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City Park to host Scottish and Celtic Heritage Festival

File Photo The West Virginia Highland Dancers will perform Saturday at the 2019 Scottish and Celtic Heritage Festival at the Parkersburg City Park Pavilion.

PARKERSBURG — The Mid-Ohio Valley’s Celtic Heritage will be highlighted Saturday during the 2019 Scottish and Celtic Heritage Festival at the City Park Pavilion.

The 14th annual festival will be 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with admission of $5 per person, with children ages 12 and under free.

This year’s festival will offer entertainment, crafters demonstrating weaving, spinning, tatting and other artisan skills, children’s games and activities including a Pot of Gold Treasure Hunt and local cartoonist J.D. Williamson.

Melinda Crawford, director of the Strathgheny School of Scottish Fiddling at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa., will perform at 10:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.

Celtic Rush is a traditional Irish band with a non-traditional twist performing throughout northeast Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The group performs with fiddle, guitars, tin whistle, upright bass, mandolin, and Irish drum (bodhran). Their music repertoire includes Irish and Scottish jigs, reels, hornpipes, waltzes and polkas, sometimes even adding some unexpected non-traditional favorites. Celtic Rush will take to the stage at 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

Mad Maudlin, on stage at 12:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m., is a traditional Celtic folk band that leans a bit to the Scottish side playing upbeat songs and tender ballads, accompanied by guitar, fiddle, whistle, button box accordion, bodhran, and Scottish Border pipes. The band has sets that include traditional and modern Celtic and original music.

The West Virginia Highland Dancers will be entertaining festival-goers with performances of traditional Scottish and Irish dancing at 1;30 p.m.

Another event at the festival is the Bonnie Knees competition for all ages. There will be genealogy help for those searching for their Celtic roots; Scottish Clan exhibitors, and local history displays. There will be a Henderson Hall display, with copies of a book published about the local Henderson family and their ancestors available for sale and the author, Pamela Douglas Brust, will sign copies.

Members of the local Civil War re-enactors group Carlin’s Battery D will participate, as will vendors selling Celtic wares including Athens resident Kelly Lawrence, of Green Mantle Studio, who will have her artwork depicting ancient Celtic culture and mythology.

Heather Cooper, of Hawthorne, will be on hand, and the St. Andrew Pipes and Drums, based in Parkersburg, will play during opening ceremonies.

For more information go to the festival website at https://sites.google.com/site/scottishcelticheritagefestival; the Facebook Page or email scotandceltfest@att.net.

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