Hello and welcome to today’s episode of This Festival in History! Today we are looking at a festival I only learned about this year that has been going on for a mysterious number of years; Celtic Fest Ohio!
Celtic Fest Ohio is a one day festival that takes place in the Renaissance Park which houses the famous Ohio Ren Faire. Running from 10 to 2300 (11 PM) the festival has a pretty jam packed schedule that could keep an attendee busy most hours of the day.
They offer activities, musical acts, food tasting, drink tasting, shops, and more merriment. Multiple stages throughout the park gave room for plenty of musicians playing traditional songs, original songs, and more that embody traditions and tones made famous in Scotland and Ireland. It was hard to be anywhere in the park and not hear a band playing or a busker at a booth regaling us with tunes ranging from jaunty to somber.
While the fest didn’t use the entire park, plenty was open and ground space filled with booths that focused their merch on the Celtic traditions and special interest items. You could find shops that sold traditional clothing such as kilts, and tartans based on your family clans or just general use. You could also find shops selling the expected clothing for Ren fest visitors and modern day offerings with imagery from pagan faiths. Plenty of shops for jewelry, crowns, glass blowing, weapons also graced the grounds. I found a tarot reader as well. An Ohio Falconry group was present to allow one to hold one of their birds for a donation.
Interspersed through these booths were food booths serving things Americans would expect to find on an Irish or Scottish menu from a booth of boozy desserts, to a Haggis tent. You could find fish and chips, the famous turkey leg, potato soups, Irish stew, shepperd’s pie and more at locations around the park with the Pickle Cart pulled through as well. The real standout for food though was the tasting events. I was lucky enough to get a ticket to visit the new Afternoon Tea. For an hour, we had decorated tables with tiered serving platters filled with finger sandwiches, crumpets with clotted creams and jams topping them, and petit fours. Each seat also had a tart and cookie waiting for us. We chose our tea cups and had three tea options, a black tea, green tea and orange and honey herbal tea which I chose. The items were simple and tasty, and a perfect light snack in the middle of the afternoon.
I left this event to make my second lucky ticket grab, the Taste of the Isles. This event was held in a special area reserved for events like weddings in a feast hall. We had a band playing traditional instruments like the bagpipes, a Bodhran, a tin whistle, and mandolin. We were seated with a haggis cheese board to kick things off. We then had four more courses that served us a steak and mushroom pie, potato soup and roll, pork hand pie, and a Guinness cupcake and shortbread cookie. This experience was to allow people a taste of traditional dishes and the atmosphere of a pub.
Other tasting events included a whiskey and history event, and a Guinness tasting tent as well.
Multiple booths were present to help people learn more about their family history or general clan histories. This included representatives from Stewart, Wallace, Campbell, Gunn, Hunter, and Forsyth Clans to share their history with visitors. Also a booth allowed you to trace your family name back to the starting clan. My family has a celtic last name but unfortunately, it has potential roots in Scottish and Irish clans and we are not close enough to it to know from where it hails. My natural red hair is all I inherited from it in the end.
They also featured workshops so you could get your hands really dirty in the lore and expertise of the teachers. Some were around traditional musical instruments and other story telling, let alone the mentioned ones around famous drinks and brewing. One let you try your hand at glassblowing. These types of activities showcase how the fest is trying to bring cultural awareness and some preservation of the heritage.
So what is Ohio’s connection to the Celtic culture and why do we have not only this festival but multiples in the state. Heck, even multiples in the Dayton area.
The Celts come from ancient tribes in Europe and I read that the culture can even be traced back to the Hallstatt culture in Modern-day Austria and Germany, evolving from the early Iron age. 1200 BCE is a time being tossed about for their cultural identity to start really emerging and then the Celtic society was influenced by many external groups after ……. Interactions with the Romans, Vikings, and Anglo-Saxons. As a society, they were famous for intricate art forms, unique social structures, and advanced metalwork. Their spirituality was heavily rooted in nature with rituals still surviving to this day in celebrations of Samhain and Beltane for example.
Jumping ahead to the 19th and 20th centuries, you’ll find many, many, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh immigrants landing in Ohio in search of work. The mining and agricultural landscape of Ohio was a draw for many in need. This then led to many areas influenced by their culture, customs, and more. These communities survive to this day with festivals, events, and people seeking a connection with that island across the ocean.
Celtic Fest Ohio is a great way to spend a day getting to know Celtic culture, and it offers a diverse set of activities, food, and more for people to enjoy and keep busy. You also can just sit and watch the vibrant, joyous people that visit and work the fest in celebration of Celtic customs. This has been This Festival in History, I’m Soph, Thanks for watching! Please like and subscribe for more!
