Scots gather for the 25th annual Glasgow Lands Festival

Date: 7/19/2018

NORTHAMPTON – The sounds, sights and food of Scotland will be featured in the 25th annual Glasgow Lands Scottish Festival on July 21 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Look Park.

The one-day event is an immersion course in all things Scottish. The festival features authentic Scottish pub food, contemporary Scottish music as well as traditional, plus Highland Games competition with athletes coming from around the region.

Peter Legmore, the chair of the non-profit group that presents the event, explained to Reminder Publications there would be some first-time features to the festival this year, including a raffle with the participation of the Irish Cultural Center of Western New England.

He added that during the festival’s opening ceremony at 11:30 a.m. the poem “An Address to a Haggis” by Robert Burns would be part of the event. Legmore noted there will be 23 pipe bands competing at the festival and during the opening ceremony all of them will be marching and playing.

“That’s between 400 and 500 pipers and drummers,” he said.

Among the bands performing are:  

• Albannach,  a Scottish band with “primal drumming and precise piping that stirs the soul of anyone who hears them – young and old,” according to their press materials.  The music is described as “It’s aggressive, like a Celtic punch to the face!”

• Tartan Terrors, “mixing rock’s energy with traditional folklore, dance, and humor.”

•  Enter The Haggis is returning for the 13th time to the festival, Legmore said.  The Celtic rock band that has won attention and praise from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and Canada’s Globe and Mail. Their original songs such as “One Last Drink”, “Down With The Ship” and “Gasoline” have become folk rock anthems, appearing in films such as “Goon”, “10 mph” and “Addicted to Plastic” and reaching as high as #25 on U.S. radio.

• The Screaming Orphans is described by the festival promoters as “one of the most sought after Celtic bands in the nation with a powerful, award-winning sound combining their own original melodic old-school pop songs with their unique and modern take on traditional Irish music and song, inherited from their family roots.”

• Charlie Zahm, another returning act who is described as “one of the most popular soloists at Celtic music festivals, Maritime and Early American music events anywhere east of the Mississippi.”

The festival’s other musical component will be the competition between pipe bands from throughout the Northeast.

For children there will be demonstrations from the Weavers Guild of Springfield, with members bringing looms to show how cloth is woven.

There will also be two border collie sheep herding demonstrations.

In the Highland Games, attendees will be able to see athletes competing in centuries-old feats of strength and skill. Perhaps the best known is the caber event during which competitors must pick up and toss from end to end what appears to be a telephone pole.

Traditional Scottish dishes will be among the food offerings in the vendors’ section. Cameron’s Scottish Foods will be traveling from Brick, NJ, to sell a variety of items, including Forfar Bridies, beef sausage and onions in a puff pastry; Steak and Ale Pies, slow cooked chunks of steak in a Newcastle ale flavored gravy; Haggis Puffs, a square of puff pastry filled with the traditional Haggis sausage; Scotch eggs, hard-boiled eggs fried with a coating of Scottish sausage and bread crumbs.

Legmore noted the festival would be donating proceeds to two other non-profits this year: River Valley Counseling Center and Forum House.

For more information, go www.glasgowlands.org.