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 Halifax Highland Games and Scottish Festival Society

67 Deerwood Lane
Timberlea, NS, Canada   B3T 1J1

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PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW LOCATION!
Being Held At Dartmouth Common Near The MacDonald Bridge
(Entrances Located On Thistle Street)

 
The Festival
Kirkin 'o' the Tartans

The Kirkin 'o' the Tartans for the Halifax Highland Games & Scottish Festival, generally takes place on Sunday of the weekend of the Games. The ceremony for 2008 will take place at a church in the Dartmouth area - more details to follow.

At the established time during the service, a representative of each clan brings a piece of tartan forth to lay on the church altar. These tartans are then blessed by the minister or other person designated for the task.

For more information on the Kirkin 'o' the Tartans ceremony, you can contact the Federation of Scottish Clans in Nova Scotia at info@scotsns.ca.

For one take on the history of the ceremony, please read the following...

A Kirk is a Scottish word for Church and a Tartan is the traditional pattern of unevenly spaced stripes crossing at right angles woven into a woolen fabric that distinguishes the various Scottish Clans. Thus, the Kirkin' o' the Tartans is the traditional blessing of the tartans by the Clergy.

Following the failure of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 when the English at Culloden defeated the Jacobites, the Disarming Act of 1746 forbade the Scots from wearing their tartans. The traditional Clan System, with its representative tartans, was declared forbidden as troops loyal to the Duke of Cumberland and the House of Hanover ravaged the Scottish Highlands, searching out Jacobite supporters.

The legend goes the Highlanders hid swatches of tartan fabric among their clothing when they went to church, and at a predetermined time, they secretly touched their tartan material during the worship service.

With the coming of the 18th Century, many of these Scots faced the Highland Clearances. Thousands of Highland tenant farmers were forced into becoming pioneers in the New World as their former aristocratic lords drove them off their land, so that they could conduct the much more profitable business of raising sheep. The Highlander, losing many of these traditions, became a victim of the Industrial Revolution.

The Kirkin ’o' the Tartans was revived during WWII by Reverend Peter Marshall, then the Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. To encourage Scottish Americans to sign up to fight on behalf of Great Britain, Peter Marshall recreated the Kirkin’ o’ the Tartans ceremony in 1943 to try to instill pride among Scottish Americans in their Scottish homeland. The Kirkin 'o' the Tartans ceremony was then held in Presbyterian churches across the USA. Today, the Kirkin ’o’ the Tartans is not limited to Presbyterian Churches, but can be observed in other Protestant and Roman Catholic services where the ceremony is a great social occasion for people of Scottish origin to congregate and worship God.