PERSPECTIVErnThe Winter of Scottish Discontentrnby Thomas Flemingrn”The miller’s daughter walking byrnWith frozen fingers soldered to her basketrnSeems to be knockingrnUpon a hundred leagues of floorrnWith her light heels, and mocking Percy and Douglas dead.rnAnd Bruce on his burial bed,rnWhere he lies white as mayrnWith wars and leprosy,rnAnd all the kings beforernThis land was kingless.rnAnd all the singers beforernThis land was songless…”rn—Edwin Muir, “Scotland’s Winter”rnRockford in July seems an unlikely place and time to holdrn”The First Annual 1 lighland Games” unless it were in obediencernto the biblical admonition that “the first shall be last.”rnThe temperature was in the 90’s throughout the day, with a humidityrnthat made the Upper Midwest seem like New Odcans,rnexcept for the absence of French food, jazz, fun. 1 did not knowrnwhom to feel sorrier for, the clean-limbed gids taking part inrnthe Highland fling contest, the close-cropped shot-putters forkingrnbags of hay over a bar and flinging what looked like telephonernpoles over their shoulders, or the middle-aged men in Jacobiterncostume, smashing upon each other’s claymores, untilrnthe lucky one is allowed to fall down and feign death.rn1 attended the event with a reluctance that had little to dornwith the weather: 1 dislike historical reenactments even morernthan recreated European castles in Disney World or tinker-toyrnreconstructions of colonial villages, and even worse than thernreenactments themselves is the desperate attempt to create anrnimpression of ethnic authenticity. The effect of most ethnicrnfestivals is about as convincing as a St. Patrick’s Day paradernor an Irish Spring commercial. The whole Scottish thing—rnbagpipes and kilts, single malt whiskies and Sir Harry Lauder—rnwas manufactured for the consumption of English tourists andrnthe woddwide Scottish community in exile, many of whose ancestorsrnwere tec-totaling Presbyterians who, as Edwin Muir putrnit, had “the bitter wit to fell the ancient oak of loyalty, and striprnthe peopled hill and the altar bare, and crush the poet with anrniron text.”rnDespite the heat I put on my tartan necktie and take my childrenrnand my skeptical dog Davy (a Scottish terrier named afterrnthe philosopher Hume). Against my better judgment, I am belO/rnCHRONICLESrnrnrn