THE KILT

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 August 1928, Page 9

THE KILT

KEPT ALIV?J3Y PIPERS. Is tihe kilt dead? I don’t believe it! .It has been stated in the press that this was the case, but the announcement was made in a paper published across the border (writes a correspondent to the Edinburgh “Weekly Scotsman”). If the kilt is dead its obituary notice would surely have appeared in a Scottish newspaper. We would have read where “it Ayore awa’ ’’ ; the date of the funeral, and where it was to be buried I 1 suppose if the kilt were dead the male populace would go into mourning for it in plus fours a very unseemly costume to take the place of such an ancient and comely dress. But the kbit is not dead nor even sleeping. It still lives in the hearts and is worn on the person of its admirers. True, there are plus fours galore 1 in our midst in the Scottish capital, but plus fours are as common as pianos, to which instrument the piper compared his pipe if they took the drones from it. I can remember the time when the city gentleman in his silk hat and black coat looked upon the man from the North in his knickerbockers as a barbarian. But now the city gentleman has fallen into a worse trap, foi’ he has adopted a dress (plus fours) which is neither Highland, Lowland, nor anything else. Can plus fours, then, be a Scottish national dress? It would be sacrilege to breathe, far less to speak of such' an injustice to Scotland and its Highlanders. Only the other day I saw in Princes Street a Highlander who walked along from Maule’s to the .Register House dressed in the kilt, and as he passed along the mass of people on the pavement stretched their necks (even the man in plus fours) and asked enthusiastically, even feverishly, “Who is that in the kilt?” Tlie kilt was on the tip of every tongue, and admired by every eye. It made the pulse beat faster, and warmed the blood of to very man who Vvore Hie plus fours. Tliei'e are more than twelve kilts made in Edinburgh in a year, and Edinburgh is not the only place where kilts are made. 1 can

prove, to some extent ‘at least, how many kilts are worn. The Great High- • land bagpipe is the Scottish national instrument, so the kilt is the nationaldress. There are then over the world from 60.000 to 120,000 pipers in existence, and these pipers wear the kilt. Pipers alone keep the kilt alive, -as well as kilt-wearing Highlanders in addition. There are also thousands of men who wear the kilt in our Highland regiments. There is no reason why the kilt should not be worn by the Scottish judge on the bench, or the minister in the pulpit. The Rev. Mr Robertson, minister of Straloch, Perthshire, wore the kilt and preached in it, as well as being played to church by a piper on Sunday, and he. was as devout a Christian, and as eminent a divine as ever lived, then or since. Long live the kilt!