Highland Games as practiced today were perpetuated by the clans of Northern Scotland but began far earlier among the Celts of Scotia (the name which Latin writers gave to Ireland). Several accounts credit an 11th century Scottish king, Malcolm Canmore, with having started the first Highland Games; but a single hill-race up a mountain in Aberdeenshire can hardly compare with the great variety of athletics which the Celts of Scotia, like the Greeks at Olympia, enjoyed for many generations. Ancient traditions insist that the same kind of contests in running foot-races, leaping, vaulting, wrestling, lifting heavy weights and putting stones (as one sees today) were begun in pre-Christian times. Several localities in both Eire and modern-day Northern Ireland were places that hosted such Games; but the most important ones were those at Teltown, in County Meath, at Emain Macha, near Armagh in Ulster and at Carmain in Leinster.

The first of these, at Teltown, were "funeral games" which honored the dead foster mother of a half-mortal, half-diety known as Lùgh, the Celtic God of Light. From Lùgh and from nasa, a word meaning Games, comes the modern Gaelic word for August, Lùghnasa, still the traditional month for Highland Games in Scotland. According to The Book of Leinster, the Teltown Games continued until the late 1700s. They were briefly revived at Dublin in 1924.
These Celtic peoples, known then as the Scotti, but now as Highland Scots, crossed the North Channel of the Irish Sea in the 4th and 5th centuries and also at the time of St. Columba, who brought Christianity to Scotland in the 6th. They settled on the coast of Argyll, which they called Dal Rìada, after their former home in Antrim. As all immigrants do, they brought with them their skills, their customs, their pastimes. Soon they were staging Games of foot-racing, horse-racing and wrestling every St. Michael's Day, September 29th. At each of several sites the event was known as the Oda, also spelled Odaigh, believed to be a Norse word, taken into Gaelic.

Other contests in racing and associated athletics began at religious fairs on various holy days as well as at cattle fairs on the quarter days of Scotland's calendar. Soon, sporting contests were taking place at the conclusion of military musters called "wappinschaws", held by the various clans. The clans' warriors needed to test their physical prowess in much the same way as modern soldiers engage in physical training. It was at one of these in 1574 that "tossing of ye barr" (caber-tossing) first appeared on record.

Clan chiefs and monarchs (including King Malcolm Canmore) used such musters for selecting the best runners to serve as couriers. Thus, when one examines this early background of history and tradition, one can see how wrong it is to say that King Malcolm of the Big-Head started the Games!

Competitions in piping, fiddling and playing the clàrsach or Gaelic harp had long taken place within the territories of the clans. For example, the MacLeods on the Isle-of-Skye held piping contests in the Great Hall of Dunvegan Castle. The first piping contests to be held in the Scottish Lowlands were not seen until the year 1781. These took place at a huge cattle fair known as the Falkirk Tryst, where all the pipers were Highland drovers who had brought their cattle down from the North.

The origins of many events seen today at the Highland Games can be traced back to the aforementioned funeral games and the Odas, religious fairs, military musters and cattle fairs. Such fairs were soon to cross the Atlantic. Indeed, in pre-Revolutionary War North Carolina, athletics and piping were enjoyed by Highland immigrants at two famous cattle fairs: At Laurel Hill (present-day Scotland County) and at modern-day Ellerbe (Richmond County).

The Act of Proscription, passed after Prince Charles Edward Stuart's defeat at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, forbade Highlanders to bear arms, to play the bagpipe, to speak their ancient, classical language of Gaelic, to wear tartan, or even to gather in groups. Almost 40 years elapsed before the Act of Proscription was repealed. During that time, while the native Gaels were being burnt out of their homes and being replaced by Lowland sheep-farmers and their sheep, much of Scotland's predominantly Gaelic culture was lost.
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