People at the San Marcos activity center donned their kilts and shouldered their bagpipes for the city’s first Celtic Spirit Worldwide cultural event on this past Saturday. The San Marcos Area Arts Council, along with several others, sponsored the event, showing off many displays of fantastic Highland art. Many performances were done by well known, local entertainers.
Thomas “Doc” Grauser performed at 1:00pm on a harp that stood around five feet tall. His music was of a calm, beautiful mood setting that really did a fine job transporting the audience back to the old country. Listening to his performance, makes you feel as if you have literally gone back in time and are sitting in a castle courtyard or perhaps a quiet tavern on a midsummer’s day.
Next up were the Austin Scottish Country Dancers. The pipes were played loud and strong as this six person group (2 men and 4 women) took to the stage. The dances they performed were not all exclusively from Scotland. Some were Irish, and others were more of a modern variety. For the last song the performers snagged up volunteers from the audience and taught them the basic steps to Highland pairs dancing.
Of course no Highland event can go without their heritage’s staple food, haggis. If you don’t know how they make haggis it might be best to wait until you have tried it first. It is made from leftover parts of the animal (not unlike hotdogs) and boiled in the stomach of a cow. But despite this disgusting process, it is actually quite delicious.
After this short break in performances, the show went straight back to the music. An unnamed performer at one point was asked to get up on stage and play. His instrument of choice was a reed flute and without a word he went right into a slow Irish folk song. This one song in my opinion was easily the most beautiful piece played that day.
As the event moved on into the afternoon, we turned from music to stories of the old country, told by Celtic story teller David Thompson. Thompson told many tales and sang several songs about great Highland warriors and of course the mythical fairy folk that is so typically Celtic. His stories made the audience smile with joy as well as slump with sadness. Thompson, in one hour, reminded the audience of the power of stories and storytelling.
Apart from the main attraction was the art gallery. At the exhibition, many paintings, sculptures, and other forms of art considered to be the traditional forms, stood side by side with their modern counterparts. Nature was prevalent all of the art displayed there, with pictures of animals in spiritual forms. Snakes and elk were seen by the Celts to have healing properties since they have the ability to shed their antlers or skins and grow new ones. Owls were also seen on much of the art as they were very important to the Celtic faith. “Sometimes owls won’t be shown in the art itself, but many patterns are based on the movements of owls” says Elantu Veovode, an artist whose work was one of the ones in the show. “The spiral for example, is actually based on the hunting patterns of an owl, since owls circle their prey in a spiral shaped flight path.”
Of course there were classic Celtic crosses made of stone on display. The Celtic equinox combined with the Christian cross gives a look at how the Celts preserved their religion even while being converted to Catholicism. Harold Thiele, an expert on Celtic traditions, tells the meaning behind the four point of the equinox. “The top point represents Winter Solstice, the bottom point is Summer Solstice, and the two side points represent the two days in the year where the daytime is equal to the night.” But the most interesting symbol he showed me was the Triscalene. “This symbol is present in every culture from the Celts to the Japanese and even the Australian Aborigines.” It means different things in different cultures of course. To the Celts though, it represents the past, present, and future. The Triscalene appears in cave paintings as old as 35,000 years, according to Thiele. There were many present in almost every piece of art in the exhibit. One can only hope that the Triscalene continues to appear in San Marcos’s future, especially if it is accompanied with a series Celtic Spirit Events, intertwining the this ancient culture with our own modern life.
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