• 9 a.m. Scottish piper Jean Hayes and Little Miss Tartan

• 9:10 to 9:45 a.m. Scottish dance with Bravehearts

• 9:45 to 10:30 a.m. Music with Isla

• 10 a.m. Scottish Tartans Museum opens

• 10:30 to 11 a.m. Parade and opening ceremonies

• 11 to 11:45 a.m. Music with Eric Duncan

• 11:30 Border collie demonstrations; children’s area opens with Highland Games, coloring, and more

• 11:45 to 12:15 Music with Stix in the Mud and Rural Felicity; also a Knobby Knee Contest (for boys only)

• 12:25 to 1 p.m. Braemoor Dancers; also a Haggis Hurl (for girls only)

• 1:15 to 2 p.m. Music with Isla

• 2 to 2:30 p.m. John Mohr MacIntosh Pipes and Drums

• 2 p.m. Border collie demonstrations

• 2:30 to 3:15 p.m. Music with Eric Duncan

• 3:15 to 3:30 p.m. Ancient weapon dueling with The Edge

• 3:30 to 4 p.m. Closing ceremony with The Carolines

• 4 p.m. until... Ceilidh at the Rathskeller

• 5 p.m. Scottish Tartans Museum closes

Haggis, Arthur Conan Doyle, the towns of Edinburgh and Glasgow, Mel Gibson in a kilt — these are all things that come to mind when one thinks “Scotland.” And while Gibson usually isn’t found roaming these Appalachian Mountains in his open-air regalia, the influences of Scottish culture and its hearty peoples abound here.

“If you really and truly look into the history, the Scots were predominate in settling the mountain region,” said Hal Chapman, a long-time volunteer at the Scottish Tartans Museum in Franklin and one of the lead coordinators of the Taste of Scotland Festival to be held June 17-19.

The Scots originally immigrated to the Americas during the British Colonial period in the early 1700s. By 1730, Scottish traders traveling through the region were among the first white men to meet members of the Cherokee Indian Tribe, establishing peaceful relations and often marrying into the tribe.

However, in the 1750s the British found themselves entangled in a bitter land battle against the French and moving to suppress rising Indian hostilities, largely driven by colonists’ efforts to control and deed land that was once deemed free-range.

The governor of South Carolina appealed to British Maj. General Jeffrey Amhearst for troops to put down the Indian rebellion. Amhearst replied by sending 1,200 Scottish soldiers to make their way up from Charleston to the mountains, passing through Rabun Gap into what is now Macon County.

At the time the English and Scottish crowns and parliament were united, and troops from Scotland were heralded for their fighting abilities.

“They were basically mercenaries, if you paid them enough they’d fight for anybody,” said Walter Taylor, one of Tartan Museum’s first volunteers and a member of the Scottish American Military Society.

They say the battle began about a mile north of the state line near what is now the Spring Ridge Dairy. Today the land has been preserved through a U.S. Department of Agriculture land trust, protecting the Little Tennessee River that runs through it. Jersey cows graze in the field where the first lives were lost.

While the Scottish troops technically won the battle, the Cherokee were not dissuaded.

“The Cherokee looked at it as a political victory, not as the end of the war,” Taylor said.

A second battle was waged and troops destroyed the Cherokee village at Nikwasi — a site marked by the village mound, which still stands in the middle of Franklin.

A guided bus tour of the Cherokee-Highlanders battlegrounds kicks off the Taste of Scotland Festival at 10 a.m. June 17. Tour goers will meet at the Tartans Museum, located on Main Street in downtown Franklin, for a brief history lecture then ride out to various battle sites through the southern portion of the county and back to the museum for a procession to the Nikwasi mound.

The tour, which takes approximately an hour and a half, runs only once.

Following the tour, the history lesson continues with lectures and demonstrations of aspects of Scottish culture from 2 to 5 p.m. including tartan weaver Marjorie Logie Warren of Thistle Studio, who will speak about the Kilbarchan Project, a weaving project reconstructing the fabric produced in the Scottish village of Kilbarchan in the 19th century. Robert Kimsey, past principal of the North Carolina School of the Arts and an international traveler, will give a presentation titled “How the Scots Invented Everything!”

“When you go through American history you can find that a great number of people who have made contributions to America have been Scots,” Chapman said. “Alexander Graham Bell, he invented the telephone; John Baird, he invented television; Samuel S. Morse with Morse code; Daniel Boone, everybody knows who he is; Andrew Carnegie ...”

On Saturday, June 18, the official festival begins at 9 a.m. featuring Scottish food and craft vendors, live Scottish music and dance, and a parade and opening ceremonies at 10:30 a.m. Throughout the day children may participate in Highland Games including the caber toss, which is much like long distance telephone pole throwing (though in children’s case smaller, lighter poles are used); the sheaf toss, a strength and speed test simulating tossing hay bales into a barn with a pitchfork; and golf, which the Scots are said to have invented.

With the festival’s close at 4 p.m., festivities will move to the Rathskeller Coffee House just off Main Street for a traditional Ceilidh, a dance and musical gathering.

The next day, at 10:30 a.m., the First Presbyterian Church of Franklin will hold its annual Kirkin of the Tartans ceremony — a blessing historically based on the Jacobite Rebellion and resulting Disarming Act of 1745, which forbade Scots from wearing their tartans.

As legend goes, Highlanders hid swatches of their tartans in their clothing, secretly touching these swatches during worship services. The Kirkin was revived in WWII by Rev. Peter Marshall, then the Chaplain of the U.S. Senate, in an effort to encourage Scots to join the Allies’ fight.

The Taste of Scotland, now in its ninth year, aims to celebrate Scottish heritage both near and far and the culture’s unique bond with its ancestry.

“I guess it’s just a tremendous sense of pride that Scots have had,” Chapman said. “The Scots, time and time again, have been repressed by England and the English armies coming and trying to take away their independence and so forth that over time this history has really motivated the Scots. A lot of people we’re finding more and more are interested in going back and finding their history.”

Those interested in ancestral research may visit the Scottish Tartans Museum — founded by Scotland’s Scottish Tartans Society in 1988 — to find family kilts, crests and surnames. Museum volunteers have traced more than 1,600 Macon County surnames to Scottish ancestry.

The museum will be open Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information about the Taste of Scotland or the museum itself visit www.scottishtartans.org.