The Grandfather Mountain Highland Games at MacRae Meadows
Near Banner Elk, North Carolina
On the meadow at the foot of Grandfather Mountain, each summer, the skirl of bagpipes and the thud of tossed cabers fill the air. This is MacRae Meadows, home of the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, one of the largest gatherings of Scottish clans in the country. The games were founded in nineteen fifty-six by Agnes MacRae Morton of Linville and Donald MacDonald of Charlotte.
MacDonald had attended the Royal Braemar Gathering in Scotland in nineteen fifty-four, and he wanted to bring that tradition to the North Carolina mountains. The MacRae family, who had founded the nearby village of Linville in eighteen ninety-two, had long dreamed of a Highland gathering on their land, so they offered the use of MacRae Meadows. The first games were held on August nineteenth, nineteen fifty-six, chosen for the anniversary of Bonnie Prince Charlie's landing in Scotland at the start of the Jacobite rising of seventeen forty-five.
About fifteen hundred people came to watch Scottish songs and dances, foot races, wrestling, and the traditional caber toss, in which competitors flip a heavy wooden pole end over end. Today the games run four days and draw crowds of more than thirty thousand, a living celebration of the Scots-Irish heritage that runs deep through these Appalachian ridges.
