NEW ZEALAND AND SCOTLAND

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 89, 14 April 1923, Page 7

NEW ZEALAND AND SCOTLAND

A CARTOONIST'S IMPRESSIONS.

(IROU OUR OTTS CORRBSPONDBNT.)

LONDON, 27th February. David Low, the New Zeaiander who is cartoonist of " The Star," has had a fortnight off duty to visit Scotland with his father, before the latter returns to New Zealand. Of Low senior, Low junior says, on returning south:

" I took my father up. there to find his birthplace, and he was the Scotchest man in Carnoustie. He* found some of his relatives;- and I 1 found a sign over a chop with ' David Low, Tobacconist,' on it which gave mean interesting moment. Carnoustie, which used to be a, fishing village on the east coast between Dundee and Aberdeen, is now given over mainly to golf, and the inhabitants talk in very high-tonijKi English ' haw-haw" style, with a very slight Scottish accent.. When you say to them, ' Hoots, -toots awa' they look at you with a. refined Piccadilly 1 stare." NO KILTS OR CURLY STICKS.

Asked if he found many of the inhabitants carrying curly walking-sticks, he replied disconsolately: "No one. They absolutely refused to live up to the pictures. The only man I saw wearing kilts was a. travelling Englishman. The draper's shop in Carnoustie 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 ' p^lus-fours ' instead of kilts, no doubt. " The fact is," said Low, "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 said 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 fit Dunedin, where the Scotchest people in the world can be found." All Low's efforts to shoot a haggis were unsuccessful, but h e attributes this to the fact that he didn't wear kilts. The local fauna is very.shy and timid. But lie had a very good time.

Of the people, he remarked: " I think the Scotch* are nice; they are like Australians. But I was disappointed to find all the characteristics that are supposed to be characteristic of Scotlandkilts and porridge and haggis and bagpipes—were, missing."