Debate over dates as Inverness Highland Games gets set for return
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This year’s Highland Games in Inverness – at Bught Park on July 16 – will be a far cry from the “True Highland Games” of 1822.
Held at Dunain Croy, the “highlight” was watching men tearing the legs from a cow. As Angus Fairrie’s book, The Northern Meeting 1788-1988 explains, the “cow had previously been felled and stunned with a sledgehammer.”
Courier columnist Charles Bannerman contacted High Life Highland (HLH), which now runs the event supported by the Inverness Highland Games committee on behalf of Highland Council’s events and festivals working group, keen to highlight the differences over the decades.
He explained: “The event in 1822 at Dunain Croy was the one-off brainchild of notorious Regency eccentric MacDonell of Glengarry. The ‘True Highland Games’ of 1822 – a complete misnomer – was bizarre in the extreme and something we would not want associated with one of Inverness’s most prominent institutions.”
Another historian, working under the moniker “A True Highlander”, also contacted HLH to state that, contrary to some claims, this year could not be considered the 200th anniversary of the Inverness games.
He claimed the 1822 games were actually the seventh successive Glengarry Games and added: “Dunaincroy, where the 1822 games were undeniably held, is not within the former Inverness Burgh and is in fact within the old Inverness County. Essentially, Inverness has to cross a historical and a geographical hurdle to lay claim the 1822 games were theirs.”
One thing that became crystal clear to organisers was that nothing was clear – apart from the fact the 2022 games could not accurately claim to be the 200th anniversary outing.
Some people believe the roots of the games date to the 11th century when Malcolm III organised a race up Craig Choinnich near Braemar to find the fastest runner to become his personal courier.
There was a further revival by Northern Meeting in 1835 at Dochfour – though A True Highlander said this date and the games held there, including a boat race and pigeon shooting, were irrelevant.
HLH archivist Alison Mason said: “It was 1837 when the ‘first official’ games, organised again by the Northern Meeting, were held on the Longman and open to the public.”
In 1848 the games moved to Inverness Royal Academy in Academy Street and in 1863 to Bell’s Park – now the bus station. In 1864 they moved to the Northern Meeting Park.
The games of 1888 were known as the Centenary Games – 100 years of Northern Meeting (the society, not the park).
Mr Bannerman said: “The 13-year gap between 1822 and 1835 is only the start of the historical discontinuity, because the Northern Meeting Games, which had been struggling during the 1930s went defunct in 1938... What therefore appeared in 1947 – the Inverness Highland Games – was in no way, shape or form a continuation of the Northern Meeting Games.”
Chairman of the games committee Angus Dick said whatever the debates about the past, in the here and now organisers are just pleased to be welcoming fans of the event back to the city “with a focus on a return to the tradition of the Highland games that our families and friends can enjoy.”
For information on trading, exhibiting and sponsorship opportunities at this year’s Inverness Highland Games contact invernessevents@highlifehighland.com
