Alba is the gaelic name for Scotland, which gave us the name Albion for the whole of the Island of the Mighty. If you look through and beyond the Victorian invention of kilted highlanders in misty glens inhabited by stags, you will come upon the real, wild Alba, where Ossian harped, which sheltered the fleeing Deirdre and the sons of Uisneach, where Macbeth was not the monster portrayed by Shakespeare, but an able King who ruled well. Here the Viking pirates came in their longboats and settled in the Outer Hebrides, still called in Gaelic the 'Innse Gall', the Isles of the strangers. Here also lived the Picts, the mysterious painted people, who left little behind them but their stones. Here Columba, Colmcille of our hearts, came, bringing with him the heritage of both Druid and Christian teachings, to found the first Abbey on Iona which was to become the basis of the Celtic form of Christianity. Alba, beloved of the Sidhe, fated to be fought over by greedy nobles and invaded by envious kings, whose history is full of heroes, many of them unlikely, many of them not high-born, not least among them William Wallace. The Scots hold other heroes just as dear: Poets such as Robert Burns and Sorley Maclean, and the champions of Gaelic, their native tongue, which is now beleaguered in the face of an overwhelming english-language culture. Taste the real Alba, it's poetry and its songs- and also its humour, for we Scots love to laugh, especially at ourselves!
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