Winners in 2002 NC Provincial Gaelic Mod at Grandfather Mountain, Saturday, 14 July, were:

Best Female Gaelic Soloist: Stephanie Johnston, Asheville, NC; 2nd, Anne Landin, Siler City, NC; 3rd, Cheryl Benz, Raleigh, NC. Best Male Soloist: Harry MacKenzie, Baltimore, MD; 2nd, Gerald Daniel, Fayetteville, NC; 3rd, a tie between Christopher Justus, Hendersonville, NC, and Donald F. MacDonald, Edinburgh, Scotland; Honorable Mention, Mary Bennett Baxley, Little Rock, Arkansas.

Prizes were trophies for the two 1st Place Winners, plus books on the Gaelic language for all as well as Gold, Silver and Bronze medals, provided by the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games. Judges were Mairi Sine Lamont of Cape Breton and Dr Jamie MacDonald of Antigonish, residents of the Gaelic-speaking areas of Nova Scotia, Canada.

The Gaelic language, still spoken in Nova Scotia and in the Western Isles and Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland, was the Mother Tongue of approximately 30,000 immigrants who came to North Carolina from the Scottish Highlands in the last quarter of the 18th and the first quarter of the 19th centuries. The language began to die out in the Cape Fear Valley region of NC before and during the War Between the States, but remained in a few areas of the Old North State until as late as World War I.

Submitted by Donald F. MacDonald of Charlotte, North Carolina and Edinburgh, Scotland.