On Saturday, April 11, from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm, join us at our at our home base in Cleveland Public Library’s historic Main Library campus in downtown Cleveland, for a celebration of Scottish history and heritage for Tartan Day 2026!
At 10:00 am, after some bagpipes and a hearty welcome, we invite children of ALL ages to a showing of Disney’s Brave on the big screen in the Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium.
After the film ends around 11:30 am, we’ll be led by a piper through the underground tunnel to majestic Brett Hall in the historic Main Library building for performances and multiple sets by:
- Plaid Sabbath, a non-profit Scottish and Celtic music workshop, incorporating musical instruments and styles played in traditional Scottish settings
- Dancers from the Jenny May School of Highland Dance
- Members of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society
Performances will continue until around 2:00 pm. There will also be crafts and displays of Scottish-related items from the collection around the Library. We encourage you to explore after the performances!
Come and spend the day with us. Don’t forget your tartan, whether that be kilts, shirts, or dressing up as Merida or the other members of Clan DunBroch!
A few of Ohio’s Scottish literary connections
- Leclaire Alger wrote under the Gaelic pseudonym Sorche Nic Leodhas. She gathered Scottish fables and folktales and re-told them in a number of anthologies, including Heather and Broom: Tales of the Scottish Highland and By Loch and By Lin: Tales from Scottish Ballads.
- “Jay Scotland” was the pseudonym of author John Jakes, who lived in Ohio for over a decade and maybe best known for this North and South trilogy
- President Ulysses S. Grant, whose memoirs set the standard for presidential autobiographies
- William Holmes McGuffey, of the famous McGuffey Readers, grew up in Ohio
- Early Ohio settler and poet John Burtt
- William Maxwell printed the first newspaper in the Northwest Territories (Centinel of the North-Western Territory, 1793)
- Superman, Ohio’s own superhero, even got his own tartan in 2015! And the Scottish author Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely have collaborated on a number of Superman stories.
- To name a few…
Tartan Day commemorates the Declaration of Abroath on April 6, 1320, that proclaimed the antiquity of Scotland’s independence from England.
The Tartan Day Celtic Celebration is held in collaboration with the Scottish Heritage Association of Northeast Ohio and the Ohio Scottish American Society.