My oldest sister and her daughter spent last weekend participating in the 1st Annual Founder’s Day Fair hosted by the Transylvania Heritage Museum in Brevard, North Carolina. Transylvania is located in
Western North Carolina which is reputed by many to greatly resemble the topography and look of Scotland, which I presume explains why so many immigrants, including my own ancestors, chose it as a place to settle.

The history of this immigration the culture, religion, and music, including many songs with lyrics by our own dear Rabbie, that came with these brave Scottish souls is extensive and something to be explored here in installments at a later date. The contribution of Scottish and Irish music to many of the later genres of Country and Bluegrass is a part of this country’s musical heritage.

In the meantime consider this:

The only museum dedicated to Scottish tartans was originally established in Highlands, NC in 1988 and moved to its current location in Franklin in 1994. The Scottish Tartans Museum was founded by The Scottish Tartans Society which was established in Scotland. The STS was created to encourage research into Highland Dress, maintain the register for all publicly known tartans, and provide a design service for new tartans. The museums purpose is to promote Scottish Highland dress and educate the public about tartan. It now serves as a general Scottish Heritage Center for the region.

Meanwhile, Coca Cola, has honored  Robert Burns and the year of Homecoming Scotland with a commemorative bottle. The first person  that Coca Cola has ever arranged such a tribute for because…. Rabbie is the real thing, just like Coke!

Thinking back I finally pieced together how it happened. I was about 15 years of age when my Scots-Irish ancestry became known to me, or at least that was when I claimed it for my own, I suppose.

A series of events that all happened within a few years fueled my desire to know more about the Scottish side of my heritage. My sister presented me with a small female West Highland White Terrier, which I promptly named Thistle, and she sent me on a quest to learn more about the Scottish Highlands, home to this brave little breed. I was introduced to Robert Burn’s poetry in my high school English class and I immediately fell in love with the rhyme, the meaning, and the Scottish lowland dialect. Learning that my ancestors hailed from the southwest of Scotland, just south of Robert Burns home, made the connection more personal.  My father died; something about losing a parent seems to beckon a child to know more about where they came from – maybe it is a way of dealing with our own place in the march of time.

I was then married to a man that loved to tease me about my pride in my Scots-Irish ancestors; he truly did not know much about his ancestry but when I would rousingly celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day he would laugh and tell me he was going to have a Saint Swithin’s Day party. I’m not sure he even knew who Saint Swithun was, or that it was an English holiday, but he claimed it as his own personal holiday. Somewhere around this time I decided that if the Irish had a national holiday surely the Scots did as well, and then I remembered having read of Burn’s night.

I started researching Burn’s night, but this was long before the handy thing called an internet with even handier search engines, so I had to rely on library books. Somehow living in a Southwestern state, as I did by then, there just weren’t that many books in our library with information on Scottish holidays! It was during this era that I was finally able to afford a Dandie Dinmont Terrier; I had seen these sweet dogs at a dog show when I was in college and wanted one for my own. I bought a female whom we named Bluebell and she became our beloved family dog. Again this fueled the quest for ever more information about Scotland ( Dandie’s are a Scottish breed as well, the stuff of Sir Walter Scott’s writings in Guy Mannering.)

Decades later, once my education was completed, children were grown and marriage over, I decided to start having an annual Burn’s night supper. I had a lot of information in my head but it took more research to plan such an evening, fortunately by now the world wide web made things much easier. My family thought I had gone a bit balmy I believe. I had always been a rather introverted person and here I was planning a dinner for ten people, serving whisky, and reciting poems aloud in a practiced Scottish tongue! But they soon embraced it and discovered just how much fun this night could be. Now friends and family alike save the Saturday night closest to January 25th and await their invitations to yet another evening celebrating Rabbie and all things Scottish.

If you have a story about how you became a Burn’s night fan I invite you to share it here. I look forward to hearing your tales.