WOEFUL STATE OF THE SCOTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 89, 14 April 1923, Page 15

WOEFUL STATE OF THE SCOTS.

1 . T.TKE AUSTRALIANS. DU*S*EDl*sr, CAPITAL OF SCOTLAND. (From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, February 27. My blood boils. Such an insvdt to my native heath. Low, the London "Star" cartoonist says that "the Scotch are nice people; they are like Australians. - ' Aussies. indeed! And this Low man gives no reason logical or illogical, for such an assertion. What, in fact, he does say of it proves if anything that Scotland stands where it always did, apart, and has no connection with the Stage Scot of Low's manufacture. Here is what Low says: "I was disappointed to find all the characteristics that are supposed to be characteristic of Scotland —kilts and porridge and haggis and bagpipes—were missing." This New Zealand-born Scot has just been back to the land of his forbears for a fortnight, and he says —and this is more forgivable—"if you were to close your ears with Herbert Spencer's famous ear-flaps, you might have thought you were in New Zealand instead of Scotland. "One day we had some snow, and next morning the residents 6aid it was the sharpest bit of winter they had had. I have felt it very much colder in New Zealand. "In fact, the capital of Scotland is really at Dunedin, where the Scotchest people in the world can be found. "Scotland has certainly become more moderate in its drink. The national drink appears now to be tea. They consume it morning, noon, and night—another respect in which they resemble Australians. "In the whole of my wanderings I didn't find a single Pan playing the bagpipes." "Did you find many of the inhabitants carrying curly walking-sticks?" "Not one," replied the disconsolate comic artist. "They absolutely refused to live up to the pictures. Tlie only man I saw wearing kilts was a travelling Englishman. "The draper's shop in Carnoustie, (Low's ancestral clachan) had a window full of immaculate tweed suits, but that may have been due to the demoralising influence of the golfing element. That accounted for local preference for 'plus-fours' instead of kilts, no doubt." He concludes these reflections on Scotia, now really stern and wild, by saying that all his efforts to shoot a haggis were unsuccessful, but he attributes this to the fact that he didn't wear kilts. The local fauna is very shy and timid, he says. But he had a very good time. I