The Pipes are Calling

I grew up in Nova Scotia, the land of the highland-away-from-the-highlands. Growing up there was both a burden and a gift. If you are not Scottish, it can get discouraging or frustrating to grow up in a land of faux-Scottish nostalgia (including kilts, fiddlers, busts of Scott, etc., etc., etc, as well as a million traditions involving beer), and you can even begin to hate the enshrined Nova Scotian tartan.

Further, what did we learn in public school phys. ed.? All of us - all the German, Native, Jewish, Irish, British, Acadian (and so-forth) students? The "highland fling". Every year. A section on Scottish folkdance, every single year of public school. Can anyone explain why a Jewish student, for example, would need to know how to traipse around a sword for fun? When, exactly, will that ever come up in adult life?

The sad part is that I would be quite surprised if even in Scotland they force kids into that.

However, Nova Scotia is in a particular position. We are long separated from the “home land,” yet the heart still longs to be ore in the highlands hunting a deer. The few actual Scots there who remember what Scotland was actually like are few and far between, so the reconstruction of the bonny over the ocean is furtive and rather sad.

But do not mistake this as entirely commercial or tacky, although Nova Scotia does use this Scottish connection for tourism bucks. Really, many in Nova Scotia cultivate the Scottish connection as some small way to tap into a beautiful and serene place that exists only in their imaginations.

And, yes, this does get a bit much, especially for those groups, like the Germans and the French and the Natives and the Irish, who have done a great deal to build and sustain Nova Scotia in their own right.

However, having said all this, now that I find myself in Ontario I find myself tapping into that old Scottish vibe, or rather the Nova Scotian version of the Scottish vibe, as a way to connect to home.

Today, from somewhere, and for some reason, while we were strolling after supper, I heard the Pipes. I never could tell from where they were coming, as there is no cemetery close by and I saw no parade. They were a long way off, perhaps, but such is the glory of the bag pipe. The way that they drift is a mystical force… Rather like how the Scots themselves have drifted across the world. (And the best thing about the bag pipes is that they are much more moving from a distance than close up.)

But the mere sound made me feel like I was back on Hollis or at the Waterfront in Halifax, for nothing says Halifax in the summer like the pipes. I couldn’t help but smile, and I stopped and listened. It sounded like home in a way that was completely independent of ancestry.

So, I guess I stand before you as an “adoptive Scot.”

Thanks, unknown piper.