TUESDAY 26 July
I was up before 6 AM for no particular reason other than being ready to get out of bed and start my day. I fed Juniper-the-cat, made a cup of coffee, finished the blog entry for yesterday, and posted it. Breakfast was toasted cinnamon raisin bread, which set offthe smoke detector. That was a first for this trip.
Our main focus for today was a visit to The Gaelic College (Colaisde na Gàidhlig) in nearby St. Ann’s, Nova Scotia (Cape Brenton Island).
From the College’s website ( https://gaeliccollege.edu/ ):
“Colaisde na Gàidhlig is first and foremost an educational non-profit institution, offering year-round programming in the culture, music, language, crafts, customs, and traditions of the immigrants from the Highlands of Scotland. The only institution of its kind in North America, students of all ages and skill levels visit the College every year to study under some of the finest instructors in Nova Scotia Gaelic culture.”
The main building of The Gaelic College, presumably administrative. We entered here through the gift shop.
The Gaelic College is small, with about six main buildings and an outdoor amphitheater. We entered through the gift shop and paid the 10$/person fee to attend a cultural experience. The program was held in the Great Hall of the Clans, which also housed the museum displays. We were early, so we perused the museum and learned things about which we were previously unaware.
The Great Hall of the Clans (An Talla Mór).
We learned that Gaelic is a language group with two branches, each of which have three branches. From Wikipedia (Scottish Gaelic): “Scottish Gaelic, also know as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goedelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as both Irish and Manx, developed out of Old Irish. It became a distinct spoken language sometime in the 13th century in the Middle Irish period.” The other branch consists of Briton, Cornish, and Welsh.
The Scottish Gaelic alphabet consists of 18 characters, with completely different phonics from English. Of particular interest to me was the fact that the language, music, and dance are intimately connected and the songs have a specific feature in which there is a one-to-one relationship between notes and syllables.
MacKenzie Hall (Talla Mich Coinnich) .
Our cultural experience was in two parts of ~90 minutes each, with a one-hour break for a lunch and cèilidh (KAY-lee). First was a presentation on kilts by a master kilt maker. Next was a fiddle player who was joined by a dancer and then followed by someone who taught us a few words and an easy song which we sang while going through the motions milling a woven fabric.
The amphitheater and a view of the countryside.
We would have like to attend the cèilidh in the McKenzie Hall multi-purpose building, which in this case was a performance by college staff and students, but it was combined with the luncheon for 15$/person. The price wasn’t a problem, but there was nothing on offer in terms of food that we could eat, and we don’t like paying for meals we can’t actually consume. We continued to peruse the museum and walked the grounds. The location of the amphitheater allowed us a view of the surrounding countryside.
A bagpiper in traditional attire plays in front of the main building by the road.
After lunch we got an explanation and demonstration of weaving. This was followed by a presentation on storytelling that included stories in Scottish Gaelic with English translations. All of the presenters throughout the day were very good and it was clear they were passionate about, and deeply committed to, preserving and sharing their cultural heritage. On the way out of the gift shop to our truck, a young man in appropriate attire was standing out by the road with his bagpipe. We had seen him sitting inside when we arrived but didn’t know why he was there. Now we did. All told it took about 5.5 hours of our day, but it was time well-spent as we enjoyed it very much, and the price was right.
The daytime high temperature only reached 80 degrees F so we opened up the trailer and turned off the heat-pump. We restocked the refrigerator with cans and bottles of water and then moved many of the dry-goods containers from the pull-out pantry to the storage compartments under the sofa. We walked the campground and dropped off a bag of trash before stopping to chat with the neighbors who are also from the States. I took a nap and got a shower while Linda fixed dinner. Our evening meal was vegan chicken tenders and improvised macaroni and cheese (also vegan). The later was more like pasta and cheese as Linda wanted use up the remaining cascatelli pasta.
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