Re: Scotsmen [Was: Olli Lounela's tournament report from IGS's early years (1993)]

Orne,

I've always wanted to ask a Scotsman, "Is anything worn under the kilt?"

I'm not sure if anything is for the everyday sort of kilt wearer but I
believe that the prescribed garment is 'fresh' air.
Many years ago in this city, Glasgow, quite near its centre there was
an army barracks in an area of the City called the Wyndford. This barracks
was surrounded by a high stone wall with an entrance into it from Maryhill
Road. The wall (or a major part of it, the bit on the main road) is still
there but now it defines a housing estate.
That barracks was there long before I was born. It would have been the
sort of place where during the depression friends of my father who could
not get work would wind up having to volunteer, to get fed in what was
supposed to have been made into a Land Fit for Heros (that old old
refrain). It would also have been the place where they collected some of
the cannon fodder for that 'Great' War. I'm not absolutely sure of this
next but I believe that it was the home of the HLI (Highland Light
Infantry) though as for the 'Highland' bit, its ranks were probably filled
with the unemployed lowlanders who had thus far managed to escape
Tuberculosis.
But for me in my late pre-teen and early-teens, off on the tram with
my pals and 'boattla ginger' (the local 'patois' for aerated flavoured
water of the sort called Pop by some and Soda(?) by others) and a packet
of sandwiches, to Milngavie (pronounced 'mul-guy') to do a bit of
adventuring in what was then to all intents and purposes for us, the
countryside, right there at the terminus of the Glasgow Corporation's
tramlines.
From the top deck of the tram as it passed by you could look down into
the main gate of the barracks. With the 'kilty kilty cauld bums' as we
called them on guard there.
The story was that when the soldiers got a pass before leaving the
barracks the Sargeant Major would fit a small mirror-device to one of his
boots and bang this booted device on the ground between men-at-eased legs
and check for that compulsory 'fresh' air apparel. They were also as the
story goes not suppose to climb up the steep spiral stairs to the upper
deck of trams. The place where the 'clippies' (conductresses) usually
stood, between making their ticket-selling rounds was right under those
stairs. Such sensibilities in the LFFH.
Even then, sceptic that I am I doubted that story about the bulled-up
shiny black SM's boot with the mirror on its toe cap was true.
Then in a UK film, I think it was 'Tunes of Glory' the 'mirror
ceremony' tale was given some credence by being shown on screen.

So there you are, it looks like it's, fresh air and plenty of it, is
the order of the day for the cauld bums' kilts. Though having worn an
ex-army Black Watch kilt that my taller younger brother bought in Paddy's
Market, though quite coarse and quite heavy, it was anything but cold. I'm
sure it would make a lot more sense for folk living in the hills and
mountains of Scotland in the days before trousers were made in the
man-made materials that fit those outdoor conditions so well now.

Harry.
P.S. As an indicator of how given enough time and propaganda you can make
a nation, while it's continually dying and 'boning' people, come to
believe it; even if the instigators meant it initially as a means of
demeaning and controlling a people. After the English /slaughtered/ the
Scots at Culloden and on many little Mai Lais across the Highlands, the
wearing of the kilt or tartans was forbidden. In time, a very long time,
the enforcement of this ordinance lapsed. It would not surprise me if the
ridicule that we, that is me and my fellow Lowlanders directed at anyone
wearing a kilt stemmed from that enforcement. As Rabbie Burns said about
the arse-kissers who advocated the Union with England, "Such a Parcel of
Rogues in a Nation"...
http://www.robertburns.org/works/344.shtml
...of course the money men will point out correctly that there was a
lot more of it to be made by joining up with the English as it went on to
take from the world all that it wanted - tell me that old old story. Of
course they, the Scots were shown and had to learn their place, what they
could find of it among all the introduced live-mutton. The outcome today
is that the Westminster Parliament of the United Kingdom is stuffed with
Scots MPs from the PM (though that one may be a cuckoo) on down through
the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Broon, for whom I have high hopes).
The biter bit so to speak. Now Diese Verdammtes Engländer are complaining
about this surfeit of Scots having a say in 'their' affairs. Perhaps now
that they don't have an Empire to milk - well at least overtly, covertly
the money made from investment abroad can now be so easily channelled to
safe havens and never even be keeked at (looked at) by the Inland Revenue
and will remain 'valuable' as long as there isn't a World War III. Perhaps
even though Bretton Woods was knobbled in '71 'money' that's stable world
wide will preserve the peace better than treaties?
When I come back in my next incarnation I'm coming as a tory complete
with the proper type of lop-sided thinking, biased education and religious
stamp, the necessary pre-requisites.
No, hang on, I take that bit back about the 'biased education';
'education' is too important a word to be 'right' allied. It's the nearest
thing for me to 'a religion' that there is; and it's what an individual
does with it or at least gets from it, that matters. The snag is that so
many different factions want control of its administration - get them till
they're seven and mostly you've got them for life or have them spend
enough of their lives clearing out the keech (crap) that it doesn't
matter.
On that propaganda, mentioned earlier. The followers of Islam are
taught not to eat pork. This may or may not be written in the Qran, I
don't know but it is a tenet of that religion. Considering that we all
know that pig meat, not refrigerated, will 'turn' as my mother put it,
quicker than say beef, this is an important consideration.
Could it be that the sensible teaching of Mohammed that one should
avoid pork was almost like a WWII, Ministry of Food, health instruction?
Back then more than fourteen hundred years ago how would you disseminate
such good advice to folk who live in a hot country? One quick way would be
part of religious teaching. This warning would spread quickly and be acted
upon. Then that is only my conjecture a matter that seemed to me a non
sequitur.

.