Kilt Wearers Unite!!

[Becca]

kilts are cool and they are fun to wear.

Just watch out for candle wax......

I really didn't want that mental image. Thanx.

[David Jamieson]

I am entitled to wear a Gunn Clan Kilt (which I do) and I am also entitled to wear the Stewart Tartan.

We got's some blood in the family.

[jdhowland]

My folks were lowlander Sassenachs (from both sides of the Channel) so I don't wear a tartan kilt. But there are options.

When I moved to Hawai'i in the 70s I lived for a time with my uncle who was a born and bred islander of Tahitian, Hawaiian and Danish descent living in a Samoan neighborhood in Nanakuli. He couldn't stand seeing me wear blue jeans in 95% humidity. He came home with a nice lava lava wrap-around skirt and ordered me to wear it. I liked it but thought it was only for wearing around the house until I saw the locals wearing them everywhere. I got used to it. The most comfortable clothing I've ever worn and the first time in my life my legs were tan instead of pale blue. I miss that lifestyle.

Now I'm back in my native Alaska where even the women don't wear skirts. Our former governer, Sarah Palin, doesn't count. She's from Idaho.

It's interesting how the military dress style of wearing tartans has become a sign of ethnic pride. I had a friend a the University of Hawai'i who looked pure Japanese. In name and appearance he could have been "fresh off da boat." But when U of H had an open house celebration he showed up in full tartan dress and played the bagpipes! Turns out, he had a Scottish grandmother and was very proud of that part of his heritage.

It's not a passing fad. The manly kilt is here to stay.

Just me, in long pants, reminiscing again as I head into my long subarctic night.

jd"Malienalu"howland

[Joesg2]

Anyone else out there wear a kilt?

I have 2 of them from Utlilikilts which was founded by my ex girlfriend and her partner in Seattle. Great kilts!!

They are modern adaptations!

Gene and others at the Zhang Sang Feng Festival got to see me don the kilt and sell a lot of dit da jow.

Anyone else like a cool breeze across their nether regions??

Be well,

Dale

I wear kilts too but they are my clan tartan not a utilikilt but a kilt is a kilt are you scottish dale just wondering

[Boston Bagua]

Im Scottish, English, Irish on my Moms side.

I have the right. Just not the cake to order me a tartan one.

Plus I can destroy the utilikilts and not feel bad about them.

[Mr Punch]

Speaking as someone of pure Saxon and Gael (Irish and Scottish both) heritage (although that's a contradiction in terms!), and as someone who 'the right' to wear a couple of tartans along various ancestral lines, and who also has an English family crest (the coat of arms is long lost), I'd just like to point out that the whole clan tartan and 'right to wear' stuff dates only from the mid-1850s when posh Victorian Scots wanted to claim some family badge, and previous to that tartans were mostly plain one-colour affairs with the weave or any pattern if they had one associated not by clan, but by region.

So, as the direct descendent also of some rather colourful rogues (like an infamous Irish sheepstealer) but precious few legit knobs (although I am apparently descended from a son of Edward II, apparently he was a b@stard, just like his old man! ) I take this opportunity to moon my royal scumbag arse at all your high-faluting clan pretensions, the whole lot o ya!

[Ben Gash]

My folks were lowlander Sassenachs (from both sides of the Channel)

What channel??? Sassenach means Saxon, and refers to (obviously) to anglo-saxons, conspicuously absent from the other side of the channel.
Mr Punch, I heard that the clan tartan thing was formulated for the visit of George IV to Edinburgh.

[jdhowland]

What channel??? Sassenach means Saxon, and refers to (obviously) to anglo-saxons, conspicuously absent from the other side of the channel.

Glad you asked. The English Channel, of course.

"Anglo-Saxon" is just a made up latinized term meant to include the various tribes of Angles, Frisians, Saxons, Swedes, Jutes, etc., who migrated to Britain in large numbers during the so-called "Saxon invasion," (although some maintain that there was no military invasion, just more immigrants moving in among their germanic cousins who had been there for centuries). In other words, there never was a people who called themselves Anglo-Saxon. And they didn't all leave their ancestral homeland. In the Netherlands and parts of northern Germany (but not in the mis-named state of Sachsen) there are still speakers of a language known as Saksisch or Sassisch. It is now generally understood among linguists that Sassisch is not a dialect of German, but is more closely related to English and Scots. Northumbrian English still shows features akin to both OE and OS. The idea that Low Saxon is a dialect of German was political propaganda dreamed up during the period of pan-Germanism to assimilate the various cultures of the German states. It is no longer politically correct to call it Low German.

By the way, clothing found in Danish and Jutish bog graves shows that they were wearing plaid cloth 2000 years ago. But they wore trousers, even then.

[Becca]

Glad you asked. The English Channel, of course.

"Anglo-Saxon" is just a made up latinized term meant to include the various tribes of Angles, Frisians, Saxons, Swedes, Jutes, etc., who migrated to Britain in large numbers during the so-called "Saxon invasion,"

The term only applied to those actually settled in Britton and only to Saxons (a germanic tribe), so they were not on "both side of the channel." They were primarily in Southern England. The Swedes and Jutes were called swedes and Jutes. Anglo is, quite literally, "English Speaking People." They didn't invade Britton; they were already there.

[jdhowland]

The term only applied to those actually settled in Britton and only to Saxons (a germanic tribe), so they were not on "both side of the channel." They were primarily in Southern England. The Swedes and Jutes were called swedes and Jutes. Anglo is, quite literally, "English Speaking People." They didn't invade Britton; they were already there.

You know whereof you speak...um, scribe. True it is that Anglo-Saxon refers to those on the left side of the water. My original post stated that Sassenachs were on both sides of the water. Using the term loosely to refer to Saxish folk in gereral, it's still true.

Personally, I don't care for the designation Anglo-anything because it's Latinized. Call me Anglish.

When I applied for an ID card in Hawaii the form asked for ethnic descriptors. Actually, I think it asked for "race." It's all I can do to stop myself from writing "Human" in those cases. After going over their list of check-the-boxes which included several types of Asian ethnicities, different forms of "Hispanic," and a very large number of Pacific cultures, I found, at the bottom, a single box next to the word "Caucasian." I took the form up to the lady at the counter and told her politely that, since my ancestors had not been anywhere near those mountains for thousands of years, there was no proper box to mark. She said, "Oh, just write anything you like." So I wrote down something like "Seminole-Saxo-Frisian". Let the demographers deal with that.

jd

[Becca]

You know whereof you speak...um, scribe. True it is that Anglo-Saxon refers to those on the left side of the water. My original post stated that Sassenachs were on both sides of the water. Using the term loosely to refer to Saxish folk in gereral, it's still true.

Yeah, but I wern't arguing with your use of Sassenach. It is indeed a Scots galic term for Saxon, later becomming a derogitory term for Englishman or non galic speaking scots lowlanders. I only disagreed with the Anglo-Saxon bit. Jutes were recognized as separate from the Saxons because thier cultures were actually very different.

Scotts did refer to all saxon tribes as Sassenachs, so saying you can claim sassenach blood from both sides of the pond is accurate. The bit on high and low german was also accurate.







And now you know one of my dirty little secrets: I'm fluent in clasic and vulger middle lattin, old and middle english and passably ok at decoding welsh, galic, and old french. I can safely blame my 10th grade English teacher and my colledge lit teacher for infecting me with the need to read things in ther original languge/original spelling.

[jdhowland]

...And now you know one of my dirty little secrets: I'm fluent in clasic and vulger middle lattin, old and middle english and passably ok at decoding welsh, galic, and old french. I can safely blame my 10th grade English teacher and my colledge lit teacher for infecting me with the need to read things in ther original languge/original spelling.

Aha. That explains why you didn't criticize my mention of Scots as a germanic language.

Schottsch is 'n germaansche spraak. Schotts Gaalsch is 'n keltsche Spraak.

But you knew that.

Be well.

John

[Becca]

Aha. That explains why you didn't criticize my mention of Scots as a germanic language.

Schottsch is 'n germaansche spraak. Schotts Gaalsch is 'n keltsche Spraak.

But you knew that.

Be well.

John

Yep. Only had a beef with the lumping of all germanic under Anglo-Saxon title. I won't go into the interesting side note of Anglii as a tribe and why "anglo" means english speaking.

I'm an egg head and proud of it.

[jdhowland]

Yep. Only had a beef with the lumping of all germanic under Anglo-Saxon title. I won't go into the interesting side note of Anglii as a tribe and why "anglo" means english speaking.

Okay. But you do know that the Jutes were still a west germanic group and are sometimes pigeonholed with the Angles, Saxons and Frisians, right? The Danes came later and made the area a north germanic region. There are still remnants of Jutish in Denmark. The sloppy term Anglo-Saxon also tends to dismiss the Frisian influence in England.

What this has to do with kilts, I can't say. But I love tangents.

Carry on.

jd

[Becca]

Depending on what part of germany they came from, yes. The problem with pigion-holing wandering tribes is that, well, they wander. Jutes had signifigantly different cultural differences. Same with the Saxons. The Frisians and the Angles could, and usually are, grouped together as Gauls. The scotts were gaulish.

And what this has to do with kilts? Some say kilts existed in celtic society back to the iron age. Some say they didn't, that they wore long, belted tunics. Resonnaly, I don't care when they started wearing kilts. 250 years is enough time for a tradition to be called a tradition without getting into wether or not Braveheart should have been depicted in trews or a tunic or a tartan kilt or a leather kilt or buck nekkid covered in lye.