I recently ran a stall at The MacLennan Gathering in Inverness, around a quarter of those attending had travelled from New Zealand and proudly claimed Scottish ancestry. New Zealand is place that couldn’t be further away from Scotland on the map but it’s inhabitants make up a good percentage of The Scottish Diaspora. So inspired by the […]
The origins of Scottish Highland dancing like most of our Scottish traditions are swathed in the mists of time. Our proud history and traditions were orally told and passed through the generations. It is said that the old kings and clan chiefs would hold Highland games as a means to select the best men […]
Recently we’ve been getting asked a lot about how to move to Scotland to live so we thought we’d put together a bit of a helpful guide. Maybe the pipes are calling you home? Scotland compared with other places does not have many people – we only have around 5.5 million people and about 70% […]
10 ways Scotland influenced the United States of America – An infographic with some great facts about how Scotland and her people helped to shape the United States…
It was only 28 years after the infamous Battle of Culloden, in 1773, when the Hector was moored within Loch Broom taking onboard a group of people from the Highlands. 189 passengers joined the Hector that day, 25 single men, 33 families, a piper and their agent, all of which had one thing in common. They […]
A few weeks ago, we took a peek into the late nineteenth-century world of frontier Colorado with a most remarkable little Victorian era explorer named Lady Isabella Bird. On one of her many adventurous journeys around the globe, Englishwoman Lady Isabella introduced us to the Chalmers family in the foothills of the front range in […]
Before Christmas just passed there were various threads on Scottish Clans and Families about rights to the title ‘Scot’ or ‘Scottish’. Far from a relatively minor Facebook debate, there was an issue at stake – how we Scots (if I may be so bold) regard our diaspora cousins. Amanda (who is English, by the way) […]
One of the things that discourages individuals from recognizing and exploring, not to mention enjoying, their Scottish Gaelic heritage is the widespread view that the only distinct aspect of Gaelic culture was, and is, its Celtic language. Many people consciously and unconsciously are assured that beyond “Ceud Mile Failte” and “Slainte”, Gaelic culture is basically little […]
In 1873, an astoundingly plucky young woman made it her strong desire to visit a primitive Rocky Mountain supply outpost in the valley of the Big Thompson river. The place was called Estes Park and it had only recently sprouted up from pure wilderness in Colorado Territory’s northern mountains (Colorado would not enter the union as a state for another three years). Constantly […]
Any cattleman worth his salt will tell you that he’s in the grass business. He either grows it himself or takes his cows where it grows up naturally. That means that it is not so much the cow that deserves attention. The important thing is the land and the water – when water is available, […]
