin.

The story goes that de Coubertin was visiting the Paris Great Exhibition.

So taken was he by a Highland Games demonstration that he conceived

the world's biggest sporting event.

Sadly, and maybe not that surprisingly, it's a story

that's so far failed to convince the experts.

We have no evidence of that. It would be nice story

but it's pretty mythical at the moment.

The Highland Games didn't quite revolutionise the world of sport.

But in their own country, the Games became a valued proving ground

for new generations of athletes.

Most would compete as a hobby.

Some would take home the occasional trophy.

But there were a few truly remarkable men and women

whose achievements would bear comparison

with the best in the world.

The Firth of Clyde, the last weekend of August.

For well over a century, people have travelled from the towns

and cities of central Scotland across the Clyde estuary

to the Cowal Highland Gathering at Dunoon.

It's perhaps Scotland's most traditional family day out.

The sea air and the scurl of the pipes.

Yet for those at the centre of the Games,

for competitors and enthusiasts,

what happens at Cowal is more than a mere tourist attraction.

For them, the Highland Games are the centre of excellence.

For the pipe bands, the Cowal gathering is now said

to be as important as the World Championships.

The best Highland dancers come from all over the world.

And in sport, the Highland Games have produced genuine

world-class athletes.

Men like Bill Anderson, the farmer's son from Bucksburn near Aberdeen.

There was always a hammer at the home, as I would say.

As a 12, 13, 14-year-old, we used to go out and throw it.

And by the time I was 18, my brother and his pals said,

"You have to go and throw it at the show."

And when I went there, I came home, I think,

with £10 from the afternoon,

and I thought, "There's something in this."

There certainly was something in it.

Bill Anderson would go on to dominate the Highland Games

of the late 20th century just as Donald Dinnie had done

100 years before.

In fact, the young Bill Anderson had been brought up

on stories of the man from nearby Aboyne.

All the aunts I had at that time used to tell me about this man,

Donald Dinnie.

"Donald Dinnie from Aboyne, throws the hammer far and fine."

That was something they said.

Statistics aren't so reliable for Dinnie's time,

but Dinnie was outstanding for his period.

I still think Bill was a better all-round heavy than Dinnie.

NEWSREEL: 'The highlight of the athletic events was Anderson's double success.

'A record with the 16 pound stone at 45.5 feet

'and a record with a 22 pound hammer - 102 feet, seven-and-a-half inches.'

From the days of the newsreels,

to the time of colour TV, Bill Anderson was king of the heavies.

Bill Anderson's achievements are outstanding, in my opinion,

in the history of heavy events in the Scottish Highland Games

and world Highland games.

He was the most outstanding heavy of his generation

and in my opinion, of all time.

Bill was at his peak.

His greatest rival, I guess, was an Englishman, ironically enough,

Arthur Rowe, who was an outstanding heavy event specialist as well.

But over the piece, Bill certainly got the better of him.

It was a real battle.

He came up and I was doing very well from '59 to '62,

and I think he appeared.

And he started to beat me and there was only one thing I had to do,

and I had to train harder.

It was nip and tuck all the way for a few years

until I finally got the better of him.

I won more competitions than he did.

In 1969 Bill Anderson threw the 16 pound hammer

over 151 feet.

That's 30 feet further than the 2011 winning throw at Cowal.

Also in 1969, he threw the 22 pound hammer over 123 feet

a Scottish record that still stands today.

He needs to...

No, he's not running fast enough. Quick, quick!

No, no, he's not going to make it.

Bill, and his fellow competitors from the '60s achieved performances

that have proved remarkably resilient.

I was judging at Crieff,

and taking over all the distances that were thrown,

and they were the same distances that were thrown way back then,

so they haven't improved.

Bill was an exceptionally gifted athlete.

Bill Anderson would have been a notable Olympian.

But Bill Anderson could never have been an Olympian.

Beginning his career in the Highland Games meant that

Bill was a professional.

There's long been an uneasy relationship between

the Highland Games and conventional athletics.

In Bill's day, the division

between amateur and professional was guarded obsessively.

There was a kid up the east coast of Scotland, aged ten,

who was branded a professional and banned from amateur athletics

for winning a 10p packet of sweeties,

a packet of Chewits, I think it was.

You have to remember that until around 1960, 65% or more

of Great Britain's Olympic teams were made up of graduates

and postgraduates and a very high percentage of them from Oxbridge.

So this was very definitely an uppercrust sort of sport.

NEWSEEL: 'Now for the mile.

'Robinson, Cambridge, number two lead for part of the way.

'Oxford's Chattaway, number one,

'obviously had the race well in hand all the time.'

Amateur athletics, it was said,

were for people who maybe didn't need the money.

The Highland Games were for those who could maybe find a use for it.

The ordinary laddies went out and completed at the local games

and they got a few bob for winning.

That was absolutely fine.

And Bill Anderson wasn't the only professional athlete

who might have won Olympic medals for his country.

George McNeill was a professional sprinter,

and a Highland Games veteran.

I was running at Edinburgh and made the other runners

look as though they were running backwards, you know.

He would have won gold, no bother at all.

George McNeill's best times were faster than Valeriy Borzov

who won the 100 and 200m at the 1972 Olympics.

Now, George signed professional forms as a footballer with Hibs

and that put him beyond the pale.

I mean, that was like being sent to Siberia -

if you signed and took money from another sport.

And conspicuously as well, there was a guy called Norman Gregor.

And Norman Gregor was a pole-vaulter.

He set a British record

and a Scottish record here about 50 years ago

and beat the man who twice won the pole vault

at the then Empire Games, now the Commonwealth Games.

So that's another outstanding athlete that we lost.

There are many, many more.

These days, the best Highland Games athletes are almost as likely

to come from Berlin or Bucharest as from Banchory or Brechin.

Of the eight athletes at Cowal, two were from Germany.

The heavy events have become part of a prestigious international circuit,

a departure from the days when Bill Anderson could win £10 at the Alford Show.

It is no longer farmers laddies just going out and trying it

because there's quite big money to be made

and people travel internationally to complete in these.

The strongman events like World's Strongest Man

has been a kind of spin-off from that if you like

and that has broadened it out and made it more international.

The Highland Games have become a focal point

for the world's best heavy athletes.

And not just in Scotland.

Across Australia, New Zealand, Canada and especially the USA,

the Highland Games are genuinely world class.

The Blue Ridge Mountains, the border between North Carolina

and Eastern Tennessee.

Misty and isolated,

a place that became home to thousands of Scottish immigrants.

And climbing high through these Appalachian hills,

the Grandfather Mountain Marathon is one of the toughest races

in the United States.

Part of a truly Highland Games.

One of the biggest in the world.

Staged over four days, Grandfather Mountain brings 22,000 visitors to this isolated mountain community.

And it was built from the most tartan of blueprints.

I wanted to go to the place where our ancestors had sailed from

so I went to Scotland and the first thing I did

was to go to the Braemar Highland Gathering at Braemar.

I was so impressed by that until I decided, "Golly,

"North Carolina is a state where it was settled by so many people

"from Scotland that we should have something like a Highland Games",

and this went down very well with the local population.

We began working on it in 1955

and then the very first games were held in 1956.

The Grandfather Mountain Games borrowed every last detail

of Scotland's most Victorian Highland Gathering.

This cover of a programme from the Braemar Gathering

is the very programme that I saw when I went over in 1954,

and from it, we used all the rules, and we were guided by these rules

to have the same events here - tossing the caber, dancing, piping.

One of their rules proved rather difficult to follow.

One of the rules said you must have more competitors

then you have prizes.

Well, we had three different clan societies who each presented

a prize for Highland dancing, so that meant three prizes.

Well, we only had three little girls who had agreed

to compete in the Highland Fling.

So, old Donald comes down from the Pulpit Rock,

which is what we call the local rock where we have the worship service,

and I danced the Highland Fling, and I must say,

it was like a drunken hippo trying to danced the Highland Fling.

I lost. I expected to lose

but it made it legal with the programme from Braemar.

We call ourselves, and have called it ever since, America's Braemar.

Braemar in Scotland is very nice - they've never try to sue us!

For more than half a century, the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games

has grown in scale and significance.

The symbol of an all-American fascination with ancestry

and origins.

NEWSREEL: 'The scene could well be beside a loch in the Highlands

'of Scotland, but it's not.'

The Grandfather Mountain Highland Games were founded here.

It's served as a real beachhead, if you will,

for Scottish culture and celebration of it here in the American South.

It's become a very popular thing in the past few decades

to be a hyphenated American,

to identify yourself with some other ethnic tradition

in just the same way that other ethnicities, Hispanic-Americans

would celebrate their culture or African-Americans would celebrate theirs with traditional dress

and dance and things like that. So, why not?!

NEWSREEL: 'Everyone who has been enjoyed America's Scottish Highland Games at Grandfather.'

The majority here are very much of lowland stock.

Descendants of the Scottish Presbyterians who colonised Ulster.

For we come in the name of the one who is the Lord for ever,

your son, our saviour, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Their 17th century ancestors would never have worn tartan,

would hardly have travelled north of Edinburgh.

But the powerful imagery of the Highlands has become synonymous

with an all-purpose Scottish identity. Thanks, perhaps, to Sir Walter Scott.

Here, everyone's a Highlander, and some a wee bit more than others.

Some people think it's a fancy dress party

A fancy dress ball or something like that!

OK, they're keen on it and that's the way they like it, good for them.

I, myself, wouldn't run around with a goat's head as a sporran,

or a roadkill sporran as we do see sometimes!

But that's their thing.

How long does it take you to get the make-up on?

It doesn't take too long. Five or six minutes.

All that the Bruce did is very important to us as well as

all the other people here at the Games and to the people in Scotland.

This is definitely what we have taken in as our creed

to be proud of who we are.

That's your real hair, it's not Dolly Parton wig, is it?

No, I'm afraid it's not.

In Scotland people laugh at us for the American way,

but that's the American Way - we overdo things sometimes.

Sometimes, it's at least interesting what we do. We hope it is, anyway!

To Scottish, or even British eyes, it's easy to dismiss

this Confederate vision of Highland culture.

An Appalachian Brigadoon.

But the American Games can claim a history

and a relevance all of their own.

Probably the oldest recording of gatherings that might be

somewhat similar to this are the old Scotch Fairs which were found in

the old Highland settlement in North Carolina, dating from the 1790s.

That was a tradition that went on for about 100 years

until it was outlawed by the state legislator

because it became a free for all,

and the place for drunkenness and gambling.

Hard to believe.

But Carolina's Scotch Fairs began long before many

of Scotland's great Highland Games.

In American cities, Scottish societies date back to the 1720s.

And these societies brought the Victorian Highland Games

to a huge audience.

In places like New York and Boston and Detroit maybe,

a lot of these events would have been organised by Caledonian societies, clubs

St Andrews' societies and being open to not only Scots

but people of all races and ethnicities as well.

We know that in the early days of some of these events,

there were non-Scots who were winners of athletics events

so it was really one of America's first traditions

of spectator sports if you will.

The success of the Caledonian Society's Highland Games

paved the way for a new chapter in the extraordinary career

of Scotland's most famous athlete.

In July 1870, the 32-year-old Donald Dinnie arrived in America.

The major sports in America were things like boxing

and horseracing, but they didn't draw the kind of crowds

that the Caledonian clubs drew.

And what they did was they advertised heavily that

Donald Dinnie would appear and as soon as you put Donald Dinnie's name

on the banner, the crowds came and he drew as many as 25,000 people.

A journalist from The New York Times was captivated

by Dinnie's performance at an 1870 Highland Games held in Manhattan.

"The great attraction consisted of a display of many

"of the old national pastimes of Scotland.

"Chiefly feats of strength in which the people of that land excel.

"Donald Dinnie, presented a magnificent specimen

"of muscular development.

Broad-chested, well-built body, long, hard and finely moulded limbs,

with arms possessed of a terrible amount of quick, sinuous power.

One of those physical specimens that comes along maybe once in a century.

You know, no fat, his muscles had muscles.

He was 6ft 1, 220lb and it was said that

when he entered the circle to complete and took off his robe

and displayed his physique, men's hearts and women's knees got weak.

There was prize money attached to this

and you have to understand that Dinnie was a mercenary.

He was in it for the money and this was his livelihood

and he was one of the first touring pros in virtually any sport.

Dinnie made a fortune.

And his popularity eclipsed even the most American of sports.

In 1869, a group of investors got together in Cincinnati

and paid the nine best baseball players they could find

to compete for the same team, the Cincinnati Reds.

They were an instant sensation and won every game they played.

They drew in the neighbourhood of 3,500 people per game.

This was an extraordinary number of people for an athletic events.

When Dinnie came a year later,

he averaged about 11,000 people per contest.

He was the sporting sensation of the era.

Dinnie's fame didn't last.

In the 20th century world of amateur athletics, the records

and achievements of this 19th century Scottish professional

were soon forgotten.

The man who had been the best paid athlete in the world,

died in obscurity.

He deserves a biography and a documentary and a movie

because this is a good story about a mercenary who was sometimes

testy and a tough guy to deal with but who was ungodly successful

as an athlete that everybody had to respect him.

He was the world's greatest athlete.

Today's generation of Donald Dinnies are still top of the bill.

They're still competing in front of thousands of spectators.

Here in the USA, and elsewhere around the world,

the Highland Games have become the most visible display

of Scottish identity.

But more than that.

Just like Scotland these Games are about community,

and making time for old friends.

The Duchess is over here. Were all in this together.

Everybody hugs each other and it's almost like a family reunion.

It's a clan reunion, that's exactly what it is.

In this case the clan is the Hamiltons,

and the reunion is with The Duchess.

# I've been a wanderer all my life and many the sight I've seen

# Speed the day when I'm on my way to my home in Aberdeen. #

-Wonderful!

-They can't stop us, you know.

They try to say, "Zip it, Donald", but Donald won't zip it!

I sometimes say that I've helped to create a monster.

It's like Frankenstein. It's growing every year, fantastic!

But a good Frankenstein! We're not going to knock him, are we?

After four days of competition,

Grandfather Mountain's Highland Games

comes to its conclusion on Sunday afternoon.

The Carolina clans begin their long march home.

All across the United States, in Canada, Australia

and the Far East, the Games have become more popular than ever.

There are now more games outwith Scotland, than there are within.

And everywhere they travel,

these Games tell great stories from Scotland's history.

Stories that have been embroidered and romanticised

but stories that never lack colour.

Universally popular yet essentially Scottish.

Our very own Olympic Games.

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