PAYSON — When Scottish games and dances are played out at Memorial Park, they will carry with them a tradition of hospitality as thick as the Scottish brogue.
For centuries Highland hospitality was an honored tradition and a social code to which Highlanders strictly adhered, festival committee member Sydney Young said. The code required, for example, for one to provide food and shelter to another when asked. Additionally, it also obligated the host and the guest to defend each other against all comers, under all circumstances and to the death, if required.
"If one should fail to properly abide by the code of Highland hospitality, they found themselves an instant outcast, a very dire condition to be in," she said.
Young tells a story about how strictly the code was honored.
"A Highlander was approached by another who requested sanctuary because he was being pursued by others who sought to kill him. The first man agreed to offer the second man sanctuary, thereby becoming a host, of course, and the other, a guest.
"After they had retired for the evening, a group of men came by. As the host talked with them he discovered they were searching for a man who they claimed was a murderer. The host realized his guest matched the description of the individual the group sought. He also discovered that the murdered man was his brother. Yet, true to the code of hospitality, the host did not expose his guest and sent the group off to search elsewhere.
"The following morning, the host took his guest out to the byre and mounted him on a garron (little Highland horse), provided him with supplies, food, clothing and weapons. Then the host led his guest by secret and trackless ways to a corrie high in the hills where there was a cave.
"When they arrived at the corrie, the host said to his guest, 'You may abide here in the cave, or you may ride the garron where ever you choose. Either way, you have the provisions and means to survive comfortably. And, either way, you are safe from your pursuers.'
"With that he turned for home — the code duly abided by — without ever once divulging to his guest what he knew of the guest's crime or the host's relationship to the man the guest had murdered."