The Royal National Mod will sign off on Friday evening in Oban, signalling the start of eight days – and nights – of quiet, sober Gaelic reflection in that bonny town. In between will also be some fierce competitive singing and a raucous cèilidh or two, of course.

It’s a great occasion, and although the good folk of Fort William might disagree, there’s no better place for it. Oban’s got everything, from a cinema to a chip shop. The best thing about the festival is meeting old friends: sometimes the short walk along George Street can take a whole day.

This is the 112th Mod, which means that an awful lot of wee drams and big songs have been sung since the whole thing began in Oban in 1892. Present at that first Mod was the great Gaelic poetess and radical Land League protagonist Màiri Mhòr nan Òran, and that single fact itself justifies the entire clanjamfry.

It’s reckoned by the end of next week that up to 20,000 folk will have visited Oban for the occasion, which will do wonders for the local economy; last year’s event in Inverness generated almost £3 million for the Highland capital.

The Mod of course has its detractors as well as supporters, and within the Gaelic community there are those who criticise its competitive nature, though enormous strides have been taken in developing a non-competitive fringe in recent years.

Any parent or teacher will tell of the annual stress involved in preparing nervous, and sometimes unwilling, youngsters to stand front of stage singing Èisg Bhig (Little Fish) in a tremulous voice. It’s like a Gaelic rite of passage into adulthood, which few survive.

Music should not be a competitive sport; even though there’s something insanely addictive about sitting there trying to guess which of the 50 competitors have best sung Hòbhan ‘s na hòbhan hò.

The stress is even greater if you’re an adjudicator, as I was for some years. It’s like being that referee in the Chelsea v Southampton game who didn’t give the penalty that was so obvious to the Special One with the perfect vision. For the best judges are always in the pews. No wonder that the great Iain Crichton Smith wrote a wonderful story called Murdo and the Mod, in which the protagonist developed an armoured taxi service to safeguard judges from irate mothers after competitions. It was called the Adjudicator’s Rescue Service: Ars for short.

Once upon a time, the Mod earned the unwanted sobriquet of "the whisky Olympics" but if it was ever true I fear it has gone the way of all media hype: these days a cup of decaffeinated organic tea is your only man, as Flann O’Brien – or at least Jimmy Shand – might have said. And speaking of the great Mr Shand, my own personal highlight in attending numerous Mods was watching the wonderful Bobby MacLeod and his band raising the roof off the Caley Hotel in Oban many moons ago. It was a bit like Jimi Hendrix that time at Woodstock; without the nude bits and the rain.

One of the other great debates that surrounds the Mod is whether it really does the language any good. Critics complain that it’s largely an English-medium event, with the only Gaelic being heard when folk are singing. As a cartoonist put it years ago: “One day we’ll sing our language to death.”

But I don’t suppose that linguistic salvation – or any other kind of salvation – is its function. It’s just a gathering of folk having a good time in pleasant surroundings, which sort of beats hammering the poor to death with tax-credit cuts or invading Syria any day. It serves as an annual opportunity to showcase the language and some of its music.

So it is all the more surprising that Creative Scotland have decided this year not to fund the National Mod. It’s a scandal that an event that brings together thousands of Gaelic-speakers from across the globe, young and old, native speakers and learners, and is easily the biggest cultural event in our calendar, should be so shabbily treated by our public arts body.

And I see no indication of a T-in-the-Park £150,000-style intervention either from our Government.

But it will survive, thanks to the hundreds of volunteers who make it possible. It’s a long established example of the Big Society, and here’s to its good health. Slàinte.