This year’s Inverness provincial mod closed on Saturday night with organisers excited about the excellent standard of Gaelic being spoken by young participants.
There were more than 800 entries from competitors as far afield as Caithness, Aberdeen and Plockton.
More than 50 local volunteers rolled their sleeves up to make sure the two-day event at Eden Court ran smoothly.
Seonag Anderson, mod officer for An Commun Gaidhealach chaired Saturday’s event and adjudicated many of the spoken Gaelic categories.
She said: “When you see the children at such a high level, achieving what they are achieving and producing the masterpieces that they do, it makes all the hard work preparing the event worthwhile.
“I adjudicate many competitions all over the place and, with the children nowadays, the Gaelic is at a very high standard.
“I say to everybody, whoever your tutor is, mothers, fathers, grandparents, relations or next door neighbours – keep a hold of them, they’re worth their weight in gold.”Gaelic is not a classroom language, it’s something outside in the community and we must make sure that we keep it alive in our communities.”
Mrs Anderson also praised the willingness and confidence of the young participants to get up and perform without inhibitions.
She said: “They love to give you a performance, and at the ceilidh in the evening it was full of children from Fèis na h-Òige [the Gaelic summer school in Inverness] who were very keen to get up and sing.”
The performers were joined by Irish group Guth nan Gael from Dundalk.
Mrs Anderson said: “They have been over a few times for Blas and other feis events and they got on so well with our kids that they decided to come over again and do a weekend of workshops.”
That attitude of getting up and making things happen summed up the collective spirit which left event organisers feeling confident about the healthy state of Gaelic in the Highland capital.
