Cowal Games

On the 175-acre estate of Charles Arthur Moore at Round Hill, Conn.. 8,000 U. S. Scots last week assembled for the largest festival of its kind outside Scot-land--the annual Cowal Games of the United States. A day-long orgy of mutton-pie eating, sword-dancing, and caber-tossing, the Cowal Games ended with a parade of 100 bagpipers and drummers who marched over the rolling hills tooting the air of The Seventy-Ninth Farewell to Gibraltar. Prize for piping--a silver cup and $150--went to the Lovat Band whose bald-headed leader, Augus Fraser, has entered 30 bagpiping contests during the last nine years, won 25 of them. Honors in caber-tossing (throwing forward in a half circle a log about the size of a small telegraph pole) went to an Armonk, N. Y. clansman named George Ross, after the caber had been sawed down several times so contestants could balance it. Further prizes were awarded to the best-dressed piper; the best-dressed lady in Highland costume; the best Highland flingers; winners at soccer, high-jumping, sack-racing and novice piping.

Patterned after the Cowal Games held annually at Dunoon, Scotland, for half a century to decide championships in Highland games, the Cowal Games of the U. S. started eleven years ago when Mr. Moore invited 30 Scottish friends to a free picnic. Three hundred appeared. The next year, Mr. Moore combined his picnic with an effort to raise funds for new uniforms for a bagpipe band, charged 50-c- admission. He had more guests than ever. The following year the Round Hill Scottish Games Association was formed to run the festival on Mr. Moore's estate. On Mr. Moore's meadows last week were parked 3,000 cars, trucks and busses from all over eastern U. S. and Canada.

A member of the famed Campbell clan, Mr. Moore is descended from the Earl of Argyll who befriended Mary, Queen of Scots. Proud of his Scottish ancestry, he has never worn his clan tartan of navy, black, red and green. His interest in the Cowal Games of the U. S. is sporting rather than historical. After schooling at St. Paul's, Mr. Moore joined Peary's Arctic Expedition in the summer of 1897. The next summer he hunted polar bear in Hudson Bay. After graduating from Yale in 1903, he spent a year touring and buying horses in Arabia. He was a major in the U. S. Army during the War. Afterward, he entered his father's tool manufacturing firm of Manning. Maxwell & Moore, became its president in 1927.

To a less hardy Scot, the spectacle of 8,000 fellow clansmen running loose on his country estate might have seemed alarming. Charles Arthur Moore, whose 6 ft. 3 in. and 250 Ib. made him easily the most impressive Scot at his extraordinary festival, was pleased by his Cowal Games last week until he noticed a group of clansmen paddling about in his stocked lake.

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