“How in the world can all these people possibly fit in there?” a woman next to me asked her companion. A hundred meters and a thousand Military Tattoo attendees in front of us, the stadium seating in the esplanade – on three sides, with Edinburgh Castle on the west – did not look as if it could contain this multitude that had completely, literally blocked the streets, from the esplanade down the first third of the Royal Mile, and also down George IV Bridge.
The crowds attending the 10:30pm Tattoo – the last of this year, the 50th anniversary of this most spectacular military and civilian dance and music event – had been queuing since at least nine, even before the 7:30pm Tattoo had finished. Not all the people were there for the queuing, however, and even someone as small as I am could hardly move about.
Yet all was calm, orderly. People’s excitement filled the air, in anticipation of the music – from bagpipes and drums, to steel drums to didgeridoo to electric guitar – that soon would be made by over 800 performers from around the world.
The streets gradually emptied into a stadium that, amazingly enough, accommodated everyone. Over the PA, an emcee greeted dignitaries and officials, and announced people’s birthdays and anniversaries, or other special guests, including a couple who was married today at the Scott Monument, a man who has attended the Tattoo every year for the past 23 years, and a couple who, like the Tattoo, were celebrating their own 50th anniversary.
As the emcee talked, two spotlights followed two kilted guards at the Castle drawbridge. Beside the gate on the other side, the stone statues of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, armored and holding their swords, points down, watched the soldiers patrol, then retire as the Tattoo began.
After the firing of six cannon, into a football field-size arena marched the Massed Pipes and Drums. Then the music of 15 pipe bands – half from Scotland’s regiments, half from military and police forces from the 54-nation Commonwealth – filled the esplanade, filled the Castle, filled the spirit of the thousands and thousands of people in the stadium.
In this, the Tattoo is a rare event. It is well hyped, and every year over 200,000 people attend while a further 100 million watch on television, yet the Tattoo deserves every ounce of attention. It is not tourist pap, nor some hollow military display of pomp and circumstance. The Tattoo’s reputation is built on the precision and grandeur of its performances, and on the deep spirit it invokes and embodies, from traditional to progressive, from Scottish culture to cultures worldwide. And individually, personally, the Tattoo touches you deep inside, and can amaze anyone who still is capable of wonder.
From the Massed Pipes and Drums, the audience clapped in time, and soon they were cheering and whooping. The Ngati Rangiwewehi Maori Group from Rotorua, the 121 Battalion South African Infantry Zulu Dance Team and the Anarungga Aboriginal Dance Company danced and sang in their own traditions, bringing the crowd to elation, and the military and police bands did the same.
Yet perhaps the Tattoo’s finest moment came when two members of the Aboriginal Dance Company, one with boomerangs and the other with a didgeridoo, were joined by the Band of the South Australia Police – who symbolized the growing unity of both cultures as they played and danced, not as a police brass band may traditionally, but more as the aborigines would.
Scottish girls danced traditional Highland dances; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police displayed a precision drill; a choir sang, and the bands all played together, soon joined on the esplanade by the other performers. Massive and brilliant and set to music, the fireworks finale faded, and the last performance of the 50th year of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo ended traditionally: first with everyone, both performers and attendees, singing “Auld Lang Syne;” and then the famed Lone Piper, standing on the Castle’s ramparts and playing “Sleep Dearie Sleep.”
With the end of the Tattoo, Edinburgh’s Festive August now begins to wind down. As the crowds began to empty the stands, I wondered how the streets would ever hold such a mass of people, yet the question came and went like a camera flash. It was soon replaced by the calypso music of the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force Steel Orchestra – personally, my favorite performance – and by my respect for and awe at the precision and unity of so many different people.
Into the crowd I walked, into the Edinburgh night we went, and as I looked around the individual faces inside the multitude, all I saw were smiles. Festive August was winding down to its end, but those smiles, I knew, would not soon fade.
The Edinburgh Military Tattoo was first performed in 1950, as the Army in Scotland’s contribution to the Edinburgh International Festival – but it has nothing to do with getting pissed at night and waking the next morning with a pretty girl needled into one’s arm.
Rather, “tattoo” derives from an old closing-time innkeeper’s cry, used in Scotland’s Lowlands in the 17th and 18th centuries. The fifes and drums of the local regiment would march through the streets, their music signaling a return to quarters (as in home, not the drinking game), and through the streets would be raised a shout, in Scots of course, of “Doe den tap toe!” (“Turn off the taps!”)
A “tattoo” eventually became known as a ceremonial performance of military music by massed bands. Edinburgh’s Military Tattoo, now 50 years running and, despite Scottish weather, with never a cancellation of a single performance, is one of the highlights of the Edinburgh International Festival.
Edinburgh Castle has always been the site of the Tattoo, as the Castle – built on a 135 meter-high extinct volcano and a royal residence since the 11th century – is the home of the Scottish crown jewels and the national war memorial, and is the Headquarters for the Scottish Division, and Regimental Headquarters of the Royal Scots and the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.