Tossing in the Highlands

The rain fell from the dark, angry skies, and as the clouds wrapped themselves menacingly around the old, William Wallace monument that gazes over the proud town of Stirling from its strategic, hilltop position, the crowd huddled together in search of warmth and cover underneath the one grandstand at the rugby ground.

Only a madman would venture out in such uncompromising conditions. Only a madman, and a Highland Games heavyweight competitor. For there, amidst the wind, the cold and the drenching wet, were five strong, kilted men, plus one slighter, Sassanach imposter; oblivious to the heaven’s fury and intent on becoming the Stirling Highland Games heavyweight champion.

During the course of a stamina-sapping afternoon, in which the unruly elements simply refused to relent and the rain hammered angrily down upon Stirling, these half dozen characters had putted shots and thrown hammers, lifted weights high and lifted them far. Now it was the turn of the caber, the highlight of the day, and indeed the highlight of any Highlands Games.

Francis Brebner was among the heavyweights, the five times world caber tossing champion, no less. So too was the legendary Hamish Davidson, a man synonymous with the Games for the past thirty years and the holder of 59 national titles. Three other big Scots completed this most Celtic of challenges: Derek Norrie from Dundee, Michael Simpson from Aberdeen, and young Fraser Ewen, from Bo’Ness.

And then there was me, in cream hoses and the red tartan of a Royal Stuart kilt, and sporting a cross between a red beard and overgrown stubble designed to enhance the rather tenuous fact that I am an eighth part-Scottish. I happen to be an eighth Hungarian, too, for that matter, and can quite happily switch from haggis to goulash without even a hint of an identity crisis, but on this given day I wanted to resemble Mel Gibson’s fat, red-haired and bearded sidekick, “Hamish,” in “Braveheart,” in the misguided belief that looking like a hairy-arsed Highlander might increase my chances of completing the heavyweight contestant’s challenge. I possessed the red hair, but was lacking in the blubber and facial hair department, at least compared to “Hamish.”

Even he, were he for real, might have had difficulties with this little caber, though. The rain had made the imposing, seventeen foot-long, 125 lb trunk greasy and heavier and, having just seen Brebner fail to toss what amounted to a Scots Pine tree, I realised I stood little if any chance at all. Still, in the full view of a crowd who had gathered beside the heavyweights in the hope of seeing caber tossing at its best, I faced no other option but to venture out into the downpour and attempt the nigh on impossible.

Rubbing a thick, sticky glue known as “Fiddler’s Resin” into the palms of my hands and in between my fingers and knuckles, I stooped down into a crouching position and cupped my hands together and around the trunk, slowly lowering first my body and then my hands. In a second or so I would attempt to lift this gargantuan lump of wood, and then toss it forward and over. If I were to succeed, the 5,000-strong crowd would probably raise the roof, such is the common reaction to any successful toss. If I were to fail, then my back, shoulders or neck could be damaged. Either way, I was about to discover why tossing the caber, for all its kilted imagery, is one of the most demanding and technical challenges known to sport.

It’s also one of the oldest. Nobody is certain when lobbing tree trunks became officially recognised as a sporting pastime, but certainly King Malcolm in the eleventh century sponsored clan gatherings in which tossing pines, together with putting stones and throwing hammers became, at least during a Highland gathering, more preferable than clubbing each other. These days, of course, that latter discipline can be witnessed in the small hours on most nights in Glasgow. The best runners became couriers to King Malcolm, the best pipers and musicians were recruited to entertain at Royal households, while the finest stone lifters and wrestlers were appointed as guards. 
There are historical records to suggest that the other throwing events witnessed in today’s Highland heavyweight contests show their origins in the Irish Tailtean Games where stone throwing and hammer throwing events were competed in 1829 BC, long before the start of the Ancient Olympics in Athens.

The tradition has lasted down the centuries and today the Highland Games is thriving throughout Scotland every weekend from May to September, a tourist attraction to some, but a serious and arduous competition to others. Although the most a heavyweight winner can expect from a good day’s work is around two hundred pounds-worth of prize money, this does not stop a small number of strong men from Australia, America and the old Eastern Bloc donning their kilts each summer to take on the mightiest from north of Hadrian’s Wall. The cult of the Games has even travelled to further fields, and the likes of Francis Brebner, one of three, full-time, professional heavyweights, are often seen competing or providing exhibitions in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, western Europe and the far east.

The Highland Games heavyweight athlete must possess a high level of strength, speed, power, agility, mobility, endurance and be proficient in various techniques to enable overall success. Indeed, when you also consider the extensive travelling from daily gatherings far apart, the contrasting climactic conditions experienced in Scotland, and the sheer length of the afternoon-long competition, a heavyweight contest at a Highland Games must be placed only second behind a decathlon in terms of athletic challenges.

To achieve a modicum of success the heavyweight trains year-long for his summer’s exertions, in the gym, on the running track and in practising the events. He adopts the same, professional approach as any top field athlete might, and in many cases might well be stronger and fitter than the best of the field athletes Scotland has produced over the years.   

Caber tossing is known to us all, but how many of us really understand what it entails? For a start, the winner is not the man who throws the caber the furthest, but who succeeds in turning the wood over from one end to the other in the straightest line. An imaginary clock is used on the field, and the heavyweight who records a mark closest to “twelve o’clock” wins the day. It is not that easy, either. As the official Highland Games rule book states: “The caber should be a length and weight beyond the powers of all but the best competitors to turn.”

Secondly, people who throw cabers are never to be referred to as tossers. These men, normally built like a Cairngorm mountain, are “heavyweights.” As a subsidiary rule to this, under no circumstances are you to approach one said heavyweight and call him, even if in all innocence, a tosser. If you do, then you will most probably become a new-found throwing utensil for the lumbering pile of twenty-stone, Scottish flesh standing in front of you.

Thirdly, every heavyweight competitor has to wear a kilt. The rule is simple. No kilt, no entry into the competition. And as I just know you are wondering, underwear or shorts must be worn beneath because often in the course of throwing, putting or even tossing, the kilt rides up or is blown dangerously close to your waist. The resulting spectacle could, if the necessary precautions have not been taken, be mentally-damaging to anyone unfortunate enough to grab an eyeful.

I discovered all this, and more, after meeting up with Fraser Ewen the day before the Stirling Highland Games for a brief caber tossing and other heavyweight disciplines session. The heavyweight is required to putt both a 16lb and 22 lb shot, throw a 16lb and 22lb hammer, and throw both a 28lb metal weight on a small chain for distance, and a 56lb weight over a high bar that usually commences at eleven feet.

Then, with this gentle “warm-up” concluded, comes the piece de resistance. The caber is a Scots pine stripped of its branches and tapered narrowly at one end, the end in which the heavyweight must cup in his hands. Propping the caber upright, with the thick end upward, the heavyweight balances it against his shoulder before jerking it up swiftly into his cupped hands. Before losing the caber’s balance, he first walks and then  runs as the caber begins to topple over. At the required moment the heavyweight stops, lifts the thinner end in his hands and hurls it upwards in the hope that a combination of brute strength and technique can turn the caber over, end on end.

As if all this is not hard enough, most championship cabers are cut heavy enough to produce too severe a challenge for everyone except one or two of the heavyweights in action at any given Games. Indeed, the famous Royal Braemar caber, at nearly twenty foot long, has been successfully tossed by just eleven men in the long history of the Games. The Loch Ness caber, an altogether more recent gathering, has been conquered by just two heavyweights.

My lesson with Fraser, high on a field overlooking the Forth and the vast BP gas and chemical works of Grangemouth, went encouragingly well. Although failing to turn his caber over, I had at least managed to lift it and toss it away from me, although the resulting splinters in my neck, the gash in my face, and the later bruising of my shoulder, had made it an uncomfortable experience. For a fleeting moment I felt eager and confident about my attempt to impress Stirling, that is until Fraser reliably informed me that the caber I had just semi-tossed was, to use his phraseology, “a wee matchstick,” in comparison to the redwood I’d be picking up in 24 hours’ time.

No matter, I was in Scotland, and as the rain pelted down the following morning, my 12.5% of raw, Celtic blood, was beginning to take eminence. The red beard, with an alarming couple of white hairs sprouting out from my chin, made me feel like the son of the bloke on the Scots Porridge Oats packet. The Royal Stuart kilt looked resplendent in its box, hired from that most traditional of Scottish outfitters, Debenhams.

All that was needed now was a little inspiration, and if a Scot, even a twelve and a half percenter, cannot be inspired in Stirling, then he cannot be inspired anywhere in the world. A walk up to the old castle is all that is required, because from there, perched on a hill high above the town, can be seen a major slice of history that makes the Scots belligerently proud to this day.

Dominating the landscape is the Wallace monument, a lasting testament to a thirteenth century guerrilla warrior made famous in recent times by Mel Gibson. Although the antipodean actor’s version of events surrounding Wallace’s defiance of Edward Longshanks is historically questionable - particularly the “they make take our lives, but they may never take our freedom” speech - the impact from “Braveheart” on not only the town of Stirling, but on the rebirth of Scottish tradition and heritage, has been resounding. The old remains of the original Stirling Bridge are still down there beneath the river where Wallace’s army saw off the English.

From another part of the castle can also be seen a solitary flagpole, with the St Andrew’s cross fluttering high in the wind. This is the sight of Bannockburn, where Robert the Bruce, inspired, so they say, by first Wallace, and then a persistent spider, reclaimed Scotland for the Scots at the expense of the bloodied and defeated English in 1314. Even the castle itself reverberated from its vast wealth of Scottish history, the home of kings and queens, and the venue for the coronation of Mary Queen of Scots.

Now, fortified by all this, I was more than ready and feeling remarkably Celtic. Arriving at the Stirling County rugby ground, and having found the changing-rooms beyond the practising pipers and dancers, athletes and falconers, I slipped into my cream hoses and tartan kilt and went looking for my Scottish competitors. Although all were either taller or wider than me, none were hairier. I was expecting a right band of whisky-swigging, hairy arses straight out of Wallace’s infantry, but instead got respectable, hard-working men, with families and good, solid professions, without a facial hair between them. There were students and prison officers, farmers and auctioneers, but not a sight of a troublesome rebel prone to giving English monarchs severe headaches. This bunch of immensely strong power-lifters wouldn’t have frightened Edward’s army at Stirling Bridge, even if they did frighten me. But one heavyweight man eventually turned up, and he fitted the bill to perfection.

Hamish Davidson - yes, he’s even called Hamish - was once one of Britain’s finest shot putters. He even beat Geoff Capes, the former British and world record holder in competition, and still appears every summer weekend around the Highland Games circuit. At 47 years of age the man from Nairn is referred to as either “the old warhorse,” or “Sir Hamish,” in friendly reverence to his standing, and to the fact that he bought the title a few years’ ago. By common consent, he is a far tougher opponent to beat once he has imbibed a few gallons of alcohol. “Aye, that’s true,” he confirms, with just a twinkle in his eye. “I like to use gin in my bottle, because people always think it’s water.” It seems only natural that he organises the Loch Ness Highland Games each year for, with Hamish making a loud and brutal annual appearance, there is little chance of Nessie ever stealing his thunder.

With his long, uncontrollable, grey hair, his colourful attire, his dominant white moustache, and his large, rotund belly, it’s a minor miracle Mel Gibson failed to cast Hamish as, well, “Hamish.” “I love the challenge,” he explained, when I asked why he still competed after all these years. “And it’s important not to let yourself go.” I made sure my gaze at his protruding stomach was brief. Still, here was my highlander, and suddenly my reddish fuzz felt remarkably at home on my hitherto reluctant face.

At precisely 1.30 pm the heavyweights’ competition got underway, just as the heavy drizzle turned into sheeting rain. It began reasonably well for me with a sixth place in both shot putt competitions after three throws each. Okay, so there were only six contestants, but I was surprised to find myself only a few inches behind the penultimate heavyweight. “It’s my crap technique, not your strength,” he informed me, with a friendly smile. The camaraderie of the heavyweights was immediately apparent, the mutual respect for each other’s embrace of both the tradition and the sport maintaining a healthy competitiveness but also an affable and helpful atmosphere.

Next came the hammer, which meant removing the rugby and football boots everyone wore in the muddy conditions, and replacing them with special hammer boots, with large spikes sticking out of the front which were to be stuck firmly into the ground to keep the heavyweight stable when throwing. These spikes were so long and sharp that they made Rosa Klebb’s versions in “From Russia with Love” look positively malnourished. If you fail to root yourself deep enough into the turf, as I did on my first attempt, then the weight of the hammer coupled with the force of your throw makes you lose your balance, topple over the wooden board, or “trig,” which deems your effort a foul throw, and end up on your back, with your legs split wide and high in the air, and your kilt resting on your upper thighs. “That’s the reason why the heavyweights always wears something under their kilts,” the tannoy announcer kindly informed the crowd as their attention was encouraged to hone in on the berk lying prostrate over the trig. It took two of my heavyweight companions to lift me back to my feet, and to stick me, spikes first, back into the ground again.

After four disciplines I had been at least consistent in regularly recording sixth place. Throwing the lead weight for distance with one hand proved equally as taxing, especially as the incessant rain made the copious amounts of chalk applied to the handle redundant. Unbeknown to the watching crowd great consternation took place among five of the heavyweights, a number which included myself, when we discovered that Hamish, unlike the rest of us who had been using a towel, had been wiping the rain away from the handle of the weight with the aid of an old pair of underpants. Francis Brebner informed Hamish, with a huge, endearing grin, that he would refuse to throw the weight again if Hamish persisted in using his drawers. Of course Brebner continued, and won, a result as predictable as the wannabe Scot who finished sixth. Hamish, in the meantime, stuck to his pants.

Yet my glory, even amid my increasing tiredness, was about to occur. Only Brebner managed to hurl the weight up and over the eleven foot high bar, with the rest of us failing to match this feat. The fact that my effort plopped some way below the others, and that I ran frantically away from the spot where I had just stood through fear of the weight falling back on to my head is, in this instance, irrelevant. I recorded an equal-second placing, and immediately told Hamish how honoured I was to draw level with the great man. This comment was met with a grunt.

Now only the caber stood between me and the end of a long, painful, slightly humiliating, incredibly wet and tiring afternoon. I was to follow Brebner, and having seen the world champion fail I approached the tree full of foreboding. Francis kept the caber upright as I stooped down and began to cup my hands around the trunk, but just as I heaved the caber upright and attempted to cup my hands under its base the caber slipped between my grip and toppled over my shoulder, narrowly missing my head, and the world champion’s.

Nobody else could toss the thing either, although they fared a great deal better than I, until Francis finally managed to turn the caber over with his second throw. When it was my turn again I produced an improved effort, this time at least managing to pick the caber up in my cupped hands using maximum force, and throwing it almost immediately before it came crashing down again on my head. Of course it failed to turn on its end - although it did provoke a quick retreat from the three officials watching events as it toppled sideways over- but at least I can say I picked the damn thing up and half threw it. “That’s good enough for me,” Francis said, as the heavyweights decided enough was enough and ventured back into the clubhouse to tot up the final points and receive their rewards. “It’s hard enough even picking it up, let alone tossing it over. And that, don’t forget, is a big, championship caber.”

Quite. Over hot tea the officials read out both the individual and overall results. Francis Brebner won every single event, and therefore returned home to Peterhead with the mantle of the Stirling Highland Games overall heavyweight champion. Ian Stafford finished sixth, although his equal second in the throwing the weight over the bar discipline, and the fact that four out of the other five heavyweights also failed to toss the caber, meant some salvaging of pride.      

With that we shook hands and bade our farewells, until the next time we meet at a Highland Games. And as each heavy plodded back to his car, he ripped open his small, brown envelope to discover how much prize money he had won that day.

I did the same, too, and can proudly boast that at the first Stirling Highland Games of the new millennium I earned the princely sum of ?12. It may not have impressed the old ghost of Wallace too much, let alone Hamish Davidson and his clan of heavyweight brethren, but it was still the hardest twelve quid I’ve ever earned in my life and, with just a little luck, ever will.