Every year around this time, the Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh runs a competition for sighting of the elusive mythological creature known as the haggis, which is said to roam in Scotland. You can join in this through checking out ten haggis cameras the paper has set up at its Haggis Hunt site. You can win prizes… but before we go further, should you be reading this on New Year’s eve, go take a look at the shot of Edinburgh Castle, where if the timing is right you’ll be likely to see fireworks, and check out the camera at Stonehaven, where you might see balls of fire being hurled into the harbor.

The ten haggis cams offer interesting shots at any time, though. At George Square in Glasgow it’s been fun to see a festive holiday carnival, including a ferris wheel in lights, and now you can watch as the festival is taken down, the strings of light come off the statues, and the square returns to its daily life as part of Glasgow city center. You could look for haggis (no worries, you will recognize one instantly) among the shoppers and tourists along the royal mile in Edinburgh or out in the far flung haggis diaspora of New Delhi, India. The camera angle at Eilean Donan Castle in Scotland’s northwest moves about now and again, so you might see a close up of the castle itself, a shot of houses on a nearby hillside, or a view of snowy mountains beyond the castle. As to the prizes, the competition runs through Burns night on 25 January (several of the cameras stay active the year around, though) and you could win hotel stays, rounds of golf at the historic course at St. Andrews, and perhaps packets of haggis flavored crisps, also known as potato chips.

Reading about those chips, you might be saying to yourself:

I thought haggis was something to eat? It is. Basically it’s the innards of sheep or beef mixed with oatmeal and spices and boiled. There are vegetarian versions too. The connection between the mythological creature and the dish comes in for a take it with several grains of salt explanation at the Haggis Hunt site.

So people in Scotland eat haggis all the time then?
No. Some do not eat it at all, and for some it’s a very occasional dish. While it by no means appears on every restaurant’s menu, in the neighborhood where I stay in Glasgow, I can walk down the busy shopping street and pass a fast food place which has haddock and chips, burger and chips, and haggis and chips on its menu board. There’s an upscale bakery a few shops down which often has mini haggis pies — pie crusts about two inches in diameter filled with haggis — in its display. Across the road there is a pizza place, with haggis among the many choices for toppings. At the grocers, you can get haggis in a tin any time of year, and especially in January as people are getting ready to celebrate Burns night, vacuum packed bags of both meat and vegetarian haggis for you to take home and prepare start appearing. Haggis as a tv dinner, both meat and vegetarian versions and accompanied by traditional sides of neeps and tatties — turnips and potatoes — gave me a good laugh the first time I saw it. Sightings of these, too, are more common around Burns night.

Okay, so what is the connection between Robert Burns and haggis anyway? and why is haggis so popular in Scotland?
Robert Burns was a farmer in his adult life and grew up on a farm, so he likely ate his share of haggis in eighteenth century Scotland. The best known connection, though, is Address to a Haggis, a poem Burns wrote. It’s actually about the independent character of the Scots and a call to national pride, with haggis as a metaphor. National bard, national pride, and history put together equal pride in a national dish.

As you are checking out the haggis cams or contemplating making your own dish of haggis, you might also want to

learn more about those fireballs and what else goes on in Stonehaven
get a heads up on a music festival coming up in Glasgow
choose music of Scotland to listen to
hear musician Julie Fowlis speak and sing in Scottish Gaelic, a language few of her fellow Scots, and fewer still around the world, still speak and understand

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Christmas Eve is a time of anticipation, of reflection, a time when the hurry to do last minute needed things quiets into hush. That’s true whether the Christmas story is part of your faith, or not. Whether the Christmas story is part of your story of faith or not it is also a holiday of travelers, both people today making long and short journeys, and in another time shepherds coming down from the hills, wise men coming from from far away, and a husband and wife seeking shelter on a night in Bethlehem.

Máire Mhac an tSaoi is an Irish poet, diplomat, and scholar who in her eight decades and counting has often been one who breaks new ground both for those writing in Irish, and earlier in her career, for women writers in Ireland. One of her best loved poems is Oiche Nollag, Christmas Eve, She reads it in Irish to go along with the images in this video. The words in English are part of the visuals.

Coming up in mid January, the Celtic Connections Festival, will light up the winter season in Glasgow, Scotland with music. There will be pipe bands, cutting edge contemporary Scottish and world musicians, tunes on fiddle, harp, guitar, whistle, bodhran, and other instruments, and songs from the many traditions and languages that intertwine with the music and history of Scotland.

All told, there will be more than three hundred events as the nineteenth edition of Celtic Connections unfolds across the city. Whether the venue is a small listening room or the main auditorium of the Royal Concert Hall, though, the festival artists, staff, and audiences maintain a welcoming and friendly atmosphere that only adds the spirit of the music they share.

This season. that music will include a celebration of the centennial of American folk song legend Woody Guthrie, as the one hundredth anniversary of his birth is observed by musicians from many traditions. There will be a setting for a mass in Scottish Gaelic, sung in a cathedral. There will be a strand of programming with concerts featuring political songs. World music collaborations are always part of the music at Celtic Connections, too, and this winter that will include From Senegal to Donegal and Mali to Manchester, a new collaboration between Manchester’s Michael McGoldrick and Mali’s Fatoumara Diawara. That show also brings together the talents of Irish group Fidil and Senegal’s Solo Cissokho. Orchestra Baobab, from Africa, are also on the bill, as is the Swedish trio Väsen. Music from the middle east, from American soul, pop, and bluegrass, Native American music, and blues are all part of the strands which find connection to Celtic music during the festival. There will plenty of music from Ireland as well, including the return of festival favorites Cherish the Ladies and Luka Bloom.

At the heart of it all, though, are the musicians of Scotland. who are well represented by legendary performers and rising stars. Session A9, Blazin’ Fiddle, and the Treacherous Orchestra will be among the groups adding their music to this lively mix. There will be a night of accordion and fiddle greats sharing classic dance band tunes, and there will be a concert featuring songs of Scotland having to do with World War I. Composer Corrina Hewat will offer The Oak and the Ivy, a suite for six harps. Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis will be on hand, as will top fiddle and cello duo Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas — and hundreds more musicians.

Formal concerts are not the limit of what goes on during Celtic Connections, though. During the day there are talks and radio interviews open to the public, as well as a highly popular series of concerts featuring musicians competing for an opener slot at the following year’s festival. At the weekend there are workshops where you may learn about the fiddle or the whistle or the bodhran, with different tracks for those who’ve never tried the instrument before and those who wish to advance their knowledge. You may learn various sorts of singing too, and there’s a strand of talks and films in Scottish Gaelic as well, called Ceol’s Craic. In the evenings, after the main scheduled concerts begin winding down, the fun and the music and the craic (that is Gaelic for conversation and good fellowship) do not stop, either, as the Festival Club, late night music sessions, and the well loved House of Song hosted by the welcoming presence of presenter Doris Rougvie, all go on through the night and into the early hours of the morning.

There’s information about artists, schedules, tickets, and venues at the Celtic Connections web site.

If you’ll not be making it to Glasgow (or even if you are and there’s just so much going on), BBC Radio Scotland, Celtic Music Radio from the University of Strathclyde, and RTE from Ireland often broadcast programs from the festival through their internet sites. If you are in the UK, you’ll be able to see BBC Scotland and BBC Alba television broadcasts from the festival as well, and RTE and TG4 from Ireland often do television broadcasts and post festival roundups which are available world wide on line.

the photograph is of Findlay Napier and Gillian Frame leading a late night session at Celtic Connections. it was made with permission of the festival and the artists, and is copyrighted. thank you for respecting that.

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November 30 is the national day of Scotland, Saint Andrew’s day. It is celebrated with festivals, events, and family gatherings from Shetland off the far north coast to Hadrian’s wall down along the borders. That festive spirit finds those of Scottish descent across the world recall their highland, lowland, and island heritage as well. Music is a big part of all these celebrations. To join in the celebration of Saint Andrew’s day this year, take a listen to these albums to help you get in the spirit.

Music and Song From Scotland is a good taster of the range of Scottish music as it’s being made these days. The folks at Greentrax Recordings in East Lothian have made a home for the music of rising artists and celebrated musicians for twenty five years now, and to mark that anniversary they’ve created this two disc set. There are, appropriately enough, twenty five tracks, and each disc concludes with a bonus track as well so there are twenty seven cuts in all.. Things begin with a song from Dick Gaughan, a longtime master of Scottish folk songwriting, and there is a cut from Barbara Dickson, returning to her folk roots in Scotland in the midst of a distinguished career in musical theater. Tradition bearer Jean Redpath adds a song, and ace fiddlers Duncan Chisholm and Alasdair Fraser contribute fiery tunes. Piping from the band Seudan, and Gaelic singing from Margaret Stewart, along with a track from internally celenrated guitairst Tony McManus are all included. Rising stars of Scottish music are well represented too, as Jeana Leslie and Siobhan Miller offer the song The King’s Shilling, the high energy group Daimh adds the Trip to Glenfinnan Set, and Jamie Steele bring the collection to a close with a classic end of evening song his father wrote called Just One More Chorus. That’s not quite the end, though, as there’s a bonus cut from accordion master Phil Cunningham and Shetland fiddler Aly Bain, a gentle waltz they composed for the founders of Greentrax on their golden wedding anniversary.

Robert Burns is Scotland’s national bard, so his words and music have a place in the celebration of Saint Andrew’s day. One of the best collections of the ploughman poet’s work is Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns. Reader skillfully interprets Burns’ sometimes bawdy sense of humor as well as she does his heartfelt romantic songs. His commitment to the equality of people and his love for Scottish landscape are present in the songs Reader chooses here too. The singer, who spent some years following her music in the world of pop music by living in London, includes a personal touch as well. The song Wild Mountain side, by John Douglas, was written to remind her of coming home to Scotland, and it did indeed call her back to making her home in her native country once again,a nd to a deeper rerun to her love for folk music.. The song stands well alongside Robert Burns’ music, as a carrying forward of his songs of love and landscape.

Julie Fowlis is from North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, islands which lie off the northwest coast of Scotland. Scottish Gaelic is spoken there alongside English, and songs from the long history of Gaelic tradition are sung alongside those from more recent times. On her recording Live at Perthshire Amber, Fowlis offers a selection which weaves these ideas together, with a number of songs from the tradition, a Scottish Gaelic version of the song Blackbird, and contemporary tunes composed by Duncan Chisholm and Eamon Doorley among others. The set was recorded at the Perthshire Amber Festival, which is an autumn celebration founded by songwriter Dougie MacLean. To conclude the set MacLean joins Fowlis for a song in English, one he himself wrote, called Pabay Mor.

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By Beebe Bahrami

As a walking traveler wanders on foot through rural Spain, she takes solace in advice from a grandfather who served as a prisoner of war.

As a child born and raised in the Rocky Mountains in the USA, I recall my Iranian grandfather’s advice to me. “If you get lost, go downhill, and follow the stream.” I felt safe with these few words. All would be well, I concluded, if I go downhill and follow the stream.

Only as an adult did I think how odd such comfort was. Certainly, my grandfather was an old hand in the mountains of northern Iran, yet he also had been an army general and the times in his life when he was the most up the creek, he was never in the mountains and there was never a stream nearby.

One day, as a member of a team inspecting Iran’s eastern border with Pakistan—because part of the border is a river that periodically changes course—my grandfather was alone and in the desert when his Jeep’s radiator overheated. He spied along the dry horizon a tree, and hiding in it, a Baluch tribesman. He went to him and asked for water. The man disappeared and returned with water from some mysterious source along with an armful of grass, which he dropped in front of the Jeep. “If your animal needs to drink, he’ll be hungry, too.”

My grandfather loved telling that tale. It ennobled the tribesman as much as it revealed the existence of people leading traditional lives that modern technology had not touched.

During World War II, Russians held him as a prisoner of war. Two years after his release, the British detained him and other young, educated Iranian nationalists and placed them in a camp to keep watch on any potentially dissident types. Inspired by Gandhi next door, he became a hunger striker to protest foreign occupation.

A few years after the war, when the world was rebuilding itself, my grandfather backed Mossadegh, striving for an independent, nationalized Iran, not one playing the role of world oil puppet. When Mossadegh’s leadership failed, my grandfather was quietly retired.

His life had not been an easy one, but he had made the most of it, always seeking the right paddle, not the easiest paddle, for the boat and for the creek.

Trekking one day in northeastern Spain, near Soria, west of Zaragoza, I got lost. I had hoped to find a local bus to the nearby village of Garray where stood the famous Celtic stronghold, Numancia, an archaeological ruin dating to 134 BCE.

No bus was forthcoming. I started walking, figuring that if I followed the Duero River nearby, I’d arrive in Garray and then Numancia. I passed through undisturbed beech, pine, and oak forest. Only once did I see another person, a fisherman hip deep in the river with his rubber boots, casting his line, oblivious of me.

Two and a half hours later, Numancia’s hilltop stood before me. It told the story of the famous last stand. In 134 BCE, the Celtic-Iberian Arevaci had managed, through determination, strategy, and fierceness, to hold out against Roman domination for years. But the Romans built a wall all around their hilltop and slowly caged them in and cut off their water. After so many years of resistance, they weakened and began to die. Knowing that life as Roman slaves was worse than death, the Numantines set fire to their homes and killed themselves. Spanish school kids today still learn about Numancia. It instills a national message about perseverance and holding out through hard times.

I returned to Garray. I waited an hour for a bus that villagers told me was coming. It never did.

Continue to Page 2 – Spain Travel Story