CNY Scottish Games

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CNY Scottish Games

For 83 years we’ve been helping keep the Scottish and Celtic culture & heritage alive through our Highland Games. A family event worth seeing.

On the 2nd Saturday in August, Central New York hosts a Highland Games competition and Celtic ethnic activities. 2026 will be our 83rd running of the games. There will be athletics, music, pipers, drummers, pipe bands, dancers, vendors, clans & societies, kid’s games, food, and entertainment.

10/31/2026

From all of us to all of you, Happy Halloween!!! 🎃🧹🍁👻🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

From masks made from scraped out sheep’s heads to raging bonfires and games to foretell a future spouse, this was how how Halloween was traditionally celebrated in Scotland.

10/30/2026

As Halloween comes near, the old Scots had a name for the one who rode out across the moors on that night, and it was Nicnevin 🌕

She is one of the strangest and least known figures in Scottish folklore, a queen of witches and of the fairy host, and she first steps into the written record around 1580. The court poet Alexander Montgomerie, writing for the young James VI, wrote a famous Flyting, a contest of poetic insults, against his rival Patrick Hume of Polwarth. In it he mocks his opponent with a wild tale of a Halloween procession of the King and Queen of the Fairies, of weird sisters, and of an unlucky child handed over to Nicnevin and her company of witches. It was meant to be funny and outrageous, but it tells us something important. The audience at court already knew who Nicnevin was.

Nobody is quite sure where her name came from. It may have been a Gaelic style surname, with nic meaning daughter, and some have read it as daughter of the little saint. Others have tried to link her with an Irish war goddess or with water spirits. Scholars still argue over whether the name first belonged to a real woman or a mythical one 🍂

Centuries later Sir Walter Scott, in his Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft of 1831, gathered her up with Hecate and the other night queens of old Europe and gave her a new life as a dark Scottish Hecate. Historians have since warned that Scott blended too much together, and that Montgomerie's poem is her earliest and only truly authentic appearance. Even so, her shadow stuck. For generations of Scots she became the presence that rode out when the year turned towards winter.

You can understand why. In the old Scottish calendar Halloween was the hinge of the year, the night when the summer half ended and the dark half began, and the border between this world and the next was thought to be at its thinnest. Folk stayed close to the fire, kept the door shut and the children in, and told stories that made the wind at the window feel like hoofbeats 👻

Nicnevin is a reminder that our ancestors' imaginations were every bit as rich as their hardship was real. Did the older folk in your family have a name for whatever was said to be out on the hills on Halloween night?

10/25/2026

Between 1563 and 1736, thousands of individuals were executed under Scotland's Witchcraft Act. This new tartan honors those victims. What is the meaning behind each of the colors? https://bit.ly/41hKZ1M

📸: Scottish Register of Tartans

10/03/2026

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09/24/2026

09/22/2026

09/21/2026

As the wheel has turned once again and we say farewell to Summer, here is a soft & beautiful glimpse of Autumn in Scotland that we hope helps you Welcome Autumn in all of her glory.

October days in the Scottish Highlands and Edinburgh - spending coz...

09/19/2026

Have a great weekend, everyone.

09/14/2026

Here’s a spooky bit of Scottish folklore. Have ye heard this tale before?

Before the black cat became a familiar symbol of misfortune, Scottish Highland folklore told of a far stranger creature.

The Cat Sìth.

It was described as an unnaturally large black cat, often with a white mark upon its chest. It travelled through the Highlands unseen, but its most feared destination was a home where someone had recently died.

The creature was not believed to want the body.

It wanted the soul.

Before burial, the Cat Sìth was said to creep towards the dead and steal the soul by passing or leaping over the co**se. One silent movement was all it needed.

This fear became woven into the late wake, when relatives and neighbours remained beside the dead through the night. They filled the hours with stories, riddles, music and games, ensuring the body was never left unguarded.

Fires were avoided near the co**se, as warmth was thought to attract the supernatural cat. In some accounts, catnip was placed elsewhere to lure it away from the room.

Every precaution existed for the same reason.

The Cat Sìth only needed one unwatched moment.

Its nature was never entirely agreed upon. Some called it one of the fairy folk. Others whispered that it was once a witch who had taken the shape of a cat too many times and could no longer return to human form.

At Samhain, when the boundary between worlds was believed to grow thin, milk might be left outside for the Cat Sìth. A household that treated it generously could receive its favour. One that refused risked its displeasure.

That is what makes this folklore so unsettling. The Cat Sìth was not imagined as something that burst through doors or announced itself with violence.

It waited beyond the firelight.

It listened as the house grew tired and if the final watcher closed their eyes, it entered quietly and crossed over the dead before anyone knew the soul was gone.

Address

Syracuse, NY
13090

Website

http://www.cnyscottishgames.org/, https://cnyscottishgames.ticketspice.com/tickets-2026

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