A Wee Dram of Scotland in Idaho: The Treasure Valley Celtic Festival and Highland Games

As Mom and I were walking around the Boise Fairgrounds where the annual Treasure Valley Celtic Festival and Highland Games were being held on a cloudy, sometimes rainy, Saturday, we saw many Scottish men of all ages walking around in kilts of the many clans of Scotland, and we couldn't resist the question, "Do they wear underwear under those kilts?!" The question would be answered later on in the day while Mom and I watched the Highland games complete with the caber toss and other events. While watching "The Weights" competition, which is where the men (and women) toss a heavy weight over a bar over their shoulders and this involved the men to swing the weight under their legs. They had to lift their kilts a little bit, and it was there we saw that most of them were not "going commando" under their kilts and had spandex shorts under them. That answered our question every one asks about the Scottish and their kiltsBoise, Idaho. Braveheart wannabes and Scottish men serious on competing in the games come from all over the Pacific Northwest to compete, and along with the games, there is music, dancers, and crafts booths for all to enjoy. One of my co-workers at Home Depot, Seth, competes in these games with his friend Zach, who is a champion Highland Game performer, and he told me that the games were being held on September 22, and I told Mom about them. Being part Scottish, Mom got all excited, and she began digging out the family information on the Nesbitt side of her family that came from Scotland via England and Canada. There are booths of the many clans that live in the Pacific Northwest, but there were no Nesbitts living in the area, but we did get our family crest and coat of arms printed out for along with a ton of information on our Nesbitt clans life in Scotland through books and other information.

Quick Tips:

Besides running out to Hollywood Video or your nearest department store to rent or buy a copy of Braveheart or Rob Roy (there's proof in those films that Scottish men didn't wear underwear under their kilts a long time ago) to learn about Scottish history and culture, you can check this website www.idahoscots.org for more information about the Scottish American Society in Idaho along with more information about the Festival and Games held every September.There are other Celtic Festivals and Highland Games held in other parts of the Pacific Northwest, and the next even will be held in Prosser, Washington on June 21, 2008 (www.prosserchamber.org). If you don't live near Idaho or Washington, there are other festivals held throughout the USA that one can see.Prepare to spend an entire day at the Festival and Games. They start about 9am and end about 6pm. Mom and I spent about 5 hours at the Treasure Valley Games and Festivals, so bring a warm jacket if the weather is cool and maybe a chair to sit down while watching the Highland Games. It cost me to get into the games, and Mom got in for half that being a senior. Children get in for half the price too, and there is a lot to see for Scottish people of all ages all ages.

Best Way To Get Around:

The Treasure Valley Celtic Festival and Highland Games are held at the Expo Idaho Western Idaho Fairgrounds in Garden City, Idaho. The Fairgrounds, the name for this are to the locals, is located next door to the Boise Hawks baseball stadium and the Les Bois Horse Track. If you are staying in Downtown Boise, you can get to the Fairgrounds via State Street. Turn right onto State Street from downtown and go down the road about 5 miles. Turn left at Glenwood Avenue, and the Fairgrounds are about a mile up the road on the left.

From I-84, take the Curtis Road Exit off of I-184 and turn left onto Fairview Avenue. Take a right onto Cole Road and follow the road to Mountain View Road and take another left. Take a right onto Glenwood, and the Fairgrounds are on the right side.

Besides checking out the family history and tartan colors, Mom and I went to the Treasure Valley Celtic Festival and Highland Games to check out the main event, the Heavy Athletics. These are the athletic events that require a lot of strength and power to compete in. There were three classes competing in the Treasure Valley Games, the women and lightweight class, the 190-pound and under class of men, and the big boys, the Heavyweights or Masters Class. My co-worker Seth and his friend Zach are part of the Masters and Heavyweight class since Seth is about 300lb while Zach is pretty ripped and about 250lb. Heavy Athletic events include stone throwing, weight throwing (aka "The Sheep Toss"), hammer throwing, and the most famous game of all, the Caber Toss.  Mom and I caught most of the Heavyweights and Masters competing in the Weight Toss and Caber Toss. The Weight Toss is a competition where the men take two rounds to see who can throw a heavy stone over their head and over a horizontal bar. The first round is the 28-pound stone toss, and the ones who survive that round go onto the 56-pound toss, which eliminated many of the heavyweight class, including Seth. I believe the winner tossed his weight 14 feet with the 56-pound stone. Mom and I worried that if that stone didn't make it over the bar, the contestant had better be pretty quick to move out of the way or be hit in the head with the big stone! OUCH! After the Weights, the Heavyweights and Masters moved to the Caber Toss. At work, Seth explained what the toss was all about. Mom and I were lucky to get a front-row seat to the Caber toss at our own risk, the judge warned! The men have to take two throws with a 12-foot, 90-pound pole or caber. The contestant has to throw it from the bottom of the caber, and it has to rotate in the air once before landing on the ground in a clock position. 12 o'clock is considered a perfect caber toss landing. Most of the guys survived the first caber toss at this class, but the next class with the 17-foot, 103-pound caber brought down all but three of the contestants.  Seth didn't make it past this round, and he couldn't even get two of his tosses out of his hands because they slipped before he had total control. Zach along with two other contestants from Oregon went onto the third round, which was the 21-foot, 107-pound caber, which is not much heavier than the second-round caber, but it's tapered with the heavier weight at top. Two near-perfect throws later, Zach was the champion of the caber toss. During the second round of the Caber Toss, I had to run to the ladies room. When I got back, Mom's chair was further back than when I left it. Mom said one of the cabers got too close for comfort!

Along with the Heavy Athletic Games and great music, there were several booths at the festival from several businesses in the Treasure Valley and several Scottish Clans from Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Mom and I hit just about every booth at the festival and got a lot of information about some of the clans in the area along with a little lesson in Celtic astrology for me.

The first booth Mom and I hit as soon as we got into the festival was where you could get your Clan information printed out on an 11 x 14 form or on a sweatshirt or t-shirt. Mom and I pounced on the book of clans they provided and immediately started to look for our name, Nesbitt. We found it fairly quickly and read about where our clan came from along with its family crest. The young girl who was working there with her dad helped us, and we had no problem coughing up $21 for a copy of the Nesbitt family crest.

Several of the booths sold t-shirts and sweatshirts with Celtic or Scottish symbols on them. One booth had this very funny t-shirt that gave the "Top 10 Reasons The Scottish Wear Kilts" including "The Sheep won't hear the zipper!" Mom and I were rolling over with laughter after seeing that t-shirt and Scottish humor.

One of my favorite stops was the booth that sold Celtic astrology jewelry and t-shirts. I started to look for my Celtic sign to see if I could relate to it, and sure enough, several things stuck out that were me. My Celtic sign is Saille (April 16-May 14). Under Saille, the cosmos were born from the boughs of two willow trees, and it is the sign of the willow ruled by Cerridwen, the Goddess of the Moon. My name Dianne is named for Diana, the Roman Goddess of the Moon. There's got to be a connection there, I thought! People of the Willow are able to use their words, memories, and will effectively. That's me!

I bought a pewter necklace for $8.75 with Saille's symbol, the sea serpent on one side, and the Celtic symbol of my sign on the other. It was my big splurge of the day.

The clans who came to the Festival were the Donalds, the Lamonts, Campbell, and a few Irish or Celtic Clans. Mom and I spoke to the Campbell representative about Cousin Ed and his Campbells coming from Ireland, but he said the Irish and Scottish Campbells went from Ireland and Scotland and back many times. The Lamont clan showed us pictures of their trip to Scotland last month, and another clan had Viking handicrafts for sale.

Mom and I found our tartan colors in several books, but we were disappointed not to find a sample cloth of it anywhere. Clans are broken into Septs, and we couldn't find Nesbitt among the clans present. Most of the Nesbitts live in the Eastern USA.

Of course a big festival has food to feed the masses. There were several food booths at the Treasure Valley Celtic Festival and Highland Games. From English meat pies made from beef or chicken to scones, and yes, even that dreaded Haggis, the Scottish treat of sheep guts inside a sheep's stomach! YUM! I mean that sarcastically!

Mom and I wanted to try something different than the hot dogs and hamburgers that were being offered at the festival, and we had our choice of food booths. We first saw the meat pie booths, but the price for small pies was ridiculous, so we passed there. We also passed on the Haggis! Mom found a booth that sold sausage and bangers along with corned beef sandwiches. So, she went off to that booth and got a corned beef sandwich. All morning, I had seen people walking around munching on smoked turkey legs big enough to make Henry VIII envious. They were making me really hungry. That was going to be my lunch.

A local smokehouse restaurant had the booth with the turkey legs, and there was a long line waiting to order and get their legs that were being smoked on two big smoker grills attended by one of the cooks. The girl at the counter said that it would be about 10 minutes before our legs were ready, but I didn't care, they were going to be right out of the smoker and fresh! So I ordered and took my number and waited.

Ten minutes later, my number was called, and I got my choice of turkey legs, and I got a good-sized leg. Mom saw me looking like Henry VIII's illegitimate child with my leg and said she didn't get that because she was afraid of looking silly. "We're Scottish (OK, part-Scottish, but who's checking?!), Mom!," I joked, "We're supposed to eat like barbarians!" Then, I dug into my leg as we walked to the highland games not caring if I looked silly eating it. The turkey leg was soooo yummy with a subtle smoked flavor and hot and juicy. If my cat Zoe was there, she would have been all over the leg, too, being a big turkey lover. My camera got some of the juices on it, but no damage. I ate the whole thing enjoying every bite along the way.

Mom said her corned beef sandwich was OK, but not like the ones she used to get at the Jewish delis back East. She said they put sauerkraut on the sandwiches, but she passed on the kraut.

Bellies full of hearty fare, Mom and I were ready for another few hours of fun and games including the caber toss and other heavy athletics.

My mother's maiden name is Nesbitt, an old Scottish name that dates from many hundreds of years ago. Our cousin Ed Campbell has done a lot of extensive research on the Nesbitt family via the Internet and travel to Scotland on a couple of occasions, and that research along with the information I found in a couple of books on Scottish clans and tartans at the Treasure Valley Celtic Festival and Highland Games has given me a greater understanding of my Scottish ancestors. There are several spellings of the Nesbitt name that we have discovered. It is spelt Nisbet, Nesbyth, de Nesbit, and its most recent spelling, Nesbitt. The Nesbitt Clan of Scotland was a prominent border clan that settled in the Berwickshire area of Southeastern Scotland around the mid-12th century. The originally came from Normandy, France (see, my Viking ancestors were raping and pillaging all over Northern Europe for a long time!) and too the name De Nesbite shortly after settling down in Berwickshire. In 1160, William De Nesbite witnessed a charter from the Earl of Dunbar to the monks of Coldingham Priory and from 1219-1240, a Thomas Nisbet was the Prior of Coldingham Priory. In 1296, Edward I of England (also known as "Edward Longshanks") forced many Scottish nobles and clergymen to swear an oath of allegiance to the English crown, and two members of the Nesbitt clan, a De Nesbyth and Nisbet were among those swearing allegiance to Edward I. From 1306-1329, an Adam Nisbet of Nisbet Knockles was under charter from Robert the Bruce. The English Civil War of 1645-1660 was rough on the Nesbitt Clan. Most of the Nesbitt nobles sided with Charles I and the Royalist cause. An Alexander Nesbit was Sheriff of Berwickshire at this time and fought with two of his sons in battle against Oliver Cromwell's army. Philip Nesbit was a general under the command of the Marquis of Montrose and was captured by the Roundheads after the 1645 Battle of Philiphaugh. On 29 October 1645, Philip Nesbitt was executed along with another Scottish noble from the Oglivy clan, who was only 20 at the time of his execution. There is a Nisbet House in Berwickshire that dates from 1603 and is a bed and breakfast today. Ed thought of staying there when he visited Scotland, but the price of the hotel was enough for Ed to say, "I might be a Nesbitt, but I am not crazy!" In the early 18th century, there was a rift between the Nesbitt clan factions and my direct ancestor moved to England before immigrating to Quebec, Canada. In Quebec, the Nesbitt family was a prominent ship building family, and one of the offspring from this family came to Rhode Island in the mid-19th century. Today the Nesbitt clan is scattered in Rhode Island, Florida, Idaho, Alabama, and other parts of the USA. Our family crest is a red and white shield with boars and a knight's head on top. The family motto is I byde it, and our tartan is a red, green, and white plaid, but blue plaid h

What Scottish person doesn't get all weepy and nostalgic when they hear the bagpipes played?! The Treasure Valley Celtic Festival and Highland Games had plenty of bagpipes blowing everywhere between the bagpipe competition that was going on all day and the many marching ceremonies that Mom and I saw during our visit to the event. But the best Scottish music with bagpipes and other ancient instruments at the Festival was the music by a California-based group called The Wicked Tinkers. This group was founded in 1995 by Aaron Shaw, a bagpiper, and drummer Warren Casey. They put together a band that played Scottish music that would have been heard hundreds of years ago at weddings and other special occasions and ceremonies in Scotland. After 12 years of several band personnel changes, the Wicked Tinkers perform with Shaw, Casey, percussionist Keith Jones, and didgeroo and Irish horn player Jay Atwood. This group brought down the house at the festival with their loud and raucous Scottish music and funny stories in between songs. Shaw joked that they were "the Band without Pants," a joke to the fact that they were all wearing kilts and the 1980s group Men without Hats and their song "The Safety Dance." Along with the great music, there was a young girl in Scottish garb that would come out and do ancient Scottish dancing and a couple of little girls from the audience came out to dance with her. The rain and cold caused the girl to get a cramp in her foot, and she had to withdraw from the dancing for the rest of the concert, but her cramps didn't stop The Wicked Tinkers from hamming it up on their own. Atwood and Jones came out to the audience several times to get the audience involved even more, and by the end of the performance, the entire audience was clapping and stomping their feet in unison to the music. The Wicked Tinkers had a tent selling their CD's anywhere from $12-$17, and they are also available on-line at www.wickedtinkers.com. I didn't buy any of their music at the festival, but I am seriously looking into buying some of it on-line as a Christmas gift for my favorite Scottish lass's Christmas/Birthday gift!