protection, a quarter-inch ring at a time. I am absorbed, watching his hands.
Also receiving instruction is a sweating and heavily bearded man struggling into some thigh-length chain mail, weighing about thirty pounds. Its maker guides him through a method of donning and doffing. He then tells of the hardy primitive Highlanders who fought naked because they felt forged protection slowed a fighter, robbing him of agility. He offers me chain mail to try on. Grinning I decline.
Now he shows us weaponry. Great two-handed claymores, capable of cleaving plate armor. Round wooden shields were covered in hide and held in place by a pattern of stud-works strapped to the arm; and hidden beneath, a dirk, tightly clenched in the hand of the warrior. Our guide slides a wide double-edged sword from its sheath—crossed-shaped forged steel with blood-gutter running to its hilt.
Allen and I are turned about by the song of approaching pipers. Here come marchers in kilts with staves, standards flapping. Near the head of the parade march our friends, Blaine and Margaret (MacBean), our town historian and his wife. The men wear swinging kilts, sporrans, and glengarries, followed by a multitude of young women pipers in swaying red tartan skirts. Their fingers fly upon chanters, their bright cheeks expel breath into the reed. Elbows pump hard against the bag at their ribs. Sweat soaks them. The skirling and droning pours upon me with the day’s heat like ravishing ointment, setting up a quiver along my sensory pathways toward the person within.
As the bands pass in color and sound, I look over my shoulder to see bearded men at the chain mail booths donning their barbaric gear: helms, battle-axes, arm shields, spears, swords. Some are mantled in animal skin, some skirted and draped in nine yards of tartan. They step off cool turf onto scorching asphalt in bare feet, nothing flinching, and join the parade.
“Look at that!”
But Allen laughs: “They’re warriors, aren’t they?”
It’s a searing summer day. Sun fires down, burning the top of my bare head as we wait in the gathering. Watching and still, crowds compass the parade ground where Highland bands assemble for the opening ceremony of The Games. I done my floppy white hat, stuff my hair under it, relieved at once by cessation of burning. Standing here in the penetrating fire, I can’t help but think of the hole in the high ozone layer . . . especially its dissipation in these higher latitudes where the crown of Maine juts into Canada.
Inert gases produced by the wonders of our age—refrigeration, the space shuttle, aerosols and Styrofoam—ascend to the stratosphere, gobbling up protective ozone by molecular conversion. The great bright hole in the sky pours out radiation, that mighty mutagen, off-cast of our sun’s fusion. Mutagens transform genetic material of skin tissue by changing the sequence of nucleotides in its DNA. Instructions for healthy cell formation are changed into instructions for disease. For every 2% reduction of protective ozone, there is an estimated 10% increase in skin cancers.
Standing here, listening but seeing little of the pipers because of the press in this sweaty gathering, I notice a young man in front of me wearing a faded T-shirt with motto: the cure/the prayer, in black letters on a pattern of faded foliage. I continue to stare at it as the pipes drone, sensing some metaphoric significance . . . but then the moment passes, its meaning gone with it. Signs and symbols strike upon the intellect, engaging it briefly and darting away. Or they live on breathless, bemused. Did I really see something in my anxiety—or is it just an old shirt?
But I can take this burning no longer. Agreeing, Allen and I break from the crowd and plunge toward the shade of the pines. Here we find ongoing dance competitions in progress and sit down to watch from an out-of-the-way bench. It’s harder to see the dancers from our oblique position but we must stay out of the sun. I am relieved by the cool grace of the offshore breeze.
Three little ones dance on the sheltering wooden stage, leaping like sprites. One-legged, toes pointed, each wee dancer reaches a poised hand on high as though in refined praise. The skirling and droning of a lone piper helps them, and they are light and finely formed in their pleats, argyles and laced up slippers. White puffy sleeves, lacy ascots and velvet vests complete the lassies’ outfits. The little legs kick back, the arms akimbo. They pivot, they leap, they dance dance dance. The piper, who pipes obscurely in a rear corner of the stage, is also a marvel. I recall Blaine telling me about the piper who played incessantly from nine in the morning till six at night for the competitions last year. He emphasized the quality of this feat in saying that the bag must continue full of breath.
I look now toward the open field before the stage where a lone judge sits. She is raised to an elevated position by a canvas chair set high on a picnic table. On her lap rests a clipboard. She watches and writes as dancers in groups of three perform the hornpipe before her critical gaze. The diminutive dancers begin and end each dance with a bow to her. Grace. The music beats faster and faster but the judge, wearing a yellow sun dress with spaghetti straps, sits still in the burning sun as they leap.
I begin to marvel more at the judge than the dancers who are shaded and sheltered. Later, as I roam the grounds while the day wears, I will marvel still more. For whenever I look in the direction of the dancers there will be the judge . . . watching and writing, seated, as though for eternity, in the fiery sun.
Rested, we stand and make our way past dancers down toward the white tents of domestic encampment which we passed on our way to the parade ground earlier. Approaching, I hear a young woman telling a few listeners about historical roles. They are camp followers, respected young women chosen by lottery to follow the Highland soldiers. They prepare foods such as scones on the griddle. They wash linens and care for the children they bring.
I sense movement at my feet and look down. There is a sweet babe, in a long white gown, sitting in a wooden tub draped in wool. She looks up at me with direct trusting blue eyes and a wet smile. The babe sucks on a smooth wooden orb held in her dimpled hand. And as she sucks, she hums. Her humming is dulcet and dreamy although she smiles at me with true awareness in her heaven’s eyes. It is long before I look away.
Beside her is another tub toward which she leans, dropping her orb. The tub holds a few inches of water afloat with smooth wood-turnings of various shapes. The babe reaches down and splashes the water, watching the turnings bob in its ripples. Then she picks out a spindle and begins gumming it. The young woman working at the table notices my interest and tells me the baby’s name is Kelsey.
I step over to watch the women’s preparation of food, and to ask questions about their attire. Now I see genuine scones heaped in a steaming plateful. Some are scorched from the iron griddle. Scones look like triangular buckwheat biscuits, homely, not high or light. Does the word derive from the place called Scone, where the Stone of Destiny became the coronation stone in 843 A.D.? Or is it the other way around? Websters says that the word comes from the Dutch schoonbrood, meaning pure clean bread.
On the women’s table are crockery, stone jugs and pewter tankards. On their heads are long white scarves with folds binding their crowns. The linen is held in place with a neat gold pin in the midst of the head. Historically, the scarves indicated that the women were married. The cloths were treasured for this, says the baby’s mother. Beneath the gowns and petticoats they wore linen shifts in which they slept. Linen was considered precious, probably because being homespun and woven of homegrown flax it was difficult to make. The top of one bodice is held in place by a three-inch black thorn. She tells me this is a hawthorn, from a hawthorn tree. It is authentic as part of the camp follower’s dress: fierce, like the spirit of a camp follower. As with the thistle, this three-inch black thorn epitomizes this life in the Highlands, where pipers call. “Wha duar meddle wi me?”
Down the facing rows of white tents are highland soldiers from the time of bonnie Prince Charlie: their garb is not ancient—no chain mail here. They wear tartans, carry flintlock muskets and swords with basket hilts. One soldier gives us a demonstration on the proper
