Highland games have been a summer staple for generations, claiming to be the biggest spectator sport after football. But there are mutterings that it has become tired, with very small numbers of traditional heavy competitors reported at some recent gatherings.
Do highland games need a makeover? Dr Douglas Edmunds, former world caber-tossing champion and World's Strongest Man entrepreneur believes so, and is helping to bankroll a televised spectacular with a six-figure budget at Scone over two days next month, on July 19 and 20.
"Gimmicky strength events, like truck-pulling, we feel are inappropriate when Scotland has such a magnificent history," says Edmunds, whose son, Gregor, ended a long US monopoly last year by winning the World Highland Games title. "Sadly, some games have poor quality athletes, bad equipment, and poor quality commentary with little crowd interaction. We aim to change that."
So the Highlander Challenge World Championships is set for Scone. The 18 contestants include national champions from 11 countries: Olympians, world record-holders, World Highland games champions, World's Strongest Man winners, runners-up and finalists, and US highland games champions. They will all vie for the title of the chieftain's champion. And they will bring the earth of their homelands to the Moot Hill, in the same manner and place as allegiance was sworn to Scotland's ancient kings.
The contests echo the war games of Scotland's ancestors: gladiator-style events - wrestling, schiltron jousting and stone-lifting, as well as traditional throws.
The implements have evolved from weapons of war and rural culture. Heavy hammers were used for smashing enemy armour, likewise the mace, with spiked ball on a chain (the morning star); while the Picts used miscellaneous flaming missiles to defeat the Romans at Ardoch.
This marriage of history and retro games is being done for Channel 4. Ancient battles will be re-enacted, and TV links from Scottish history, some bloody, scheming and treacherous, will be re-enacted, filmed, and celebrated.
Like the feud between the McNabs and the Neishes. Near Killin in 1522, they fought, naked according to legend, and the Neishes were routed. A large stone, covered in red lichen, marks the spot on Little Port Farm. Its colour is said to come from the blood spilled that day.
The surviving Neishes retreated to an island on Loch Earn, safe, because they had the only boat, and pillaged with impunity, until 1612 when they raided the McNab's Christmas supply train, including their whisky. The enraged McNabs - father and 12 sons - took their own boat, sailed it down Loch Tay, and then carried it through the snow over a 2000-foot pass at Alt Breachlaich, down onto Loch Earn where they surprised the Neishes, liberating their whisky, decapitating their enemies, and taking the heads home for the weans to play with.
The McNeish head and the boat appear on the McNab coat of arms. The ruin of the Neish castle can still be seen on the island near St Fillans, and until the early 1900s, when it was consumed in a peat fire, the abandoned McNab boat lay on the watershed above Loch Tay. It was ditched so that the clan could carry home their whisky and plunder.
That will be marked at Scone by challengers carrying heavy barrels.
History lessons with highland games may just work. Otherwise a heavy line-up of major sponsors would not already have signed up.
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