History
The origins of Highland Games
The Highland Games of Scotland uphold a tradition going back into the mists of the past.
The earliest Games were hold more than a thousand years ago under sponsorship of kings and clan chiefs.Competitions served a varity of material, sporting and religious functions. The clan chiefs used them to recruit staff - winners of races made excellent couries and the strongest men made fine bodyguards. The athletes and wrestlers, retained by the rival chiefs, were often matched in competition at important gatherings. Dancers and pipers were also taken into the chiefs' household - not just for entertainment value, but for the glory their prowess would reflect on their masters, on occasions such as these.
Down the centuries the men of villages or parishes gathered once a year - perhaps it was their only holiday - and passed the day exercising their strength in competitions founded on the use of implements of their trades: throwing hammers, putting rounded stones found in the rivers, heaving weights, tossing tree trunks, running in flat races and up steep hillsides. They would practice too, the playing of the bagpipes and perform traditional dances.
All these activities have been incorporated in the modern games. Prowess has developed into highly-skilled techniques.
Great Athletes, great dancers and great musicians have come to regard the "games" as a natural outlet for their traditional arts.
And also there are the time honoured march-pasts and massed bands, with clansmen marching past their chief, banners flying.
In the particular case of Braemer, it is the Chief of Chiefs who takes the salute: the Queen herself.
Distinctive as this is a great honour undoubtedly is, it is part of Braemar story:
Her Majesty fulfils a role assumed by an ancestor of hers in the 11th century.
Traditional Highland Games are at the most picturesque and vivid in the Highlands.
Here, amid incomparably beautiful scenery, age-old traditions come right into the present, and thrill by their Scottish - their Highland - individually.
The Braemar Gathering is always held on the 1st Saturday in September.
Flyer of the BRAEMER GATHERING 1974 (private collection)
Flyer of the BRAEMER GATHERING 1981 (private collection)
Braemar Castle
Braemar Gathering was held at Braemar Castle in 1894 and in later years
Braemar Castle is situated near the village of Braemar in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
It is the ancestral home and seat of Clan Farquharson and is leased to a local charitable foundation.
Known colloquially as "The Games" - and originating from those believed to have been held by Malcolm III - an annual Highland Games Gathering is held at Braemar on the first Saturday in September and is traditionally attended by the British Royal Family.
Royal Patronage
Highland Games have had a long connection with the Royal House of the United Kingdom. King Malcom is credited with starting the Royal association with the now world famous Royal Braemar in the 11th century.
To find a new footrunner he arranged a hill race to the top of Craig Chroinich, a mountain overlooking Braemar.It was Queen Victoria with her love for Scotland who popularised Highland Games. For many decades after the failure of the 1745 Rebellion, large gatherings, along with the kilt and bagpipes, were banned. Early in her reign Queen Victoria realised there was no neccessary conflict between a native Scottish culture and loyality to the British throne. The traditional dress, music and dance of Scotland were encouraged and the Highland Games received Royal patronage.
In 1848, Queen Victoria and her consort Prince Albert, paid their first visit to Balmoral. In the very first week of the great Queen's long-life love affair with Deeside, the Royal couple attended the Braemar Gathering. In her famous "Journal" names and terms connected with Highland Games were catalogued.
She wrote that there were "the usual games of puuting the stone, throwing the hammer and caber" and she was pleased to note that her ghillie "Duncan.....an active, good looking young man" should win the race up "the hill of Craig Choinnich".
Royal patronage had the patronage of the nobility hard on its heels. The noble patrons exist today most often in the shape of the local laird. For example the Duke of Argyll sonsors the Inveraray Highland Games, Lady Aberdeen is patron of the Aberdeen Highland Games and the Earl of Huntly is Chieftain and generous patron of Aboyne Highland Games.
The presence of the Royal Family on Deeside had brought many generations of Royality into close association with the Highland Games.
The reigning Sovereign is still a regular visitor to the Braemar Gathering.
The "Heavies"
Stars of the Highland Games are undoubtedly the "Heavies", that breed of gigantic men who draw the rapt attention of the followers of the Games wherever they go. Some of the names and the tales of their prowess are almost legendary. They have certainly passed into a lively history. Perhaps the most famous of all Heavis of the past was Donald Dinnie.
A son of Deeside he dominated the 19th century Games scene and established records that remained unbroken for many years.
At the turn of the century the great A.A. Cameron assumed the role of champion. Later still, until after the secon World War the names of Jim Maitland, George Clark, Bob Shaw and John McLelland are illustrious in the story of the art.
The tours of Scottish athletes abroad stimulated great intereset in the Scottish Traditional Events with Heavies such as Brian Oldfield from America and Colin Mathieson from Australia coming to compete in Scotland.
Heavies like "big Bill" Anderson, Hamish Davidson and Brian Robin have been joined by new breed, Englishman Geoff Capes and Scotsman Grant Anderson from the amateur field, who, after learning the art of the professional technique, have dominated the Highland Games circuit in the eighties.
Events
Caber toss
Of all the events at the Highland Games, surely the most spectacular and the most popular is the Tossing the Caber.
Not many nations boast among their pastimes the throwing about of a great tree trunk!
Yet "throwing about" is not what tossing the caber is: it is a feat of enourmas sill as well as one requiring extraordinary strength.
Like other articles to be found in the strength-testing activities at the Games, the Caber is native to the land, a tall, straight, heavy pine, stripped of its branches. This natural "device" - like the round stones from the beds of fast-flowing rivers, the hammers used in daily work, were the basis of the games contest and the simple forerunners of the more sophisticated apparatus of today.
Yet, the caber remains what it has always been - a great tree trunk, requiering the force of a great body strength and technique to throw it.
A small group of officials bear the caber to the athlete. Propping it upright, thick end upward, he stoops to balance the tall, unwieldy object against his shoulder as he grasps the lower end in his hands. Balancing the top-heavy caber, the athlete jerks it swiftly and surely up, so that he is carrying it at arm length, its weight shared with a shoulder prop.
About eight-ninth of the caber towers above the shoulder. Expert judgementmust be brought into play even to achieve this equilibrium.
A run is take - swift, straight and unerring. From top speed, the athlete comes to a full stop.
At that crucial instant the caber leaves the athletes shoulder. With every atom of his strength he lifts the thinner end in his cupped hands and hurls it upwards. The crowd wait breathlessy to see whether
the caber will turn over cleanly and fall in the required 12 o'clock position.
The moment is one of the most thrilling in any athletic contest in my opinion!
Scoring
The object is not the sheer distance of the throw, but rather to have the caber fall directly away from the thrower after landing.
A perfect throw ends with the 'top' end nearest to the thrower and the 'bottom' end pointing exactly away.
If the throw is not perfect, it is scored by viewing the caber as though it were the hour hand on a clock.
A perfect toss is 12:00.
A caber pointing to 11:00 would yield a better score than one pointing to 10:30 but would be the equivalent of 1:00.
If the caber lands on its end and falls back towards the thrower, the score is lower than for any throw that falls away from the thrower but will be based upon the maximum vertical angle that the caber achieved (side-judging may involve a second judge.)
An angle of 87° is better than 75°.
Scoring depends on accuracy, and if the caber did not completely turn once, then it is based on the degree that it rose away from the ground.
The Caber / Cabar
Each games has its own particular caber, all with its own characteristics.
The better-known Games may have a traditional caber which is never cut under any circumstances.
These cabers are often produced as an extra challenge outwith the normal Caber-Tossing competition.
The Braemar Gathering Commitee for example possess three cabers.
In the closed event, for Society Members only, the caber is 17ft 3 ins [~ 5.3 Meter] in length and weights 91 lbs [~ 42 Kg].
For the open competition a caber three inches shorter is used, but it weights a full 23 lbs more [~52 Kg].
The best known of all however is the world famous Braemar caber which measures 19ft. 3 inches. [5.88 Meter] and weights 120 lbs [~ 55 Kg]. This caber was used for approx. 60 years at Braemar.
George Clark was the first to successfully turn this caber. This was in 1951 but after this time there was a rapid increase in standards and the Braemar caber was shipped to Australia for games in New South Wales.
A new caber was introduced then in Braemar, his weight is 132 lbs [60 Kg] and he measures 19ft, 9 ins. [6.06 Meter] and his name is "Tobermory Caber".
Scottish Hammer
The Scottish hammer toss today is smilar to the version seen at modern track-and-field competitions.
In the Scottish event, men use a round metal ball that weighs between sixteen and twenty-two pounds; which is approx. between 7.25 Kg and approx. 10 Kg, (while women use one weighing twelve to sixteen pounds [5.44 Kg - 7.25 Kg]) that is attached to the end of a four foot long [1.21 Meter] shaft made from wood, bamboo, rattan, or plastic.
Keeping your feet in a fixed positions, whirl the hammers over your head and throw them for distance over your shoulders.
Weight throw
The weight throw is divided into two separate events, one for distance and one for height.
Weight for distance
The distance event, said to be one of the most graceful of heavy events, uses a twenty-eight pound [12.7 Kg] weight for men and a fourteen pound [6.35 Kg] weight for women. In simple terms, the thrower grasps the weight in one hand, spins around in (mostly two pirouettes) and throws the weight as far as possible.
Weight for height (Weight over the bar)
For the height event, participants attempt to throw a fifty-six [25.4 Kg] pound box weight over a horizontal bar using only one hand.
Each contestant has three attempts to reach a certain height.
Successful attempts allows the athlete to advance to the next round, for which the bar is raised higher.
The competition is determined by the highest successful throw; in the event of a tie, the winner is the one with the fewest throws misses.
Sheaf toss
Mostly Sheaf Toss is not a heavy event, the sheaf toss has been incorporated into many Team Highland Games competitions.
This traditional agricultural event was originally contested at country fairs in Scotland and in some of the Basque regions of France.
Using a pitchfork, farmers would hurl a burlap bag stuffed with twenty pounds [~9 Kg] of straw over a horizontal bar above their heads.
Each competitor has three chances to toss the sheaf cleanly go over the bar without touching it.
Normally the bar is raised after each round.
This continues until all but one athlete is eliminated.
Farmers Walk
The Farmers Walk is done by grasping the handles of the weights in each hand, standing up with them, and walking.
In professional competition, the weights vary from around 265 pounds per hand to almost 400 pounds [120 Kg - 180 Kg]per hand!
The contest can be to walk as far as you can with the weights with a pre-set number of set downs allowed,
or to walk/run a set distance for the fastest time.
Most of the time the event is done over a set distance for time, and set up for two or more contestants to go side by side in a race.
Clach Cuid Fir / Clach Neart (Stone put)
There are two traditional stories concerning the origin of this ancient sport.
Men would hold competitions using two types of stones to determine who among them was the strongest.
The first stone, called the clach cuid fir, or "manhood stone" weighed over one hundred pounds; men competed to see who could lift it to a certain height or place it on a wall.
The second stone, the clach neart, or "stone of strength", was much smaller, usually around twenty to thirty pounds. The contest at which this stone was employed was to see who could throw it the farthest.
Supposedly, the stone put evolved from these two competitions.
All young men needed to take up stone putting was a smooth rock from the river bed.
In the past, each gathering had its own stone, which could vary in weight from thirteen pound stone to Braemar's twenty-eight pound stone.
Today there are two variants of stone putting styles that call for different stones.
The "Braemar Stone" weighs between twenty and twenty-six pounds [9.07 Kg - 11.8 Kg] for men, or between thirteen and eighteen pounds [5.89 Kg - 8.16 Kg] for women, and is thrown from a stand-still.
The "Open Stone" is several pounds lighter (sixteen to twenty-two pounds [7.25 Kg - 9.97 Kg] for men, eight to twelve pounds [3.6 Kg - 5.44 Kg] for women), and can be putted with any style so long as it is put with one hand and is cradled in the neck until the moment of release.