Rob Roy is about as Scottish as they come. For one thing, there’s actual bagpipe music playing in the background when he talks on the phone. For another, he shares a name with one of the most famous Scotsmen of all time (famous enough, anyway, to have a cocktail named after him), and although he suspects some bloodline in common with the original Robert Roy MacGregor, he says “I can’t prove it. I’m a member of my mother’s clan.” That would be the Farquharson clan, a lineage he can trace back to the fifth century, and one of the twenty-odd clans representing at the Colorado Tartan Day Festival today.
A clan, by the way, is “basically a family, and if you’re even slightly related, you’re a part of it,” according to Roy’s definition. But you won’t need even that tenuous connection to participate in the Tartan Day Festival, a celebration of all things Celtic (tartans are the plaid patterns that represent a clan). There you’ll find vendors, food, educational activities and reenactors perpetrating all sorts of “old-time Scottish doings, like swordfights and pistol duels,” says Roy. There’ll also be a whisky tasting, and the whole thing tops off with a ceilidh. (“That’s Gaelic for ‘party,’” Roy adds.)
Aside from the whisky tasting ($20) and the dinner/concert ($20 for adults; $10 for kids), Tartan Day events are free. The festival takes place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at McIlvoy Park, 5740 Upham Street in Arvada. For more information, visit www.coloradotartanday.com.
Sat., April 9, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., 2011
