Bonny Scotland continued-The Isle of Bute
The Free Motions had an absolutely crap workday, so there aren’t really any pictures to show you. Sometimes there is just too much personal stuff going on with all of us to get much work done and this group of friends focuses on personal, rather than artistic support. This was definitely the case on Tuesday.
In lieu of art pictures, I thought I’d post about my upcoming trip back to Scotland. My husband, Ken, and I are going to spend a week on the Isle of Bute to celebrate our 10th anniversary.
Bute map courtesy of Isle-of-bute.com
Here’s a few highlights from the wedding. Though he’s from the Glasgow area, my husband’s family has a long history with Bute. His paternal grandfather was the head gardener at Kames Castle and Ken spent quite a bit of time there as a child roaming around the castle grounds.
Kames Castle-photo from wikipedia.com
When we decided to get married, my mother-in-law Agnes did the majority of planning for the wedding. Bute was the perfect place. We got married in the ruins of Rothesay Castle.
Rothesay Castle-photo from bestofbute.co.uk
As an American unfamiliar with Scottish custom, this was an entire day of not knowing what the heck was coming next. The Scots have many traditions that Americans don’t and the entire day I would here things like, “This is the part where you…….”. I just rode along and had a marvelous time. My mother-in-law planned the most beautiful and fun wedding I could have imagined.
Some highlights of the day included:
Kilts!!!!!!: God, I love a man in a kilt! We had about 20 of them, including my handsome husband.
Bagpipes. Wow. I happen to really like the pipes, but they are LOUD. Good thing the piper was outside.
Lucky Horseshoe: my nephew presented this to me as part of the ceremony. I did not realize that the tradition of this as much about fertility as luck:
Lucky Horseshoes –Horseshoes have always been associated with luck. There is a nice myth about the devil asking a blacksmith to shoe a single hoof of his horse. When the blacksmith realised who his consumer was, he carried out the job as painfully as he could until the devil roared for mercy. The Blacksmith released the devil on the conditions that he would never enter a place that had a horseshoe on display. When a bride carries a horseshoe it is considered to be a symbol of fertility.-From Hubpages.com-Traditional Scottish Wedding
Scottish country dancing: This is the most fun ever. We had half Americans who didn’t know anything and half Scots trying to teach them the dances+ plenty of drink. It was wonderful even though we butchered all of the dances. I am amazed that there weren’t injuries. Here’s a picture of some Canadians dancing. They look much more coordinated than we did!
Picture by Jacques Surveyor-www.pixofcanada.com
Wedding Scramble: I couldn’t figure out why there were a bunch of local children waiting outside Rothesay Castle for our ceremony to end. Why would they care about strangers getting married? It all came clear when I was told about the Wedding Scramble. This is the scary tradition of throwing coins into the street for kids to gather as you are leaving. I am still amazed we didn’t run over everybody. The kids were running everywhere to get the loot.
Ending the evening with Auld Lang Syne: This was the pinnacle of strangeness for me. It’s the end of the evening, everyone has been drinking and dancing for HOURS, and the guests gather in a circle around us and begin to sing Auld Lang Syne while widening and closing the circle. Motor accuracy was a bit impaired at this point and I thought we would be crushed by those we love. It was a perfect Scottish ending.
I am too technically challenged to have scanned and posted MY actual wedding pictures :-). Maybe another time.
We plan to spend the week hiking and biking around; sitting in the pub if it rains. I will take plenty of pictures!
I know there are a few of you Scots reading this blog. Am I missing anthing?
