The old country; your inner haggis.(Ancestralscotland.com)(The Talk of the Town)

The Bryant Park Hotel had a Braveheart moment last week: a bagpiper was stationed on the street outside, and, in the subterranean Cellar Bar, swatches of Black Watch tartan decked the chandeliers while girls in short black skirts with tartan sashes served platters of potato-based canapes. The occasion was a party for a new Web site, Ancestralscotland.com, which was created by the Scottish tourism board to encourage Americans of Scots descent to discover their Highland or Lowland heritage. The site is based upon data provided in the 1881 census; a user who believes he may have Scots blood can type in his name -- McCoy, say -- and discover where, in 1881, the largest populations of real McCoys lived (in Wigtown and Dumbarton). Ancestralscotland.com does not assist with genealogy searches, though it provides links to sites that will; what it does do is help a user find a nice bed-and-breakfast in Clackmannanshire or tell him which golf course now occupies his family's ancestral property.

There were, if the handful of men in kilts were anything to go by, at least a few Scots and Scottish-Americans in evidence at the party. They included the towering blond model Kirsty Hume, who comes from Ayr and is something of a highland in herself, and her half-Scottish husband, Donovan Leitch, who was wearing the kilt and black velvet jacket he'd worn on their wedding day, four years ago. They stood near the bar, greeting stray guests. "The Scottish tourist board asked us to do this because our wedding got a lot of attention and Madonna and Guy weren't available," Leitch explained. But the party was not exactly thick with MacDonalds and MacBrides. When Mike Cantley, a red-haired ...